Pre-series funding success drives sensor production

Germany-based Pydro is scaling the deployment and operational abilities of its sensor-enabled water monitoring services following an oversubscribed pre-series A funding round. Aquatech Online talked to Pydro’s founder and CEO, Mulundu Sichone, to find out more.

Pre-series bridges the gap to full Series A funding round

The pre-series round raised more than €1 million with investments led by Connect the Drops, with participation from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, Berlin Angel Fund, and several business angels. Sichone, also reinvested, signalling his strong commitment to the company’s vision and trajectory.

Ahead of our call, Sichone wrote on Pydro’s LinkedIn page: “This round brings together partners who understand the urgency and opportunity of transforming water infrastructure.”

He added: “By investing personally, I’m putting even more skin in the game, doubling down on my conviction that the future of water management lies in autonomous, data-driven systems built for resilience and efficiency.”

What does Pydro’s technology do?

Pydro offers teal-time monitoring of flow, pressure and temperature in water networks to help detect and locate leaks, helping to reduce non-revenue water. The company’s PT1 sensor is self-powered at the point of use, sends data minute by minute or even every 30 seconds or more frequently according to need, and can be installed by the customer.

Sichone told Aquatech Online: “The beauty of the product is, we send the device to the customer and none of our engineers have to go there. They just install it, press one button and it starts sending data in real time, every single minute from that location.”

He added: “And this is basically the vision we have of the industry that the customers have got a real time insight in what is happening, which means they can react when something happens.”

Where did the idea for come from?

Sichone had a fascination with water from a very young age.

“I came from Zambia and later moved to Germany, but I was always curious about how water gets to the tap, and how they manage to do it in a way that is more or less clean and reliable. Because the contrast for me was in Zambia where I come from, sometimes you had to get water from water trucks or some had to go to the well. I can remember well when I was visiting my grandmother and this curiosity led me more or less to exploring more about how the water is transported or distributed.”

They just install it, press one button and it starts sending data in real time, every single minute from that location - Sichone

His initial interest, however, lay in hydro power, or more specifically whether it was possible to harness the energy of water flowing through the water network.

“I am a mechanical engineer by background, and an entrepreneur by heart, and after talking to utilities, I quickly found out that harnessing excess pressure was not an interesting business model. But it was a journey for us as a young company. We learned about the other challenges they were facing.”

What problem does it solve?

One of these challenges, faced by utilities and municipalities around the world, is non-revenue water.

“What was really mind-blowing for me as a professional was that we lose so much water, as much as 30 per cent on average, some countries lose 50 per cent.”

A common theme for non-revenue water is finding and locating leaks and anomalies in good time, before the leak worsens and to stop the loss of water. To tackle this problem, you need good quality, reliable data. Many sensors rely on batteries that are expensive and often need replacing.

What if we had a self-powered solution that is a water to data solution that can send data right away after installing it - Sichone

They also experience another major problem: “The customers we talked to in the early stages led us towards the challenges they are facing with getting data from the infrastructure and this was mainly that they have got battery solutions which can only send data once or twice per day and then you have to replace batteries, you need a data logger and data transmitter. You have got sometimes false alarms, and so on.”

It was clear from these conversations what Pydro’s potential customers needed: “They told us that if we could power those sensors that would be great for them. So, we took it one step further and asked ourselves, what if we had a self-powered solution that is a water to data solution that can send data right away after installing it. This is basically how the concept was born.”

Helping to future-proof water networks

With the EU introducing a water resilience strategy which calls for the use of digital solutions to help reduce leaks in pipes and in modernising infrastructure, Sichone believes the need for services like Pydro’s will increase in the coming years.

“The kind of customers that are now digitising their network is who we see as our target customers or our ideal customer profile. With the EU’s resilience strategy, more and more utilities are going to go through this route of digitizing their network.”

More than just hardware, a complete business model

The PT1 sensor itself is only part of the solution offered to customers. As Sichone explained, the business model goes beyond hardware.

“We call it sensor enabled service model or sensor enabled services; basically, we don’t see water monitoring as a device that we give to a customer and we leave them alone with. We support them along the journey. We validate the data. We give them updates and upgrades.”

He added: “It is more or less a worry-free monitoring service for the customer. They don't have to hire people. We will make sure that they get the highest quality data at the lowest cost of ownership.”

What will the funding allow the company to achieve?

Pydro currently operates in Italy, Greece, France, Australia and Spain, and is looking to expand into new markets.

“We have spent a lot of time listening to the customer, and on iterations of the product and of the offering itself, the value proposition. And now we are ready to go out there and deploy the solutions with different customers. And for that we're looking for not only utilities that are digitising their network but also for different partnerships in markets where we see a need for our solution.”

Sichone told Aquatech Online that the company’s mission is also to help support customers in their transition to offering sustainable water supplies, but that this can only be achieved through a solution that can be deployed at scale.

We want to get to mass production readiness - Sichone

“So, this current pre-series A round is because we want to get to mass production readiness. We want to get our partnerships in place now that we have the economics deploying these solutions at scale.”

The entrepreneurs involved in the recent funding round all have experience in production, which as Sichone explained “is needed for the next step”.

For now, the pre-series A funding will help the company get to a state where it is ready to take that next step, to scale and to seek fresh markets and new offerings.