Opinum 5-1A

Equity
€734,900
total amount raised
This campaign ended

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Description


Opinum is a Belgian start-up dedicated to giving sense to building and micro-grid utility consumption. Through a unique blend of competencies, it brings together the most advanced Internet of Things (IoT) technology and Big Data analytics, to provide Cloud Based building management solutions to its customers.

Problem


Today, with energy costs rising and with environmental consciousness becoming more and more prominent, building owners and managers need to track how much they spend for their utilities in terms of costs but also enviromental impact. European regulations require to have reporting in place and this can be a very tedious and expensive thing to do.

With the arrival of connected meters we now have the possibility to monitor consumption from the distance. However, all meters are different, and a building owner often has to connect to multiple platforms or systems and aggregate various sources of data himself.


Idea


opinum offers opiSense:

opiSense is Opinum’s secure web portal. Recording in real time the utility and C02 consumption of buildings, it lets building managers see at-a-glance where they can act to spend less. opiSense connects to whatever hardware is in place, new or old.


OpiSense lets customers create custom-made periodical reports and generates them automatically. They can be sent directly by e-mail to a defined set of users. Alerts and maintenance requests are also generated automatically from the platform.


Marketing strategy


opinum's unique strength resides in its unique ability to connect to many different hardwares, as such, a total solution can be brought to customers for the full monitoring of utilities in their buildings. 3 channels are considered:
- Public and governmental buildings, through tenders
- Energy Services companies (ESCO's), that will need a measurement platform to provide their services
- Building managers in general, for the tertiary sector.

Distribution strategy


Our distribution focus is currently mainly in Belgium, with a direct sales force. For extensions in Europe, we will work with a network of added value agents. These agents will include opiSense as a tool in the portfolio of services provided to their customers.

Internationalisation strategy


opinum has been quite succesfull in installing opiSense for users in Belgium and Luxemburg, we monitor today 458 locations and about 1,000 measurement points.
We are identifying the right partners internationally to reproduce this model in different regions in Europe, with a focus on France, the Netherlands, Germany and the UK.

Intellectual Property


Currently, opinum does not possess any patents. However, several research projects with EU and Walloon region funding will provide the foundation for patents in the domain of micro-grid and smartgrid characterization, allowing to use the data generated by opiSense to forecast energy consumption and prices in the market.

Major contracts


In FY 2016-2017, Opinum had 40+ paying clients. Some of the most interesting are shown below:

  • Sibelga: Test phase on two buildings. Sibelga is looking for a solution provider for the monitoring of the municipalities of Brussels Region (+- 25M€ of energy consumption per year).
  • Keolis: Deployment of 54 buildings for the monitoring of water, gas and electricity, fuel (150k€ budget). Potential deployment in FR in a second phase
  • Cobelpro: Monitoring of two buildings (Pegasus Park) as pilot for further expansion in cooperation with Cobelpro.
  • Tempolec: Integration of a BMS (Building Management System) and development of a co-branded SiteCare interface
  • AG Real Estate: Deployment of all AG buildings for monitoring and reporting on water, gas and electricity. 5 buildings completed, 20 by end of 2017 and 220 in scope for BE.
  • EDF: Deployment for EDF customers with a co-branded Opisense interface (current scope are all schools from the group Go-Vlaanderen – 20 done).
  • City of Musson: Implementation of a system which gathers automatically indexes from residential water meters, sends this information in Opisense, and Opisense feeds that information. Increased visibility for smart city projects
  • Klinkenberg: Customization of customer-branded Opisense for all Klinkenberg customers (2.000 data points).
  • Total BE: Co-selling activities for Total BE / Lampiris B2B customers (comparable to Proximus offer)

Main partners


The ecosystem of opinum is based on partnerships with hardware providers, service providers and customers. Some examples are presented here: