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Wednesday, 24.04.2024, 12:20
Smart Energy Fund invested in Estonian startup Hepta Airborne
Hepta Airborne is focusing on overhead power
lines use cases and has already developed a foothold in the Nordic market,
where it offers tools for analyzing infrastructure based on the imagery and 3d
data. The company also focuses on emergency response after extreme weather
events.
“We are consistently investing in solutions that help us to improve
the maintenance on our infrastructure. Currently, the vast majority of
electricity distribution network inspections are performed by humans. It is time-consuming
and costly process. Lietuvos Energija is seeking to create and implement
a solution allowing full automation of electricity distribution network
inspection process by 2024”, says Dominykas Tuckus, Lithuanian Energy
Board Member and Director of Infrastructure and Development.
“Drone applications are very much a vibrant and moving
landscape in terms of how much activity has gone on,” acknowledged Henri
Klemmer, the CEO of Hepta
Airborne. “For us, we’ve been largely and continuously focused on
the commercial aspects of the market that we can solve for really difficult energy
sector challenges. But I think others have had some challenges because it’s not
the most straightforward thing to figure out a viable business model for scale
in the drone space.” That is the reason the team had to develop their own
versions of electric and gas-powered UAV platforms to enable their solution to
start collecting data for the customers.
Company’s solution offers an end-to-end hardware and
software solution and it is one of the reasons the company is thriving today. Hepta Airborne CEO has a clear vision
on where he wants to take the company in the future. “As the UAV application
space becomes more crowded, the challenge of the future becomes data, and that
is where we feel confident that the solution will make the process much more
efficient, regardless of the platform you use or the type of asset you are
inspecting”.
“We have been actively tracking developments in this space
and working with Lietuvos Energija to understand the inspection process
and the pain points,” Rokas Pečiulaitis, the Managing Partner at Contrarian
Ventures has said. “You have to know what has been solved already and what other
companies are working on to figure out where potential in the inspection
automation value chain lies. That is how we believe Company’s solution is and
will be relevant.”
Smart Energy Fund powered by Lithuanian Energy
and managed by Contrarian Ventures supports Lithuanian Energy
Innovation Hub including programs of
Open Infrastructure, Open Partnership and Open Culture. Potential partners can
find more information about them at leinnovationhub.com.
Smart Energy Fund powered by Lithuanian Energy
and managed by Contrarian Ventures invests in start-ups that are
developing new technologies in the energy technology field. The Fund also
manages AcceleratorOne Programme which
together with Lithuanian Energy invests in start-ups and helps them grow.
The programme tests pilot products and services in the local market, providing
further opportunity to grow internationally.