California-based energy analytics firm Bidgely Inc, which has a major engineering unit in Bengaluru, has raised $27 million (Rs 172 crore) in a Series C round led by Canada-based investment fund Georgian Partners.
Existing investors Constellation Technology Ventures, Khosla Ventures, European utility companies E.ON and Innogy have also participated in the round. The company said that the latest transaction takes the total money raised by Bidgely to $51 million.
Constellation Technology, the venture capital arm of Chicago-based energy generator Exelon Corp had led the company’s Series-B round. Khosla Ventures, E.ON and Innogy had also participated in the round.
Khosla Ventures had initially invested $3 million in Bidgely in a seed round in 2011, and had followed it up with an infusion of $5 million two years later.
“Bidgely is using machine learning to fundamentally reinvent customer engagement with utilities and enable a new class of business analytics,†Simon Chong, managing partner, Georgian Partners, was quoted in the press note.
The company will primarily use the funds to expand its sales team and its Indian engineering centre, besides beefing up its product offerings in business intelligence and analytics and explore opportunities in newer markets in Europe and Asia Pacific.
“Our core products and innovations are being developed from our India office and the new funds will be used to continue to attract top talent to fuel our growth. We plan to expand our Bangalore office to over 200 engineers in the next twelve to eighteen months,†said Bidgely co-founder and CEO Abhay Gupta.
Bidgely provides energy management solutions to households. The software-as-a-service provider was started in 2011 by IIT-Delhi graduate Gupta and IIT Bombay’s Vivek Garud. Using proprietary machine learning algorithms, it offers energy management solutions based on energy disaggregation technology, which breaks consumers’ energy data to an individual appliance.
The company operates on a B2B2C (business to business to consumer) model, where it essentially offers its products and services to utility companies, who then push it to the end consumer as part of their service offerings. The company also has offices in California and the Netherlands.
According to Navin Doshi, vice-president and head of Bidgely’s India engineering unit, the company’s solutions are used by more than 10 million homes under contract through 25 utility firms across 12 countries.
While most of its products have been predominantly developed at the India engineering centre, Doshi said that adoption of the company’s solutions in the Indian markets is still a couple of years away and it essentially hinges on large-scale roll-out of smart meters and favourable steps from the government.
“Some of the smart city projects are already conducting pilots. Likewise, we have also seen some big tenders from utility firms for roll-out of smart meters in parts of Gujarat, Haryana and Maharashtra. I believe our solutions will become relevant to the Indian market as well in the next two to three years,†Doshi added.
