JSE-listed 4Sight Holdings has signed an agreement with Chinese company Shenzhen Rongmei Science and Technology (RM) to establish a 50:50 joint venture (JV) in China.

4Sight said in a statement on Monday that it aims to expand its business operations, opportunities and customer footprint in the underserved Asia Pacific areas with a specific focus on the Chinese market.

It currently derives only 1% of its revenue from the Asia Pacific region.

Both companies have earmarked a strategy to combine the roles of marketing, sales, operations and technology delivery through the JV, which will focus on targeting the telecommunications, mining and energy sectors.

4Sight will enable the JV with its Industry 4.0 know-how, implementation experience and technology offerings in the selected vertical markets, while RM fund the JV, provide loan funding, identify local acquisitions and take responsibility for local business development.

4Sight’s key technology capabilities that will initially be focused on as part of the JV include the optimisation of telecommunications networks through the application of dynamic tariffing services for revenues management and network optimization for active and passive telecommunications networks; real-time optimization to optimize the efficiency and profitability of mining, manufacturing and energy provisioning processes; and prescriptive maintenance to monitor, analyse and instruct planned maintenance actions on component levels for process equipment through artificial intelligence (AI) agents.

Other technology capabilities will include simulation software and services to assist with the redesign and optimisation of mining, manufacturing and energy processes for digitisation purposes; digitization and automation of physical processes through sensors, instrumentation, system integration, automation and control of manufacturing and mining processes at the plant floor level; and cybersecurity of the sensors, commercial Internet of Things (IoT) and industrial IoT and operational networks.

These algorithms and services will be provided by various 4Sight subsidiaries, including Digitata DTS, Digitata Networks, BlueESP and Age Technologies and will be coordinated and driven by the enterprise project management team from Sakhu.

RM’s vision is to extend its current industry focus in government and financial services to that of smart factories, -health and -cities; backed by the Chinese government’s drive to integrate the Internet, big data and AI in the next few years.