BENGALURU: Unlike Western countries, customers in India do not have multiple electricity providers to choose from to optimise their bills and shift plans like we do in case of mobile phone telephony or broadband providers in India. Hence the best option consumers have is to optimise energy usage.
In order to cater to this market, Arjun Bharathan founded an innovative startup company — Digigrid Energy Solutions Private Limited, which offers to save electricity bills by up to 20 percent. Arjun pointed out the energy bills figured prominently in expenses incurred by households, SMEs and industries.
“In some industries energy consumption is as high as 7-8% of its sales. The cost of electricity runs into thousands of crores. Digigrid was started in 2015 to optimize energy. Since then we have successfully done a pilot project for clients in banking, financial services and insurance companies,” he added.
“The core enabling technology is an Internet of Things (IoT) solution by which electricity meters, machines, devices and buildings are embedded with sensors from which data is collected,” he added.
Explaining how the product can save energy, Arjun cited an example, “The device for home use enables to read magnetic signature of devices to clearly understand how exactly energy is used in the house, which appliance uses how much, how often and for how long each appliance is used. An itemized monthly bill like mobile statement can be generated showing individual costs per month.”
With the help of this technology, one can switch on or off appliances when away from home and time limit can be set for certain activities. For SMEs like shops and showrooms based on the footfalls and number of people present, lighting and air conditioning can be set, which will save lot of electricity, Arjun said.
The device can be operated from any remote location by wifi or data connections, even from a different city, he explained. Talking about the cost, Arjun said, “Our target is to get the device cost down to that of a medium range smartphone, ideally below Rs 10,000. In the B2C segment we are aiming to reach a figure of 5 million devices sold within 5 years.”
