With rapidly rising energy prices across the globe, the need for companies to better control their resources is becoming critical for their survival. Wasted energy sometimes reaches 30% in certain sectors, so the need for a comprehensive, cost efficient and easy to use system represents a great way to mitigate these losses and act on your carbon footprint.
Established in 2018 by Issam Smaali, Wattnow is an IoT Smart Energy Management Solution that helps companies take control of their energy by reducing their energy related costs and carbon footprint. Through the combination of its plug and play hardware and software, Wattnow enables companies to visualize, in real time, their energy usage, control and automate certain loads (like lighting or HVAC), and receive alerts and notifications when something goes wrong. The data, captured thanks to their smart sensors, is analyzed through machine learning engines. These insights can be accessed on a cloud-based dashboard, empowering companies by giving them access to detailed reports and analytics on their energy usage. The core mission is to make a robust and accessible energy efficiency technology for both industrials, commercial buildings, and corporates.
The investment round, closed at $1.3M, recorded the participation of Norwegian climate impact fund, Katapult, Tunisian VC fund 216 Capital, and an African VC, Launch Africa. We also note the follow up investment coming from Oman Technology Fund, already an investor in Wattnow and Crossboundary as well as an Angel investor from the KSA.
“In a world where energy costs are increasing week after week Wattnow’s platform and technology have the potential to help businesses reduce significantly their energy bill but also their impact on the environment. We are very excited to support Issam and the Wattnow team in their exciting journey” – Dhekra Khelifi partner at 216 Capital
Despite the pandemic, Wattnow managed to keep its exponential sales growth scoring a market leader’s clients portfolio across several sectors, such as retail, telcos, or banks even within industries, aeronautics, cement plants, and even pharmaceuticals.
In one of its case studies, Wattnow was able to mitigate maintenance work by 60% and avoid 1900 tCo2 eq, that’s comparable to the energy usage in one year, of more than 200 US homes.
With Safran, another one of Wattnow’s clients, what started as a small pilot in Tunisia, then expanded to the whole factory, followed by another factory deployment, to Wattnow finally ending up playing a big part in Safran Tunisia winning the Safran Group Innovation Prize in the low Carbon category. The IoT solution actually plays an important role in companies seeking to get the ISO 50001 certification, dedicated to groups committed to address their impact, and wanting to improve the level of efficiency of their energy management.
In 2021, Wattnow was part of SET100, listing the top 100 energy startups across the world, one of the first north African startups to make the list.
The young Tunisian start-up faces strong competition coming from traditional actors, system integrators or cloud-based players but manages to differentiate itself thanks to its strong adaptability to the emerging markets and through the unique data sets acquired feeding its machine learning engine and algorithms. Wattnow is thus able to bring out the information and trends that matter, and that are in tune to the pain points of these clients, in these locations.
After showing some great growth in their local market in Tunisia, Wattnow is expanding its clients portfolio to Africa and to the Middle east, while always keeping an eye on where the environmental impact can be the highest. Being part of Plug and Play Morocco and Plug and Play Middle East’s T5 SDAIA Smart Cities Accelerator, the Tunisian startup already started sizing the Moroccan and Saudi markets and building partnerships for deployment.
“These funds will play a major role in helping us take Wattnow to the next level. As a 100% Tunisian start up, the whole team is very proud to have been able to make it to this stage, and the best is yet to come, I’m sure”. – Issam Smaali, CEO of Wattnow
Previously, the startup was supported by regional investors including Flat6Labs, Kepple Africa Ventures, Oman Technology Fund, and a selection of angel investors from the Bridging Angels network.