Agnitio Technologies- Enabling Utility Distributors to Execute Smart Grid Program Management
At the 2015 United Nation Climate summit in Paris, the world leaders agreed in unison that the Energy and utility companies have to explore alternate energy resource in next 4-6 years and reduce coal and oil consumption by 40 - 60 percent. As a result of this, the companies are on the lookout for a vendor who has what it takes to deploy a standard based technology platform that allows energy generators, suppliers and consumers to intelligently connect, collect, collaborate and conserve.
Agnitio engages itself in developing mobile and desktop apps that will provide further intelligence to the consumer such as bill forecasting, energy saving tips, smart notifications, historical analysis, outage and more
Headquartered in Noida, Agnitio Technologies is a start-up that offers AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) enabled smart energy management solution that consists of smart energy meter that can communicate with in-house display and back-end central system. The solution tracks electricity in real-time and records other power parameters such as power quality, surges of energy consumption and tampers and makes consumption data available to the customer on their in-home display unit, thus providing a clear view and transparency of the energy consumed. "Agnitio engages itself in developing mobile and desktop apps that will provide further
intelligence to the consumer such as bill forecasting, energy saving tips, smart notifications, historical analysis, outage and more,” says Subhasis Ojha, Co-Founder and President, Agnitio Technologies Pvt Ltd.
Intending to provide global technologies cleverly adapted to the Indian market, Agnitio have been investing a lot of effort, time and money on R&D during the last 2+ years. As a means to achieve this, the company has strategically established a comprehensive ecosystem of partners across different market segments. “Partners like Silver Spring Networks, NES (formerly Echelon Corporation) and Microsoft BizSpark program have enabled us to bring the technology to the Indian market.” says Subhasis.
Silver Spring Networks delivers open, standard-based networking platform, software and services used by major utilities and cities worldwide to support multiple smart grid and smart city applications and services on a single, unified network. On the other hand, NES designs control networks to connect machines and other electronic devices for the purpose of sensing, monitoring and control. “We are committed to bring to the market a full spectrum of smart energy metering and grid solution that includes smart meters, communication platform, Big Data analytics and applications for Energy & Utility domain,” explains Subhasis.
However Agnitio has faced few of their own challenges in the process. Raising funds has been a very challenging task for Agnitio. Unlike the West, the Indian investor base is not very friendly towards start-up companies. Also, working on a technology that is predominantly targeted for the Government sector is not considered a very exciting investment opportunity. Besides raising money in India, Agnitio had to bring in foreign investment to meet the funding requirement. Secondly, lack of clarity of product standard in the Indian market has been a major challenge for Agnitio. However working on pilot projects with Utility companies gave the company a very clear idea of the challenges to be addressed.
“Agnitio started this venture before the new Government and its initiatives such as Make-In-India, Digital India, Smart cities & StartUp India were launched and we are pleasantly surprised with our alignment with these initiatives” concludes Subhasis.
Intending to provide global technologies cleverly adapted to the Indian market, Agnitio have been investing a lot of effort, time and money on R&D during the last 2+ years. As a means to achieve this, the company has strategically established a comprehensive ecosystem of partners across different market segments. “Partners like Silver Spring Networks, NES (formerly Echelon Corporation) and Microsoft BizSpark program have enabled us to bring the technology to the Indian market.” says Subhasis.
Silver Spring Networks delivers open, standard-based networking platform, software and services used by major utilities and cities worldwide to support multiple smart grid and smart city applications and services on a single, unified network. On the other hand, NES designs control networks to connect machines and other electronic devices for the purpose of sensing, monitoring and control. “We are committed to bring to the market a full spectrum of smart energy metering and grid solution that includes smart meters, communication platform, Big Data analytics and applications for Energy & Utility domain,” explains Subhasis.
However Agnitio has faced few of their own challenges in the process. Raising funds has been a very challenging task for Agnitio. Unlike the West, the Indian investor base is not very friendly towards start-up companies. Also, working on a technology that is predominantly targeted for the Government sector is not considered a very exciting investment opportunity. Besides raising money in India, Agnitio had to bring in foreign investment to meet the funding requirement. Secondly, lack of clarity of product standard in the Indian market has been a major challenge for Agnitio. However working on pilot projects with Utility companies gave the company a very clear idea of the challenges to be addressed.
“Agnitio started this venture before the new Government and its initiatives such as Make-In-India, Digital India, Smart cities & StartUp India were launched and we are pleasantly surprised with our alignment with these initiatives” concludes Subhasis.
