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Cassia Networks was founded in 2014, by serial entrepreneur Felix Zhao. Currently, he serves as CEO and Chairman at Cassia Networks. He laid the foundation for Cassia intending to solve the IoT connectivity, location, and management challenges. Over the years, he has been successfully leading the company making it one of the fastest-growing ventures of 2022.
Before Cassia, Felix served as the VP & GM of APAC for Sensys Networks where he grew the revenue of Sensys APAC region by 300% in two years. Before Sensys, he served as the Vice President, Mesh Technology at Aruba Networks (NASDAQ: ARUN), which acquired Felix’s company Azalea Networks in 2010. Azalea Networks was also one of the successful businesses co-founded by Felix. The company was awarded the Wireless Beijing project for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and won the large-scale China Mobile 3G and Wi-Fi projects in 2009. Before starting his entrepreneurial journey, Felix worked at Cisco Systems, where he was the key contributor in developing wireless products and solutions. He was also the founding partner of zPark Venture. Felix has over 20 US patents granted or pending on IP routing, QoS, voice control, video optimization, mobile internet, wireless communication, as well as Bluetooth routing, roaming, and long-range transmission.
Felix always had a strong passion for IoT. During his years at Cisco, he was working on wireless technologies and sensor networking—which was at the premature stage of IoT— and identified the potential this technology holds. By 2014, Felix thought that the time was right to start his new adventure with IoT and thus established Cassia Networks. The company initially focused on low power wireless communication, cloud computing, and edge computing to name a few. As the market developed, Cassia progressed and began successfully supporting large-scale enterprise IoT networking.
Moreover, Felix and his team effectively identified the potential of Bluetooth IoT which can be used beyond consumer applications. “The market demand for the enterprise was huge and we wanted to seize this opportunity. Fortunately, I had great support from my core team at my previous start-up, Azalea Networks, and in a short amount of time, we were able to turn our ideas into a working prototype,” explained Felix. Though introducing something new to the market is not a cakewalk for today’s leaders. Felix and his team had to change the perception towards Bluetooth technology and believe in the long-term vision for Cassia. The company had to build a breakthrough product that never existed before and be capable of solving the unique challenges facing enterprises. He adds, “We knew that to survive and thrive, and to scale the company, we had to find the right market segments with strong demand and achieve product-market fit in a very short time.”
Cassia’s products and solutions are uniquely designed to meet the specific needs of the end-user. Enterprises are facing a plethora of challenges when it comes to IoT and they need the right wireless solution to overcome these challenges. Cassia’s enterprise-centric products position it on top of the leading IoT solution providers. Apart from offering a ground-breaking products suite, the team at Cassia continuously innovates and upgrades the technology with feature-rich functionalities that can help customers scale their IoT projects more effectively and efficiently.
Cassia Networks has filed 16 patent applications on several key Bluetooth specifications such as long-range transmission, one-to-many connections, Bluetooth Routing and Bluetooth Roaming to name a few. Felix adds, “By redefining what is possible with Bluetooth, we can offer customers worldwide enterprise-grade reliability, security, and scalability. This gives us a significant advantage over other vendors and allows us to gain a competitive edge.”
Cassia Networks has partnered with today’s global IoT leaders such as ABB, WEG, Philips, and Medtronic to name a few. By combining their solution with Cassia’s Bluetooth IoT technology, Industrial companies such as ABB and WEG, can provide their customers with complete condition monitoring and predictive analysis solutions to significantly reduce machine downtime, save energy, and reduce deployment & maintenance costs. Cassia receives positive feedback backing its promise that the company offers the right Bluetooth products and solutions their customers and partners have come to expect. Furthermore, this feedback also helps Cassia to customize their IoT solutions to help customers achieve the scalability they need to deploy their IoT projects in the most cost-effective manner resulting in greater ROI.
Cassia delivers an exceptional product and solutions suite, which is cost-effective and does not compromise on quality. The company has maintained this quality over the years and has upgraded their solutions to fit the ever-evolving landscape of IoT. These remarkable products and solutions are often recognized and awarded in the industry. Highlighting one such award, Felix states that winning the 2016 Best of CES award was one of the proudest recognitions for Cassia. In the initial journey of Cassia— a start-up company with a small budget, the award boosted the team’s morale and motivated them to continue developing products and solutions to help companies worldwide overcome their IoT challenges.
“This award was an early indication that we were onto something and were truly building something unique and useful for our customers,” proudly asserts Felix.
Shortly after winning the award, Cassia became a familiar name in the industry and started serving customers from some of the largest IoT enterprises. The award accelerated the growth for Cassia and the company has since never looked back. In 2021, the company won the Best Innovation Supplier Award from the Medtronic Technology Centre (MTC) in recognition of Cassia’s innovative Bluetooth IoT products and solutions that are used in conjunction with Medtronic’s real-time continuous blood glucose monitoring solution for medical facilities. Cassia is equally striving to help the healthcare sector by making Digital Health IoT more reliable and accessible for hospitals and patients.
Cassia recently won the China Telecom 21CN public bidding for their telehealth cloud IoT management platform in Dec. 2021. China Telecom 21CN plans to deploy this solution in millions of homes in the next few years.
The landscape of IoT is continuously evolving. Currently, the IoT market demands products and solutions that offer reliability, security, and easy deployment to enable large-scale projects. Cassia can leverage the power of Bluetooth IoT to meet consumer demands. Its cutting-edge IoT products and solutions are curated to best serve the specific needs of the market—regardless of industry.
Cassia Networks’ progress trajectory has been phenomenal over the years. Staying on this path, the company will continue to surprise us with breakthrough technology and products. In the coming year, Cassia is looking forward to launching a new compact, easy to use and deploy cellular Bluetooth Gateway that will complement Cassia’s full product suite of enterprise-grade BLE gateways. The team is very excited about the launch and the official announcement will be available soon.
Felix concludes, “Our vision and mission for the future is to make IoT easy for everyone.”
“We believe in putting customers first, continuous innovation, long-term thinking, and teamwork.”
