While world leaders are still discussing ways to save the earth, Zenatix, a two-year-old startup, has already takenconcrete steps to help companies reduce their carbon footprint.
Co-founded in December 2013 by IIT and IIM alumni Rahul Bhalla, Vishal Bansal and Dr Amarjeet Singh, Zenatix helps reduce the electricity spend in buildings by understanding their power consumption patterns and providing insights. It is in talks with seed fund Blume Ventures to raise Series A funding by May 2016, said co-founder Dr Amarjeet Singh. On Monday (7 December), Blume invested an undisclosed amount of pre-series A in the Gurgaon based startup.
“Blume Ventures has helped companies in the B2B segment grow to a decent size and they very well understand the challenges in the enterprise segment. Moreover, they are one of the active investors in clean tech space which fits in well with Zenatix’s vision,” said Singh on their strategic partnership with Blume Ventures.
Earlier this year, the company had raised $1,61,000 from a group of angel investors led by Google India chief Rajan Anandan, Trifecta Capital’s Rahul Khanna, and Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.
Zenatix installs energy monitoring equipment, smart meters and controllers on different appliances such as ACs, lighting, UPS etc to monitor the energy consumed by them through their cloud-based software. Then it analyses the data and sends information on energy-saving measures to customers via SMS or email.
Currently, the company is focused on commercial customers with large office spaces and retail chains. In two years, the company has more than 45 paying customers including bigwigs such as Google, Glaxo SmithKline, Xerox, Mother Dairy and Starbucks.
“What gives us confidence is that all of our first ten customers such as telecom provider Tata Teleservices and e-commerce classifieds company Info Edge have renewed their subscription and have also asked us to do new installations at their office premises,” adds Singh.
With the investment, the company will expand their services to hotels, banks, hospitals, and educational institutions.
With the current customer base being largely centered in Delhi NCR, the company plans to expand into Bangalore and Mumbai over the next 2-3 months. The capital will be further used to increase the size of its 20-people-team across functions such as technology, product and sales.
The company earns revenue from the monthly subscription fee it charges from its clients. This fee is proportional to the area over which the sensors are installed. And, there is also a guarantee: if the client doesn’t make cost savings, Zenatix removes the software without any charge. This way the customer doesn’t have to make any payment upfront for the hardware or software, said Rahul Bhalla, co-founder and CEO of Zenatix. This SaaS-based revenue model helped them reach an annual run rate of Rs 80 lakh in November 2015 from Rs 15 lakh for FY2014-15.
The company hopes to reach an annualised recurring revenue of $1 million over the next nine months to one year.
BW Reporters
Sonal was a writer on startups and entrepreneurship for BW Businessworld,
