Forbes US: Smart Buildings Startups To Look Out For
May. 17, 2019
In a previous article, I theorized that one of the key PropTech themes for this year is that of “smart” technologies. Industry players seek solutions that help deliver the now widely accepted principle of real estate-as-a-service.
There are many ways this goal can be achieved, from the deployment of sensors and the intelligent analytics that go with it, to customer experience platforms that span use cases and asset classes. As we already discussed late last year, exciting advances are being made in the residential, commercial and retail spaces, as well as in placemaking. The latter will, I think, become increasingly important as connectivity becomes key to entire local communities, bringing the concept of individual buildings being managed in a silo from their surroundings into obsolescence.
Over the past few months, I have met many interesting startups through this column. Here are four that operate in the smart buildings space which are well worth looking out for.
Spaceti
Czech PropTech startup Spaceti focuses on smart offices. It was launched in Prague in 2016 by six enterprising co-founders who realized that many smart buildings projects weren’t scaling due to the fragmented nature of the market. They believed that the only way to achieve scale was to build an integrated approach in a single platform, combining hardware, sensors, data analytics and the UX side of things. Spaceti makes its own sensors so as not to be dependent on third party suppliers, but can also integrate with external partners. These measure everything from occupancy, through parking utilization, to indoor air quality. According to co-Founder Akash Ravi, now that Spaceti has a well-rounded sensor portfolio, they are focusing on an analytics platform to creating deeper insights and recommendations with better algorithms and more contextual data. The system has open APIs that integrate with existing platforms already present in the buildings. In the future, they want to focus on advanced analytics and on being an open provider that can track data between different systems, analyze this data, and make recommendations off the back of it. The company’s client list is already impressive, with top names such as Vodafone, Invesco, and Castellum using Spaceti in their portfolios.
Source: Forbes US.
