A technology company and router distributor developed by a Rady School of Management alumna is making waves in the worldwide cryptocurrency market.
Emma Russell (MBA ’15) is the CEO of Gmine, which is the seller and distributor for the Newifi 3 router in the U.S. Gmine distributes routers that can share bandwidth and storage. In return, users will be assigned tokens through smart contract. The Newifi 3 router, the first blockchain-powered router in the world, launched in the U.S. on January 30. Emma is also the CEO of Newifi Global.
The success of the Newifi router was noticed by technical giant Tencent, a Chinese multinational investment holding conglomerate. Tencent decided to explore crowdsourced content delivery networks provided by Newifi 3 router to accelerate its self-developed game, King of Glory. This top-grossing game is the mobile version of League of Legends, which already has 200 million users in China and also generated $5 billion revenue in 2017.
“Thanks to my MBA classes at the Rady School, I can see the big picture, understand entrepreneurial mindsets and know how the real business operates,” Russel said. “Also, my MBA courses gave me the great opportunity to learn and improve my leadership skills, professional knowledge and teamwork values. The Rady School helped me turn my previous role into entrepreneurial one.”
Newifi’s blockchain technology breaks the traditional concept of content delivery network service providers and cloud service providers. Newifi 3 is the only smart router currently available for cryptocurrency mining in the global market. This means that every household can have a premier router to share idle bandwidth and storage resources. Another feature of the Newifi 3 is that the router can become a private cloud by plugging in a portable hard drive. The Newifi 3 also features photo album backup, unregistered device alerts, multi-screen interaction and security protection. All these features make Newifi 3 a popular network attached storage for everyone from typical users to photographers and videographers.