New York-based Ryse, which specializes in retrofitting to enable smart home automation, has closed on $2 million in the form of media inventory from Mercurius Media Capital (MMC), a specialist media-for-equity firm whose partners include Baltimore-based Sinclair Broadcast Group and several others.
Under the deal, MMC will provide media inventory consisting of air time across North American TV, digital, and out-of-home media. The media campaigns are scheduled to launch later this month. Ryse said the deal would enable it to scale up media spending and fast-track customer acquisition, strengthen brand presence, and expand sales across America.
“This partnership is a major milestone for Ryse. With MMC’s media support, we can tell our story at scale and accelerate our vision of making smart shading a standard in every home,” said Ryse CEO Trung Pham, who previously founded a smart home company called Axis Labs. “Our retrofit approach allows homeowners to upgrade affordably, and now we’ll bring that message to millions.”
Retrofit First
Ryse’s backers include Newport Beach, Calif.-based Exoio, Cogito, which has an office in New York, and a bunch of Canadian firms including Elemental, Globalive, Good News Ventures, North Spring Capital Partners and Supporters Fund.
“We see strong potential in Ryse as they lead the retrofit smart home category, offering an innovative solution in a space that has long lacked accessible and consumer-friendly options,” said Piyush Puri, co-founder of Redwood City, Calif.-based MMC. “Their retrofit-first approach, paired with a compelling value proposition around affordability and energy efficiency, positions them uniquely in a rapidly expanding smart home sector.”
Founded in 2015, Ryse’s products connect with Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Apple HomeKit, giving users varied smart home automation features with voice and app controls. Its flagship product, called SmartShade, automates shades with beaded chains, while another newly launched product, SmartCurtain, installs and works with both curtain rods and tracks.
Ryse believes it can capitalize on the smart home automation industry’s compound annual growth rate of 23%, growing to $355 billion by 2031.
