Green-tech start-up vies for share in USD 2 trillion facility management pie

Prabhu Ramachandran, Rajavel Subramanian and Yogendra Babu, ex-Zoho veterans with over 17 years of cloud & IoT expertise are the founders of the city-based green tech start-up, which was set up in April 2017, and has started operations in India and Middle East this year. 

Speaking to this newspaper, Ramachandran says, “We bring pureplay software driven technologies to solve efficiency related problems within large buildings. We target customers who own and operate large buildings – like a chain of IT parks, hotels, hospitals. We mainly solve three problems – the first being increasing efficiency with respect to energy and water consumption. The second solution is for the building’s large mission critical and expensive assets, such as heating and cooling (HVAC) systems, elevator and power backup systems. We help customers increase the life cycle of such assets. Our third solution is for people management. For every 1,000 occupants in a building, you need close to 70 to 80 people to support them – including soft services like security and housekeeping to technical teams. We offer tech driven software to make the workforce smarter and their lives easier. Our idea is to help the owners operate their buildings more efficiently.”

Giving us a lowdown on the statistics that govern this business, Ramachandran says that more than 87 per cent of our time is spent inside buildings – from offices to malls to hotels etc. Not surprisingly, the global facility management spend for buildings, which is currently at $1.3 trillion annually, is set to touch $2 trillion by the year 2022. The technology spend share (including software) will be around $200 bn in the next 2-4 years. 

The company is currently piloting its product with one client in India and three in the Middle East. 

Talking about the pain points of embracing energy efficiency, he says, “It looks great on paper, but most buildings do not have a budget for the same. Also, most vendors come up with hardware centric solutions that are high on investment. The time required to get compliant is also a deterrent to this drive to go green. Our idea is to use IoT to help buildings make this transition and make sustainability a habit.”