Market validation and growth for Urbio

Like most Swiss cantons, Valais is ambitious when it comes to decarbonization. It plans to reduce CO2 emissions from buildings by 80% by 2040. This goal relies in particular on energy suppliers and communes. To meet the growing demand from municipalities, Energypolis Campus headquartered Urbio has developed a next-generation digital tool to speed up decision-making. Energy suppliers are currently on the hunt for energy data. This is a very time-consuming activity, given the scattered nature of the data sources and the clean-up work involved. Urbio is revolutionizing this data quest with its new platform. " Similar to Google Maps, our tool centralizes and visualizes all energy data useful for diagnosing and analyzing municipalities. Access to data is thus facilitated, offering transparency and simplified analysis, by means of colored maps produced by the minute", explains Sébastien Cajot, co-founder of Urbio.

Already tangible results

For almost a year now, the Sion based company has made its platform available to OIKEN, the energy supplier for the central Valais region. "OIKEN supports its shareholder municipalities in meeting the challenges of the energy transition, in particular through the production of energy plans that outline the opportunities and constraints of each territory. The tool proposed by Urbio enabled us to consolidate this support, by rapidly sketching out different strategic variants for decarbonization. These strategies could be modeled, explained and visualized much more quickly and simply than before," explains Thierry Bernhard, head of the Energy Consulting Group at OIKEN. The energy distributor has already used Urbio to analyse several thousand buildings in its shareholder communes in Valais.

With this first partnership, Urbio and OIKEN are paving the way for the decarbonization of Swiss real estate. Thanks to the alignment of shared values around energy transition and digitalization, both companies are engaged in a virtuous cycle that benefits not only themselves, but also other players in Switzerland and abroad, multiplying the positive impact on the climate. The collaboration between OIKEN's industry experts and Urbio's deep-tech software team enables the incorporation of new solutions into the start-up's web platform, further accelerating the energy transition. François Fellay, CEO of OIKEN, shares his excitement: "The many synergies with start-ups on the Energypolis Campus enable OIKEN to benefit from the development of innovations in many energy-related fields. Such collaborations enable us to implement solutions in line with the ambitious objectives of the Canton of Valais and the Swiss Confederation to achieve climate neutrality by 2050".

Growing demand in Switzerland and abroad 

Contacted by Startupticker.ch, CEO & cofounder Sébastien Cajot explains that Urbio has around twenty active customers in Switzerland, based on a recurring annual licence model. These are mainly energy companies such as OIKEN, Romande Energie and Groupe-E, and engineering consultancies such as BG, Planair and Intep. And the Valais startup is also growing in Europe with its first commercial customers in Germany and Belgium since this year. The tool is used in particular by Trianel, a German cooperative of energy suppliers, and Resolia, a Belgian specialist energy consultancy which is applying the tool to produce the Brussels Region 2050 climate plan.

Speaking about the future, Urbio is set to consolidate its presence in Switzerland, Germany and Belgium, while accelerating the roll-out of its tool in other European countries. Following an initial pre-seed round in 2021, a second round of financing is planned to enable the company to grow the team, develop the product based on feedback from the first customers, and accelerate market roll-out. Today, 20 people work actively for the startup.

(PR - ES)