Smart Joules, a pioneer in energy-efficiency-as-a-service, today announced it has completed a 4.1 million round of Series A funding aimed at expanding its offering across large commercial buildings and industries in India. The funding round saw participation by ADB Ventures (the Asian Development Bank’s venture arm), Sangam Ventures, Max I. Limited, cKinetics Accelerator, Mr. Saket Burman from the Dabur family and 6 other marquee angels from India and the US. DPNC Advisors, the transaction advisory arm of Dewan P.N. Chopra & Co., were the exclusive financial advisors to Smart Joules for the fundraise.
Smart Joules offers capital expenditure (CapEx)-free retrofits by improving overall design of energy intensive systems like cooling, heating, compressed air and steam in commercial and industrial facilities, and replacing aging energy-intensive equipment with best-in-class energy efficient equipment. Their DeJoule technology platform then utilizes various sensors and IoT controllers to track and control each equipment and optimize overall facility performance in real-time using data. This technology allows Smart Joules to guarantee its clients 15% energy savings. Founded by Arjun P. Gupta, Ujjal Majumdar and Sidhartha Gupta, Smart Joules will deploy the invested funds to strengthen its energy management team, enhance its digital technology platform, expand its presence across hospitals and scale it’s cooling-as-a-service offering for commercial buildings and industries with heavy air conditioning loads such as pharmaceuticals and data centers.
“We have seen the Smart Joules founders build an amazing climate positive start-up from the ground up and excited to be part of the next phase of their journey where they are taking their innovative Internet of Things-enabled, data-analytics driven platform to transform the energy efficiency landscape in India by making it simple and profitable for businesses to invest into,” says Sangam Ventures’ Founder Karthik Chandrasekhar. ADB Ventures remarked that Smart Joules’ innovative solution holds the potential to scale into markets throughout the Asia-Pacific region. “Smart Joules has proven the energy-efficiency-as-a-service business model in India,” said Daniel Hersson, Senior Fund Manager at ADB Ventures. “We believe the company can become a category leader in building energy efficiency space in the region.” Chairman of the Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy (AEEE) and Managing Director of cKinetics, Mr. Upendra Bhatt commented, “Smart Joules team has demonstrated that with the appropriate value proposition and data enabled smart implementation frameworks, ESCO ventures can thrive in the buildings segment in India. We are excited to enable their next phase of growth and look forward to their scale-up into other geographies and segments.” Smart Joules, in operation since 2015, has provided its full-stack solution for leading Indian hospital chains, including Apollo, Fortis, KIMS, Aster, CARE and others.
