World’s fastest growing clean-tech company SmartHelio is now backed by Y Combinator. SmartHelio will be pitching its solution to a league of world-class investors during Y Combinator’s Demo Day. Read to know more…
It was a proud moment for the team when SmartHelio was selected for the Y Combinator startup program W22 batch. In a few days, on March 29th and 30th, 2022, SmartHelio will be pitching its solution to a league of world-class investors during Y Combinator’s Demo Day. The most awaited event for the startup community all over the world. The event will feature founders from 43 countries among the 375 startups selected for this batch.
With the rising concerns of climate change, innovative cleantech solutions are emerging rapidly across the globe. This growth is supported by investors who have invested $775 Bn in cleantech startups in 2021 and it is growing at 27% YoY. It is not only critical to replace fossil fuels but it is also important to make the current and future cleantech infrastructures truly sustainable.
What does SmartHelio do?
SmartHelio provides advanced predictive analytics and IoT solutions that help solar utilities automatically predict and prevent downtime disruptions, to increase their annual revenue by $10k per MW/ year from their solar plants.
What problem are they solving?
When a solar plant starts underperforming or shuts down suddenly, it directly affects the revenue of solar companies and operational expense increases. The main reason is the inability to automatically identify the reasons. This loss in revenue combined with increased operational expenditure amounts to a $15 Bn/year (and increasing) loss to the industry.
What is SmartHelio’s USP?
Minimize downtime and fix problems with click of a button. Their software reads the live data coming from solar plants, identifies why the plant is under-performing and prescribes actions to the companies with recommended timelines of action. This automation reduces manual interventions in maintaining the solar plants by 80%. If the plant’s data is not accurate, they also offer them their smart sensor IoT device.
Who are their customers?
Solar Developers, often called IPPs – Independent Power Producers (roof-tops and utility).
How did they get here?
The company was the brainchild of Govinda Upadhayay, CEO and Founder of SmartHelio, who is a serial entrepreneur listed in Forbes 30under30 for his work in the clean energy domain. He did his research in climate modeling from a top European tech university, EPFL, Lausanne. Govinda realised that the reactive maintenance of solar plants is affecting the health and its end-of-life. He started his research on designing an intelligent monitoring system that could keep a check on solar assets’ health. Thus, turning reactive maintenance to predictive maintenance for solar PV plants.
How has their journey been?
In just two years, SmartHelio bagged 15 international awards for its innovative solution and was selected by 8 prestigious acceleration programs. Recently, SmartHelio won the MassChallenge competition and was selected by the AWS Clean Energy Acceleration program. This year SmartHelio was also awarded the B Corporation Certification for meeting the highest social and environmental standards.
About Y Combinator
Y Combinator provides seed funding for startups. Every 6 months over 10,000 companies from across the world apply for the YC accelerator program, commonly called the YC Boot Camp. After critical evaluation by Venture Capitalists, only a selected bunch of companies make it to the three month long Boot Camp.
During these three months, YC works intensely with startups on their ideas helping founders deal with investors and acquirers. It helps startups to get into the best possible shape and refine their pitch to investors. Each cycle culminates in Demo Day, when the startups present their companies to a carefully selected, invite-only audience.
So far, more than 3,000 companies have been funded by Y Combinator like Airbnb, Coinbase, Dropbox, Reddit, Stripe to name a few. Many of these companies are now Unicorns.
