Estonian start-up helps to save up to 50% of EU housing energy consumption through intelligent building solution
Bisly, the Estonian tech company developing intelligent building solutions, has raised 1.7 million euros to carry out its aggressive expansion plan into European countries. The tech start-up’s technology helps to make energy consumption up to two times more efficient.
According to Siim Vips, founder and CEO of Bisly, buildings consume up to 40% of energy in the EU and automated energy consumption can significantly cut this rate by making buildings more energy efficient, optimising consumption and therefore costs. Says Vips in a press release:
“Intelligent building solutions help to save up to 50% of housing energy consumption and at the same time, we have to keep in mind that air quality and intelligent lighting management ensures a better living and working environment.”
Founded in 2018, the company has become the market leader in Estonia and aims to make intelligent home solutions available for private as well as business clients. The company employs 15 people, but the team will expand as the company heads to foreign markets.
Bisly has developed an intelligent building technology that makes it easy to save energy in residential as well as office buildings. Today, more than 20,000 Bisly controllers have been installed in Estonia, which are responsible for more than 500,000 intelligent automation decisions every day. “Our goal is to make this solution available in other European countries, in the first round for example in Germany, Belgium, France, Austra, Switserland, Sweden etc,” says Vips.
Market for building automation growing due to EU energy targets
According to Viljar Arakas, CEO of EfTEN Capital, the largest Baltic real estate fund management company, and one of Bisly’s investors, the market for building automation has great potential because of EU regulations, climate and energy targets as well as the understanding of developers that buildings have to become smart. The company has picked up investments from Estonia, Finland, the USA and Norway. Its investors include angel investors as well as big names in the real estate sector. Enterprise Estonia’s programme Green ICT for cooperation between Estonia and Norway also contributed 700,000 euros to the development of the company.
“Raising additional capital is necessary to allow us to strengthen our sales and development team and expand to foreign markets where we can see a growing demand for Bisly’s systems,” Vips explains. In the coming months, Bisly plans to establish a subsidiary in Germany for the purpose of entering the German market. In addition, the company has plans to start operating in Scandinavia, Austria and Switzerland, where the building automation industry has the fastest growth rate but is still a long way behind Estonia. Talks are also under way to launch the first pilot projects in Asia. “Many building automation solutions in use in new real estate developments in Estonia are difficult to access in these countries, meaning that there is huge potential for our tech to be adopted,” explains Bisly’s CEO. In addition to Viljar Arakas, Pipedrive creators Timo Rein, Martin Henk, Martin Tajur and Peep Vain as well as number of other investors from Estonia, Finland, Switzerland and the USA have backed the company.
