Bidgely, a SaaS (Software-as-a-service) startup based in California and Bengaluru, announced the completion of a $26 million round of strategic funding to strengthen its UtilityAI platform, which is used all over the world. Moore Strategic Ventures backed the round, which was accompanied by Accurant International, another investment venture led by Bahman Hoveida, the co-founder and former CEO of Open Systems International.
The round was oversubscribed, according to the startup, with existing investors which include Future Energy Ventures, Georgian Partners, and Constellation Technology Ventures also participated in the round.
Bidgely stated that the fresh funding will be leveraged to continue innovating in the domains of decarbonization and beneficial electrification solutions for utilities and their users. The startup assists utilities and energy companies in recognizing and engaging with their audiences. Furthermore, it offers companies to maximize personalized energy profiles for individuals in order to promote to them more effectively.
The company follows a B2B2C (business to business to consumer) business approach using artificial intelligence (AI)-based solutions to provide its products to utility companies, which then distribute them to end-users as part of their service offerings. It is headquartered in California and has offices in Bengaluru and Netherlands as well.
Bidgely secured funding earlier this year from IvyCap Ventures to facilitate Indian utility companies to harness technology and analytics to improve operational efficiencies as well as customer experience, and also upgrade existing infrastructure. Bidgely’s most recent $27 million Series C fundraising round was completed in 2018. The company has so far raised a total of $77 million in funding.
Abhay Gupta, CEO of Bidgely commented on the development saying, “Bidgely’s Silicon Valley roots and strong engineering arm in India play not only to our strength of providing AI technology to established markets like North America and Europe but also to our ability to address key issues in emerging markets.”
Bidgely innovated load disaggregation, owns 17 patents, which works with nearly 40 global utilities and energy distributors to acquire significant customer energy analytics leveraging data from smart meters already installed in the users’ residence.
Furthermore, in collaboration with a commercial Indian electricity distribution company (DISCOM), Bidgely has shown a keen capacity to detect non-technical losses using disaggregated smart meter data, which is likely the most significant pain point for most Indian DISCOMs. Every day the startup handles over two billion energy data points.
Bidgely is also seeking a variety of use cases, such as AI-based short-term load prediction, analytics-based customer tracking, and asset predictive maintenance, to enable DISCOMs to address a variety of problems.
