Introduction

 “If energy costs are important to your business, then Powerbot helps you prioritise where and how to improve.” Co-Founder Powerbot 

A study on Indian industries shows that industries and commercial buildings spend around $80 billion just on electricity. Many industries like processing, metal, casting etc. are highly energy-intensive. With over 25% of their operational costs being from energy bills there is a significant white space in this domain to use advanced technologies to conserve and optimize the usage of electricity. Powerbot provides an energy analytics solution that  enables an enterprise to address energy cost (not just energy consumption) like any other direct expense associated with the process of making, moving or storing the products or services. The analytics take into account the factors affecting energy cost to the enterprise. It understands how much energy and power an enterprise uses, when it’s used and where it’s used and provides a solid solution to tackle the issues.

It is founded by Anand Teke and Hemant Shinde. Powerbot is a culmination of their combined experience of 25 years in the domains of energy efficiency, electronics, software, and data analysis. Anand has experience of more than ten years in the fields of power plant engineering, energy efficiency, and electronics. He has helped more than 100 industries to become more energy efficient. He is a certified Energy Auditor and has graduated from Delft University of Technology, Netherlands and College of Engineering, Pune. Hemant has worked for more than a decade across leading technology companies. His core expertise is Solution Architecture for building scalable software services. He graduated from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2008.

By automatically processing the electricity bills and precisely predicting on ways that can help a company  reduce its effective charges their product rightly addresses the gap in the industry.

Market size

The current market size being  $2.0 billion is expected to  grow to $4.3 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16.3% during the forecast period. The major growth factor of the Energy and Utilities Analytics Market is the mounting adoption of smart meters for enabling two–way communication between companies and customers. The prioritization of power generation planning and the need for accurate forecasting, and the investments in digital channels to improve customer processes, experience, and perceived customer value are also expected to drive the market growth.

The Energy and Utilities Analytics Market by vertical is segmented into two categories: energy and utilities. The energy vertical is expected to grow at a higher CAGR during the forecast period.  The growth can be attributed to the increasing volume of customer data, changing customer needs, and growing need for efficient supply chain management. These factors have created the need for energy and utilities analytics solutions and services.

Investment Thesis

Electricity bills anywhere in India are complicated to say the least. Very few consumers can spare time to dig beyond the total amount and units consumed. There are more heads of charges than that make sense. There are more than fifty categories of consumers in Maharashtra alone. Some pay fixed demand charges while others pay as per their use. The per unit charges also vary by up to 90% within various subcategories of commercial consumers alone. Choosing the right tariff for your needs can pay huge returns without investing a penny. Powerbot clearly analyses the electricity usage over the year and recommends a tariff category that best suits the customer.

We believe there can be a symbiotic relationship between energy management and predictive maintenance. Over a period of time we believe Powerbot rather than just saying we are saving your energy bill, which the customer might not find tangible outcome for, instead will give actionable insights like assembly line is working for so long but due to some factors its shuts down which will improve the predictive uptime of your assembly line therefore improving overall productivity. Powerbot which collects critical data to understand electricity consumption patterns in the factory or building could over a period of time and with enough standardized datasets would have created a sustainable moat which only becomes better as function of more data over a period of time. What truly sets them apart is instead of just  bombarding the customers with numbers and jargon, Powerbot automatically processes the data and sends critical alerts which can directly be acted upon. Alerts also reach the right people with an electrical person being alerted in case of a drop in power factor while a commercial person will be alerted when the electricity bill is due thus making the entire process highly effective and result oriented from day one. With an end to end solution Powerbot is a complete energy management solution including energy meters, wireless data collectors, and a web application that generates actionable insights by providing specific insights at the right time to help companies become more energy efficient and optimize their cost of electricity. Currently they have a subscription based model with phenomenal early traction from companies like Tata Power, Kalyani and STCE to name a few.

Conclusion

We believe that the founders have the right combination of passion and experience to scale the business in the industrial business segment and not just in India but across the globe eventually. The solution offered by Powerbot could benefit manufacturing industries greatly as  energy cost, efficiency and environmental implications have top priority all over the world today particularly for heavy energy consumer industries which are looking for better tools to optimize their energy costs and increase their bottom-line.