Interview with WenuWork

We met WENU Work, an innovative Chilean startup that has made energetic efficiency their main purpose with their innovative concept, let’s meet Vartan and the two Daniels!

Hello guys - can you introduce yourself, your company and how did you come up with this idea?

Well, the idea in Latam (Latin America) and in Chile is to create new services and bring energy like a service not only a product. What we have been observing for the past years in our country is that energy generation and distribution was handled by an oligopolistic structure and people were having trouble with utilities. Smart grid seems to be the right solution for people aiming towards renewable energies.

So I am Vartan, the cofounder of the company or the CEO but the three of us are founders: Daniel 1 is more on the financial part and Daniel 2 is the cop of the company making sure that we are on the good track. First I was a university professor that created a mini smart grid in the university. I had an idea of creating an IOT to measure energetic data in smart grid projects like PV panels or LD illumination -so I created a big sensor to do so and met the Daniels.

Then we had the idea of a smaller IOT I order to bring this technology device from a smartgrid to companies or households in Chile and more generally in Latam. Engie factory was looking for innovative consultants and companies that were focused on energetic efficiency and have done similar projects. Venture business and Engie found us and supported us when we presented the idea to them. They offered us a financial help (with a percentage like a financial skim that we can keep or sell to another company). We received also great help from Startup Chile.

Engie wanted to lead and help this kind of projects but without distracting their core business in a short term (energy generation and distribution) -that’s why they created a separate environment with Engie Factory to go towards new business models and innovation technologies “like a hub of innovation in energy”.

Wah, this is impressive, we have a lot of questions for you guys -but first can you explain how does your system work?

Well it’s not great science, but we are really proud to have achieved our first goal which was to create the cheapest and the most accessible censor in the market. We analyzed that censors were very expensive and were an elite project for the companies so we decided to democratize this concept and make it available for everyone.

So basically, we connect the censor into the electric system or board of a house, a company building and you connect this device to the Wi-Fi – (99.9% of Chilean use Wi-fi compared to countries that have a lot of different communication systems) this gives us real time data on how much electricity is being consumed in the house or in big electric circuits like a whole building. (In Chile, most of houses need only one censor, here in the office we are able to identify different circuits). With these censors, we can analyze the light, heating system consumption for example and measure how much we spend in each. This way we are gathering plenty of data that make us know exactly where we are being inefficient exactly. We sell the service and the product with a monthly maintenance fee and a life warranty.

How does your system know where it comes from?

The electrical board system (in the breakers) has its own labels so we connect a censor for each of these buttons and when the data appear on the internet platform it is converted into valuable information for the consumer. There is an online platform where all the data is collected and sent to the cloud, we have special algorithms that transform it into valuable information that consumers and clients can read. We are working with plenty of different companies -from restaurants, offices, hotels to public and governmental utilities. We are also working with Brazil and Mexico, we have been reached or we reach companies directly there.

When something remains switched on, it is notified by the censor. Some companies have good policies (the last person leaving the office need to check everything’s off before leaving) but when they use our device they often realize that efforts aren’t really made. They tackle the problem once it’s notified by the system and when they realize how much this can be a huge cost for them. It’s a “digital cop”, it shows you what is going on where are you being inefficient and where you need to put the efforts; for example some companies let the air con during all the weekend, the result is they are spending more than 1000 pesos only on Saturdays and Sundays in one month.

Today, we have a great amount of data in the cloud all over Latam!

So what is the next step with all this data collected?

What we want as a next step is not only monitoring the energy but thanks to all this data that we are still collecting, to create a new censor that would be put on/off and controlled from distance. Latam has special needs so we can’t take the technology from other countries: we need to find our solution to our own specific Chilean problems. In France, there is a company called NETATMO, they propose an all-integrated platform to make houses smarter. (In France you are quite innovative you have also optic censors and you can see what the video is recording.)

We are aiming to this but for now we have a transition solution. Our main goal is to achieve a M to M system: machine to machine. We will be able to produce this new censor in 6 months or 1 year.

Today is a good solution for our emerging country but we are also looking towards other countries that have more data. We have our Chilean way -we don’t have Amazon or Google, but we have huge companies as well but first we need to build the companies, the ecosystem before making companies come to Chile, before the landing.

How did you launch your concept? Did you start with houses or companies? Is it more and more adopted?

First we started working with houses in a B2C perspective but the housing market is not ready for this kind of product. We need to be clear about what type of clients we want so now we are really focused on B2B as there are only a few people want this type of technology, the early adopters, the crazy loons fond of technology and IOT everywhere.

Energetic efficiency was not a well-known topic but companies on the other hand have been starting to change their consumption attitude so we decide to work with them instead.

Our system works when the utility gives it for free -there was a company in the US called Opower (that has been bought by Oracle since then) that works with utilities so they could sell and put this type of censors directly on circuits without making customers pay for it as if they were giving it for free. That is why we are working with local utilities as well.

For now we are also approaching real estate companies to build smart cities/ houses (this market keeps growing in Chile) -we are offering them to add value to their building: a great gadget for them -and their customers and they pay us. We work directly with EMS (electricity or building management system) under mid and long-term contracts. Companies have more awareness about energy efficiency, carbon foot print or sustainability in their building or operations.

Our dream will be to use this kind of technology here in Latam for all the people that don’t have a good access to electricity, to use all these data to help leading public policies -we are working with Fundacion Chile, a governmental and private alliance that want to use energy data to create PV or houses for the poorest. Of course, it is nice to work with big companies, big clients such as Telefonica to get big projects in renewable energy but we went to help also little projects!

And to finally save all the pandas and all the polar bears by lowering the foot print and the electricity bills (laughs)!

How much does your system help the companies to reduce their electricity bills?

Thanks to your IOT, but depends also on the industry we manage to reduce by 10 to 15% the electricity consumption (bakeries 18%, offices 20%, restaurants 15% for example), this is a feedback we are getting from our clients but also from the newspaper!

If we understood where the problem comes from for each company we are helping we can then bring a solution. For example, Patagonia (which is the coolest clothing in Latam by the way), we started monitoring their offices’ building because they had electrical issues and we realized they were spending more than 50% of their electrical bills in light so we changed everything to LED and now they are only spending 10%. Thanks to our technology they realize a huge saving! It’s understanding what is happening and changing consumer’s behavior (Example also of restaurants that let their oven on all day long).

So you are having also a consulting position?

It depends on the consumer transition position but today our short-term strategy is being a consultant using all the data collected with our technology and do little projects to solve these problems but as we said before the long term strategy is to educate people and then propose a M to M service. It will give automatic reports of what clients need to do. We are doing baby steps! (laughs). Here some companies and people are very conservative, they don’t really know what IOT is so they need to be sensitized, we need to be professors in Latam.

But quick question, how do your clients react to all this data collected? In terms of privacy?

For now, people are not too concerned -maybe in one year but it is huge red light for us! In terms of security and privacy it is written in the contract with clients -we never share the data without their approval and erase it if they want to. But if we use the data, we are not mentioning their name and so on!

Okay great and how are you going to develop your new system?

We have a partnership with a Mexican university (200 000 students) that are building an energy transition project, they want to introduce a technology for their university. We talked to them about our future development so they are sending students over summer to work for and with us to build this solution (and then go back to their university and build it).

You said you were working with Brazil and the US, like potential markets or suppliers?

We want to be global, we already have our servers in the US and in Brazil, we create our censors in China, we have some contacts/ advisers in France or in California. It is going quite fast thanks to the contacts from Engie Lab and VIVATECH. We will be working with a Smart city in Mexico and in Las Vegas next year. Brazil is a very protectionist country, where there are a lot of regulations when you try to implement a new technology, you have to work with a local company to work there. We would love to work with Africa as well!

How do you choose the markets you are going to?

In Chile, we have the highest price of energy in Latam so we wanted to reduce it, Mexico and Brazil are bigger markets and more open to technologies -but Chile is like a strict test, if it works in Chile, works everywhere. We may have the most boring country in Latan but it is the best to start a business. The market offers good conditions like stability and we receive benefits and tax cuts from the government!

Is the level of development of the countries you are targeting is important?

Well, our technology is very flexible so basically we can propose it everywhere and to everyone: we offered it to the strict Chilean government as to simple houses and to more developed countries as well like France or Belgium - they’ll test in one year.

We made our prototypes here in Chile but we get the materials from the US to optimize the production and to get them cheaper. We want to produce censors that use a less amount of waste and make it as small as possible so we try to diversify our suppliers. We are working with our Chinese supplier to produce a 3.0 censor (for now it’s 2.7). We are also tending to get reusable materials in case of a technical problem, etc.

In case of big orders: how many are you able to produce and in which amount of time?

The first year we produced 100 censors now we are able to produce 1000. But the censors are evolving all the time. We need to adjust our procedures and platforms to be sure they work with more and more censors on it. We test it to see how it adapts/ behaves with virtual sensors and we do the correction step by step. The hardest part is the scaling!

Did the government helps you a lot? Do they push people and the economy towards energy efficiency?

More and more the political class is creating institutions and new laws to make renewable energies the main subject, the baseline of the Chilean future. They want to create big standards with initiatives like Fundacion Chile or Agencia Energetica An energy efficiency law that was supposed to be done by the actual government but it has been delayed for the next government: it is a good purpose for the society and the economy! They also want to have 70% of the energy produced by solar and they want to reduce by 50% the carbon foot print of all Chile even if we are not a big part of it in the world compared to China or India. We need to build more PV panels, using this great irradiation we have in the north of our country.

Do you think there is an innovation hub in Chile, companies like you that want to improve the situation?

We have a very privileged country because we have a great incubator called Startup Chile -have you heard of it? Our country has become famous thanks to them! They are bringing entrepreneurs from all over the world to work here. They offer a great program and great opportunities for companies to work here and to understand all the ecosystem. They receive around 150 projects a year from Chile and abroad! They give also great and useful relationships! What makes Chile an innovation hub is all these people, talents, brains and knowledge that are flying to Chile: young people with good ideas spreading them in our country!

Did Startup Chile help you?

Well, Energy factory was more a capitalistic partner (place to work, HR, finance -20 000 first prototypes were free), Startup Chile gave us 30 000 dollars and the most important Amazon and Microsoft credits for 100 000 dollars which was very useful for us seeing our business model, we were about to pay a lot to use the servers without their help!

Did you apply? How does it work with Engie?

Yes, we applied (two generations per year each generation needs to apply with a lot of videos, pitches, etc. In comparison, Engie came to us but didn’t want to merge– they built with us from zero. They have 8 companies in this program. It was great to work with them but we would like to go out from this program now, to bring the opportunity to another company, to be more independent!

One final question -why did you pick this name?

Wenu in Chile means Bueno, we are like bringing something good, like “sky on the earth”. We wanted a happy and playful name, which was a good catch point as we first started to work with B2C -we added work when we were trying to reach more B2B clients!

Many thanks Vartan, Daniel 1 and Daniel 2 for all this information and the time you spent with us! Good luck with the future!