Page 23 - The 20 Most Promising CEOs in Business Industry 2019

It is this thought that led to Ecolibrium Energy, an energy consumption. They started out with
Ahmedabad-based startup that shows the way to
hundreds of industrial firms in India. Ecolibrium
sets up sensors in various parts of an assembly line
in a factory and its cloud-based software system
analyses the data to find power inefficiencies and
recommends ways to plug them.
Last month, Ecolibrium, which was incubated
at IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation,
Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), won the
UNFCCC’s Lighthouse Activity Awards under
Information & Communication Technology.
The beginning
Chintan and Harit Soni, founders of Ecolibrium
Energy, had been planning to start up five years
ago and were thinking of biofuels and clean
energy. They hit upon the idea of setting up a
Demand Response system that would work in
power deficit countries.
This is a dynamic system where electricity
supply is managed between customers, and some
consumers reduce their usage at times when other
users require to draw more power.
Ecolibrium Energy started in Ahmedabad in 2010,
went into commercial production in 2012, and
now has operations in Ludhiana, NCR region,
Indore, Raipur, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru
and Mumbai.
The product and customers
Ecolibrium places its smart sensors at various
points of the assembly line to gather data of
│ September 2019
electricity usage, but now they study all forms
of consumption – steam, electricity, gas. The
data is transmitted to a cloud-based server where
the software analyses and recommends changes.
They get in and tell them where they are consuming
energy, where the leakages are and why and how to
fix it.
The company is targeting industrial firms as well
as commercial companies such as hotels and malls.
The service has helped companies reduce between
5 percent and 25 percent of their energy costs,
according to Chintan.
SmartSense CREATE
SmartSense CREATE (Collaboration for
Reimagining and Activating Tommorrow’s
Enterprises) was formed with the aim of bringing
together leaders and industry experts from different
fields and sectors, in order to Reimagine the future
of Industrial IIOT and Predictive Maintenance.
Funding and future plans
In 2013, Ecolibrium received angel funding of
$1.5 million from Infuse Ventures and International
Finance Corporation (IFC). Since then, the team
has grown to 62 people from 19 and the company
has gained 500 customers in its three years of
operations. The company is also looking at raising
funds again, he added.
The company is looking at new products and at
international markets in countries like Bangladesh,
Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.
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