The Tunisian startup Wattnow offers an intelligent IoT solution for energy management in businesses. It has recently opened its subsidiary in Toulouse.
According to the latest data published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, gas and electricity prices are finally beginning to stabilize in the market. This is good news, especially for French businesses that have been heavily impacted by the surge in energy prices since the Covid crisis and, particularly, the start of the war in Ukraine.
Between 2019 and 2022, the price of gas doubled, averaging barely €35 per MWh to almost €70 per MWh. On the electricity front, prices increased by 38% over the period, reaching around €130 per MWh (source: Insee).
Reducing Energy Waste
Even though the situation is improving today, many uncertainties continue to weigh heavily on the energy market. Consequently, managing consumption has become a priority for numerous companies of all sizes. Founded in 2018 and based in Tunis, Tunisia, the startup Wattnow has made it its mission to help companies optimize their energy usage and extend the lifespan of their assets to reduce costs and carbon footprint.
In the midst of growth, the rising star has chosen Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) to open its first subsidiary in France. A significant step for Wattnow, which aims to market its solution combining machine learning and IoT (Internet of Things) in France and establish an R&D center to strengthen its software development and artificial intelligence (AI) teams.
The Wattnow solution is made up of smart sensors that collect data and a prediction algorithm that detects, analyzes, and optimizes real-time energy consumption, automating certain processes such as lighting or air conditioning. Already deployed on more than 500 sites across three continents, including several local subsidiaries of major French companies, the Wattnow solution retrieves over 1 billion data points per month.
Why Toulouse?
Given the strong interest of French companies in Wattnow’s solution and the significant challenges posed by reducing carbon footprint and the associated costs, the start-up, identified by the Tunis office of Business France, decided to establish itself and market its solution in France. In a press release dated November 13, 2023, AD’OCC, the economic development agency of the Occitanie Region, explains that “Wattnow was looking for an ecosystem with a strong industrial and tertiary fabric, offering recognized skills in IoT and AI, with good connectivity to Tunisia for its establishment. Occitanie was chosen for all these criteria among eight other sites in France.”
To support it in this new phase, the Tunisian rising star benefited from the International Decision Makers’ welcoming program during the Energaïa exhibition in December 2022. This allowed them to meet companies and experts from the Occitanie region and “decide on their establishment in Toulouse.” This project aims to create more than sixty jobs over three years.
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Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert. As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard.