Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Fighting Air Pollution with Data | Dimitry Trubitsyn @ Airvoice
19 Plays22 days ago
In this episode of The Spotlight, we delve into the world of air quality innovation with Dmitry, the visionary founder of Airvoice. This episode offers a fascinating glimpse into the transformative solutions Airvoice is pioneering to address air quality challenges in urban environments.
Dmitry shares his personal journey and how his experiences have shaped his passion for creating healthier indoor environments. He describes the "smell of freedom" he associates with his work and how it has influenced his decision to make this country his home for the next few years.
Listen to this episode as Dmitry, explains Airvoice's cutting-edge products, including advanced air filtration systems and indoor air quality monitors, designed to enhance both air quality and energy efficiency in buildings.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Dmitry and Air Voice
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, my name is Dmitry. I'm a founder of Air Voice. We work in the field of air quality monitoring and management systems, both for indoors and outdoors.
Growing Up in Russia
00:00:24
Speaker
Okay, Dimitri, welcome to the Found a Thesis podcast. ah ah You know, this is the first time I am interviewing somebody who grew up in Russia. and there is ah I mean, you know, and Russia is not a place where, I mean, you see the Western world because of TV shows and Hollywood movies and all, but I don't know what Russia is like. ah what What is it like growing up
Parents' Career Shifts and Dmitry's Education
00:00:48
Speaker
in Russia? Can you know just like, you know, like, I want to hear your life story a little bit, like,
00:00:54
Speaker
OK, OK, thank you for your question. Yeah, I will try to disclose some you know history, some feelings about being grown up in in Russia. ah Basically, Russia is very different from my point of view. So I was born literally in not even in Russia, but in Soviet Union. And so I was born in 1981.
00:01:18
Speaker
And I had a really like nice and pleasant and happy childhood. i mean and What did your parents do? ah the um ah like scientists, i can at least they graduated from Novosibirsk State University. So my mother, she was studying biology and also my father was studying biology at the university. But after graduating university, ah you know, all these changes became in in the country.
00:01:55
Speaker
And basically, they almost didn't work, ah like, according to their education, to their profession. And after that, after graduating university, my parents, they switched to some other, you know, some other activities, some other job. And they were somehow connected to entrepreneurship. At least they tried. So they didn't become, you know, like,
00:02:19
Speaker
big and successful entrepreneurs, but it was very important to survive that time.
Economic Crisis Impact
00:02:26
Speaker
but what and what have we from language i think like like Why couldn't they pursue their what they studied, what changed? because it was um ah let Let me recall. um i suppose so I was born in 1981 and ah Like in and these years and after that, especially when we're talking about 1990s, it was very difficult times um in in the country. And salaries for scientists were really low, and it was almost it was nearly impossible to survive.
00:03:04
Speaker
if you are like a scientist and that these time a lot of people, they are switched. So either they um you know go abroad to and manage to continue their careers somewhere ah or they switch to another another business.
Physics Education and Novosibirsk State University
00:03:23
Speaker
It was a crisis. It was like really a tough crisis in the country. And what was the same what didn you what was the business?
00:03:30
Speaker
that your parents tried? It was also ah like a kind of attempt to create high-tech businesses because ah they managed to switch to some. and So as a as a as I remember, it was ah really, really you know many years ago. so But they tried to create a kind of high-tech company or like a joint company with somebody from from abroad and they were working on like different sensors for um measurements of body conditions like you know humidity temperature and something it was like a kind of high tech so they still were working in the field of you know science research but it was more business than science
00:04:19
Speaker
But you always had food on the table. like it was ah Yes, maybe maybe sometimes it was like really difficult because it it was not only a matter of money, it was also a matter of like avail availability of some you know products. But it was never, how to say,
00:04:39
Speaker
It was never ah too sad. I mean, it was always a kind of funny story. and i mean if you For example, if you don't have butter, you can create it. And my grandma, I i do remember this ah this small story, ah she managed to create it from milk, like a cup of milk. But in general, yes, we were not suffering too much from that.
00:05:08
Speaker
okay But you know, when you are young, when you are kids, if you, I mean, how to say, if everything is okay in your family, you can easily, ah um you know, tolerate, it can easily overcome all the like external obstacles and you do not ah feel it, you do not treat it as a like huge problem. So everything is in your mind, right?
Founding of T1 and Early Challenges
00:05:31
Speaker
True, so true, yeah. So what did you want to pursue? like Education wise like what what were your ambitions growing up ah Speaking about me, but my education right if I understand it properly. Yeah, ah so um first of first of all Initially I ah Went to very typical school nothing special but after the um
00:05:58
Speaker
seventh or sixth grade, ah I decided to change the school and I attended to a little bit better school in Akademgorodok. It's like a scientific part of Novo Sibirsk, my ah hometown. And ah at this school, I attended fifth and math class.
00:06:21
Speaker
and this one was like better. ah Like my new school ah was located in the Akkadiamgardok. It stands for scientific town in my hometown named Novosibirsk. And at this school, I entered a phys and math class. And it was my ah like first, you know, connection to physics and science. mathematics and it was really good and a kind of life-changing event. So after graduating from the school I attended Novosibirsk State University physics department and like our physics department is one of the best in the country. I think it's like yeah one of the like first three best departments in the country and also it is really well-unknowledge worldwide because for example after you graduate in a physics department at Novosibir State University you can easily go anywhere and continue your you know
00:07:27
Speaker
or research scientific career, you can become a PhD student, like literally everywhere. And for example, for now, a lot of my you know classmates, not classmates, but the guys who started together at Nova Sierra State University, but for now, a lot of them are you know professors in different universities all over the world and it helps us also to, you know to yeah for example, to and to run some joint projects for now. So it was Novosibir State University.
00:08:00
Speaker
And after I graduated from Novosibirsk State University, ah we had a bachelor's degree and after that you can complete master's degree. So after my master's degree, I became a PhD student at the Institute of Catalysis in Novosibirsk, but at the same time,
00:08:24
Speaker
Like that time, we we began to think about ah the simple idea that to be a scientist, it's not the only way to do something useful. And you can also at least try or think about you know creation some high-tech products that will be useful for many people.
00:08:44
Speaker
So, and literally after these three years of PhD study, we created our first company. It was a very fast decision. We spent, I don't know, two weeks to decide that it's a good idea. And it took, I don't know, two more weeks to find how our first business angel.
Shift to Professional Air Purifiers
00:09:05
Speaker
And that's how our first company named T1 appeared in 2006.
00:09:11
Speaker
ah You did this with your fellow Ph.D. students? ah Yes, in general, yes. They were like four of us, and they were not, like, not not everyone and but among them ah were from physics department, but at least we were all from Novosibirsk State University. But that's time, 2006.
00:09:38
Speaker
Sorry, please continue. 2006, it wasn't already a kind of, sorry, it wasn't yet a kind of fashion to make high-tech companies. It was something, I would say, unusual, because there were no like like proper infrastructure to create your startups, especially high-tech startups. So it was something new, and that was that's why it was really challenging.
00:10:07
Speaker
e ah What was the idea? Idea was to create like air purifier based on for the catalytic ah methods of oxidation. So, you know, when we were PhD students, we worked on some technologies for the catalytic oxidation. And this technology, like in principle, it allows you to destruct, to oxidize, and to destruct all the
00:10:38
Speaker
organic compounds up to CO2 and some mineral compounds. And it can be used to remove all the organic pollutants from the air ah without like any need to change the filters. And we thought that we have a miracle in our hands And we can apply this technology to create a really good product, but our experience was equal to zero, and this not not in the field of photagatalytic oxidation, but in the field of creation of products. And I think that i maybe ah like three years later,
00:11:13
Speaker
We understood that fatigue validation is not an option. i mean it's li At least it's not the the best option and not the best technology it to solve the problems we try to solve.
00:11:26
Speaker
but By that time, we already created some more technologies, and we already become a company. And so that's why we refused using fatality oxidation, but everything else was used to to create a professional air purifiers.
Finding a Business Angel
00:11:47
Speaker
And first of all, it's also by the way, it's also interesting ah to ah to mention that we thought about ah creation of a product for um like for mass product, I mean great mass product for B2C market, for households, but it is extremely difficult to start ah from this idea. It's much more easier to start from ah like professional products. When you have not that many customers, you like few customers, but requirements from them you can understand and at least you can agree on requirements.
00:12:24
Speaker
And you can develop technologies or products according to these requirements. And that's that's why exactly like after the first six months of our startup, we changed our um like direction. So we started from creation something for households, but we decided it's not possible. And we decided to create something for professional customers. And that was one of the good decisions in our track.
00:12:54
Speaker
ah You said you found a business angel. You mean like ah somebody who invested money? ah If I'm talking about T1, yes, we found a business angel. Again, um um I would say that I would mention that like all this you know ah VC environment is not well developed. At least it was not well developed at times. And there were no like VC funds.
00:13:19
Speaker
And they will know, like, you know, regular procedure how you can get money. But, ah like, our Aketium Garadok is a scientific part of Novosibirsk. It's very small, and as we we have a joke that a concentration of ah smart, nice, and, like, powerful people is really high.
00:13:40
Speaker
And you always have, ah maybe it's not not like your friend, but at least it can be like friend of your friend who will be ready to invest. And that was exactly true for us. So we found a friend of our friend who decided that, I mean, he said to us like following, I do not nothing about all these you know air purification business ahead. I do not nothing about what the catalysis, but you guys, yeah, you look like,
00:14:10
Speaker
I mean, nice, and I believe that you can do it. And you you talk ah something reasonable. And yes, I can give you some money. But it's also very interesting that we were mistaken in terms of amount of money we need to get to, I don't know, to brick-even point. And in terms of time we need. And our mistake was, I mean, 10 times.
00:14:34
Speaker
I mean, the we and we promised to conquer the market ah like for the next six months
Photocatalytic Oxidation Technology
00:14:40
Speaker
and we promised to do it. We needed something like $100,000.
00:14:46
Speaker
approximately, but it took 10 times more in terms of money and in terms of time only to get to breakeven point. And it's okay. I mean, if you do something really complicated, really difficult, it's okay. And you have to be you know persistent. You have to be a marathon runner.
00:15:07
Speaker
Amazing. The business angel continued to support you for that that five years. So you said it took you like five, six years to become break even. So you continue to get funds from him or you had to find other investors.
00:15:21
Speaker
After that we found a lot of new investors, but speaking about this one, Business Angel, ah his name is Gennady, he's still with us, and I mean, you even now we have a lot of different projects, and now he's a part of all our projects, because he was, and he's not only about mining, he's about, I don't know, a kind of spirit, and he's really nice and, you know,
00:15:48
Speaker
a friendly guy and so and it's it's not now we are like connected ah not only in like business terms so we do together many many different projects interesting so I want to understand what is this photo catalytic oxidation and ah before that like a bigger question so air purifier in India at least air purifier means to protect you from pollution. Is that what you thought in Russia, that air purifier for pollution? but I don't think Russia has a pollution problem. It is, fair ah so sorry it of course, ah it has a lot of pollution issues. And ah i will of course, I will talk about it. But yeah if you allow, let's start from photographic excitation. And then I'll try to explain the the idea of you know
00:16:42
Speaker
how you can protect yourself from air pollutants, because even like air purifiers, they are usually not enough to protect yourself. So speaking about photectalytic oxidation, first of all, I need to declare that the last time um I have um you know ah talked about it, it was, I don't know, 10 years ago, something like that.
00:17:02
Speaker
But anyway, I will try to recall. So ah basically, you have you know that you can use a catalyst, ah to i don't know for example, to clean all these exhausted gazes from engines. right But all these typical catalysts, for them to work, ah they need high temperature. For example, when you when we're talking about exhausted gazes from the engines, temperature is really high, like 400 degrees, maybe 600 degrees.
00:17:32
Speaker
And for the catalytic process, it's a kind of similar process, but ah for catalysts to be activated, ah we need to apply not temperature, but UV radiation.
00:17:45
Speaker
And we have like some substance ah like made of very, very small crystals. And when you radiate it by UV of some given wavelengths, it became active. And any ah like molecule, any organic molecule, when it touched this surface, it decays.
00:18:07
Speaker
and it decays to like carbon to some other mineral compounds and so that's how it basically works.
Development of the Breezer
00:18:16
Speaker
So for example, if you're talking about some hydrocarbons that consist only of for like carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. ah So this for the catalytic process ah will lead us to creation of only CO2 and H2O and water, and that's it. And you can, even if if at the beginning it was something really dangerous, dangerous, and you know, molecule or compound, I guess. It will be destroyed, I mean, decayed to CO2 and h in water. And it really works, I mean, when you, when we're talking about all this, you know, laboratory research and experiments, it really works.
00:18:59
Speaker
and can be proven that it works. since like It's a well-known technology. But the most like peculiar part is how to create a product using this technology. When you try to scale, when you try to apply it on an industrial scale, you have a lot of side effects you have to take into account.
00:19:21
Speaker
What kind of side effects? like like like Why didn't it become a product? For example, ah you can have like just just not not maybe the major side effect, but anyway, yeah like to make it...
00:19:37
Speaker
within like reasonable size and reasonable, I don't know, pressure drop, if you're talking about particularity filters, you have to pull air within quite high um you know velocity. And in this regime, okay you will have some intermediate products. For example, you have something like organic compounds at the inlet, and then, for example, you will not have enough time to ah ah how to say, to oxidize it up to CO2 and water, and you will have some intermediate products, intermediate products with the react reaction in the air. And sometimes these intermediate products can be even more dangerous than the initial, and you have to be very careful with that.
00:20:20
Speaker
And ah like many more, and also in like typical conditions of exploitation, it turns out that you have to apply ah really you know a lot of UV radiation. And so energy consumption of these filters are quite high, ah like much more high than expected, and many, many more.
00:20:42
Speaker
But again, in some applications still it can be used. I mean, I don't say that it cannot be or totally used by now. For example, if I'm talking about like small areas, small spaces, like for example, refrigerator, very, very small. So you can do it like small filter, air flow will not be really high, but it will be enough. And if you have enough, how to say time, if you can recirculate air many, many, many times, it is okay, it it works well. But if I'm talking about like, you know,
00:21:13
Speaker
systems ah where you have only like one attempt to clean air. It's not very good. Interesting. interesting okay So ah you decided to make professional air purifiers. What kind of customers was it for? Was it for like say people who need a clean room?
00:21:33
Speaker
ah like said pharmaceutical companies those kinds or was it also for like regular office people or like yeah what was the problem? you were them also it's It's a very very good question ah like before like answering this question I would um mention how we how to say how we thought and how we moved so we decide first of all we decide to work with like more professional customers at least with like corporate customers And we went, like how to say, very widely. We started communicating with many potential customers where we could imagine that that they can potentially have air quality problem. ah They were like big offices, hospitals, airports, bio laboratories, pharmaceutical companies, et etc. et etc etc
00:22:28
Speaker
And it was very interesting period of our development because we had a lot of feedback and we were listening to this feedback adjusting technologies and adjusting products. It was not ah like you know selling already existing products. It was like developing something i mean something custom for for our clients.
00:22:51
Speaker
And after this period, we found out that ah the highest demand and the best product market fit or technology market fit lays in um like applications for hospitals.
00:23:07
Speaker
because we managed not only to remove all the pollutants, including like microorganisms, but we also managed to ah ah like to kill these microorganisms after they were captured by our filters. So we provided not only like high level of air purification or high level of high standards in terms of you know clean rooms standards, but also managed to make our filters clean and safe. And that was the first so um phase of our like exponential growth. We found out that our technologies are better implemented then and we created
00:23:47
Speaker
Line of products for ah for hospitals and after that we I mean we focused on this market we spent a couple of years to you know to develop to unjust and then we ah allowed ourselves to you know a little bit to step back and to start and developing these technologies in other directions that were on hold while we were working for hospitals. So speaking about this professional um like direction, we work with like hospitals, um big buildings, we work with bio laboratories,
00:24:20
Speaker
ah We work with clean rooms, we work with pharmaceutical companies, ah we work with, for example, huge pumpmping pumping stations, and we clean, clear, so we purify air, we remove all these, you know, odors, and it's, by the way, it's one of the most complicated problem, because, of course, you can do it, but to do it, like, within um a reasonable cost, it's not that easy, and especially to do it within, like, very different, you know, weather condition or climate condition, it's a hard heart problem.
00:24:49
Speaker
but it was solved and it was like professional applications. And after we spent, I don't know, seven, I believe seven years working for these professional but ah customers and after we ah you know cross-brick event point, now we decided to like finally to start working and start creating products for B2C market, for households. So we returned to our initial idea. But by that time, we already understood that photocatalysis is not an option.
00:25:24
Speaker
And also, by that time, we understood that to clean air in recirculation regime is also not a really good idea. I mean, it is better than doing nothing, but it doesn't solve all your problems you have. Because if you are talking about like room or like you know buildings rooms inside, buildings, offices, and so on, you have ah i mean you have not only to remove pollutants like PM2.5, PM10,
Expansion into Air Quality Systems
00:25:52
Speaker
and some. you know Organic compounds, but also it's very very important to remove co2 people exhale Because otherwise you will have these high levels of co2 and it's it can be dangerous so at least it's not healthy or it's bad for your you know productivity mood and so on and ah What we decide to create we decide to create the product ah named Breezer
00:26:17
Speaker
Generally speaking, it's small compact ventilation unit, personal ah ventilation unit, or we can call it TFA, treated fresh air unit. And it's installed on the wall connected to the outer air. It pulls air from outside. It's very important to understand that CO2 levels outside are always really low. It filters out all the pollutants.
00:26:43
Speaker
particles, organic compounds, and so on. And it brings you enough fresh and clean air, and it replaces all your polluted air, and it replaces CO2 in your room with clean, fresh air. And it's a kind of new approach. I mean, this approach is used in big buildings, in HVAC systems. But this approach was never used within not really big households. So and we created that kind of Product that kind of product lines, but to create something it's how to say it's never ending story It never work never works like you know you create something now you have product and you can sell and you can stop Developing like when you you know start developing something new or like even your R and&D department will grow ah like ah Along with your business because you have you always have feedback you have like new ideas what can be implemented and it is even more demanding in terms of you know
00:27:41
Speaker
like people in terms of manpower to develop products and to create the first version. So that's how ah like that that is the second business unit, second direction of T1. And now T1, it's like Russian-based company.
00:27:59
Speaker
it is It has two business units, like for but like business unit engaged in professional air quality equipment, air purifiers, and in these households. Yeah, and after that we decided, we understood that to make air clean, it's very important not only to you know to filter out pollutants or to take air from outside, it's also very, very important to measure. And it's better to start from measuring parameters of air environment, and inside buildings, outside buildings.
00:28:32
Speaker
ah ah at least it will help ah people to understand and to like realize the importance of air quality and understand how it can potentially affect them and to see the results that they will have after implementing one or another you know hardware solution. And that's how like major KF system appeared. It was our first attempt to create software ah product It's a set of sensors that can monitor air quality inside buildings and also this software can control all these um devices like breezers, air conditioners, air purifiers, air humidifiers and so on. And it was like our first attempt in tune. Okay, ah so I want to just recap a little bit.
00:29:19
Speaker
ah when you You said after about six, seven years, you went back into consumer air purifiers. And what you decided to do was like the freezer product. Yes. So I'm guessing this is a product for slightly colder places, right? This would not work in Gurgaon, for example, because Gurgaon is so hard. It works. It works. And you can pull in external air. Wouldn't it really heat up the room if you were pulling air from outside?
00:29:51
Speaker
But ah like the first part of the answer is the following. It already works in Gurogram and it will ah works in India and but basically it what it is exactly what... In in the summer? Yeah, but you always... but Of course, you at the same time, you you have to yeah continue using AC.
00:30:13
Speaker
But what a freezer does, so if you don't have a freezer, still you have some ah air flows from outside. If there were no air flows, you will suffocate, literally, up to the desk.
00:30:25
Speaker
like 12 hours and that's it. If you are like, have really totally sealed room, right? And that means that you, anyway, you have this air flow. But if they are not, if they are like a kind of organic, organic air flows, that it means that this air contain all the pollutants.
00:30:46
Speaker
So what breezer does, it gives you enough amount, it it ah um in some somehow it stops all other flows with polluted air and it gives you only one flow but with a clean air. In terms of energy balance, you will have the same situation.
00:31:01
Speaker
And of course, still you need to apply air conditioner to lower the temperature. By the way, one of the potential next steps of the freezer development, it will be integration um between breezers and ACs. It can become... ah like and uniform i mean the same system. ah at least and even Even now, they are already connected in terms of controls. So we have a mobile application that controls them simultaneously and would help to you know to adjust regimes of breezers and aces.
00:31:38
Speaker
But again, it's like ah very, very, very, very small and ah the most, um I mean, the easiest part of our products, the great, it's only initial part of our entrepreneurship, so like high tech journey. Okay.
00:31:57
Speaker
ah An air conditioner also pulls in air from outside, or an air conditioner is only circulating? In vast majority of cases, it doesn't pull air from outside. It it and cool it down. So you have this you know pipe from air conditioner that is connected to outer heat pump. But there is no air in this pipe. It's only a substance to you know to remove heat.
00:32:25
Speaker
It's like a heat exchanger. So it's not it's not the about that. By the way, it it really, I mean, in spite of being quite simple idea or simple concept that yes, you need air from outside to remove CO2 and at the same time, this air should be cleaned like from all the pollutants. So it's like like very basic idea. But it took ah several years to educate market that breezers, they are different from air purifiers and from air conditioners. And it's not easy because concept of AC or concept of air purifier, they are already in our minds. And it's quite difficult to create another mindset. So we managed to do that. And now we, breezers become a kind of new standard, at least like back in Russia.
00:33:17
Speaker
And now we brought business here in India. And we are going to create the same approach, the same new product category here. And we are already working on that. We already start sales. But the most interesting part of our journey, I mean, not the most interesting, but the next and not less intensive was
CityAir Launch and Strategy in India
00:33:40
Speaker
the following. So after T1, as our first company, became ah successful,
00:33:45
Speaker
and relatively big, I don't know, now we have approximately 500 people, something like that working there. How much revenue does it give? It is approximately, ah I don't know, $30 million, something like that. Okay, okay. And it's a private company. Yeah, it's a private company, yes. um okay So, yeah, and, but but after after it became, you know, quite big,
00:34:14
Speaker
it At the same time, it became, I would not say that it became slow, but to create something new inside Tion became more difficult than before. Because every new professional guy from your hire to R&D team start working on already existing products. We try to prohibit them from working on already existing products. We try to do everything. But it typically doesn't work. If you have your mainstream, it will suck all the resources for this mainstream.
00:34:54
Speaker
ah and it's not And at these stages of development, it's not interesting for me as an entrepreneur because i'm ah I prefer working only like first stages so when you have to create concepts. It's a kind of combination. Zero to one journey. Yeah, yeah, zero to one, maybe to one and a half, but yeah, something like that. And that's how CTA created was created. It was our second company. So after we acquired some CTA, like air of CTA.
00:35:29
Speaker
Okay, and which year was it? Year, sorry. Yeah, ah it was like a legal entity was established in 2013. But we started working on this project yearly because it was initially it was internal project inside T1. And I believe that they started working on that in 2014, something like that, 2015. And in 2018, we made a kind of spin-out. And so, speaking about CTA, so they started it after we acquired enough knowledge and expertise in the field of measurements of air quality.
00:36:10
Speaker
But it's not difficult to measure air quality inside buildings. There is no like rocket science in that sense. But it's quite... complicated to measure air quality outside. At least it's quite complicated to do it in a reliable manner. I mean, ah to have like reliable regions, it's not that easy. Of course, there are a lot of products, like very small sensors you can put the you know outside, and you will see some figures about how they are connected to reality. It's a big question. And so we started working on that.
00:36:45
Speaker
ah and initially we didn't even know what will be a business model or we didn't even know will it be business or not because our idea was to understand how we can measure parameters of ambient air and how we can measure ambient yeah air quality. yeah And the idea was that, for example, if you did not if you will not manage to transform into a business, at least we will do a kind of you know open map with air quality ah ah like accessible for everyone. And it will be it potentially could be huge auditory, and we can sum it.
00:37:31
Speaker
define how to convert it, for example, sales or preserve, something like that. But it turned out to be a business, and we started working with industrial companies and with big cities or regions, because they have a need in this kind of system. But it's much more ah than sensors. Sensors, like reliable sensors, you use only to measure at some given point. But at the same time, you need to apply um quite sophisticated and advanced math modules and the platform ah that help us and our customers not only to understand what is happening right now and at any given point, but also helps to understand what are the reasons for observed air quality and what is the like forecast
00:38:18
Speaker
And also, what can be like strategically done to improve air quality? For example, how you like um managerial decisions on the city level will ah affect air in five or 10 years? Or will, of course, some decisions can affect like immediately? So it's like a holistic system. It's much more than sensors. More over now, sensors is not the main part of the system. So that's how city air appeared.
00:38:43
Speaker
and ah And after that, after it became like check at least a technology leader in Russia, we decided it's time to to go global because the air quality problems were solved. They are not you know associated with any country. It's a global problem. And we decided to cut all our you know yeah Russian businesses ah to exit all our Russian businesses and we decide to create ah new legal entity in the United States And made it like headquarters with all the necessary, you know team members intellectual property and so on and we decide to reboot us and after that we start searching for the first Country as For our like market for our like base
00:39:39
Speaker
And we were really lucky to meet our but that time potential, but now like existing partners in India. And that's how CTA India appeared. So CTA India, this company, I mean, I'm now currently I'm at at office at the office of Internet CTA India in Gurugram. And this company, it is a joint venture company between our Air Voice global legal entity and Indian partners.
00:40:08
Speaker
And we brought all the necessary technologies, products, competences here. And we developed all the we continue to develop technologies, we continue to develop products, and we continue to develop markets. And again, we now we are at the phase when we go quite wide. I mean, we have all these products. And I believe that in one year or something,
00:40:37
Speaker
not far from one year, ah we will ah decide to focus on something.
University Collaborations
00:40:42
Speaker
But now we are working in three areas. It's like breezers and similar products for households, like ultimate solution to improve air quality, ah and so two types of systems to monitor and to control air quality. For big buildings, so it's like air voice indoor system. And for citizen industrial companies, it's like air voice ah outdoor system. So yeah, that's that's where we are right now. And by the way, it's really interesting and challenging. I mean, ah so India sounds, I mean, there is no need to explain importance of air quality. At the same time, economy is growing. And also there isn't like, um I would say proven ambitions of India to become like international hub for technology development.
00:41:36
Speaker
And all this, you know, like business environment perfectly feeds our 18 years expertise in the field of air quality and management projects, businesses, high tech companies. And I think that we are at the right place at the right time. Interesting. Okay. So did you like,
00:42:02
Speaker
all the co-founders exited Teon or like some of you are running air voice and some are running Teon? Some of them are are still in Teon. So please please. Okay okay okay you split that and ah it so what is
00:42:24
Speaker
unice in When you started this in Russia, who was like your first customer there for CityAir? Was it a city? or was web like What did you learn in Russia about ah kind of customers? What their needs are?
00:42:40
Speaker
Yeah, it was, it was a city, even, I mean, it it was even a region, so it's not city but it's like a little bit like you know larger than city. And, but, and, but I think that we had, ah you know, a kind of. um ah Two types of customers simultaneously like cities and industrial companies. So cities who wants to know what is happening. What are the reasons how it can be improved and also cities need tools are for communications with the public.
00:43:12
Speaker
It's also very important. At least but after you start monitoring and you start thinking about importance of air quality, you already can start talking about this and it's good for your you knowet reputation. ah yeah And speaking about industrial companies, the problem is a little bit different. ah So the i mean they care about how they affect like environment.
00:43:36
Speaker
And they need to know, for example, how pollutants from their chimney, how they spread, and how they cover like local ah a cities nearby. And we give them that kind of tools that help ah not only to understand like total amount of pollutants they emitted, but also that helps them to understand how exactly it affects. And not not only how, but also when it will affect the most. i mean Yeah, when when it will affect. And we give them that kind of forecast, and they can use, for example, this forecast to reduce amounts of emission for item for two hours ah you know to to but to wait a little bit. And after, for example, our forecast says that these pollutants will disperse in other direction. They can enlarge.
00:44:25
Speaker
if like amount of emissions for this period of time. So two types of Of course, it's not the like strategic business model because it's quite ah difficult to work with regions and industrial companies. They have very specific requirements and it's like really long ah projects and big projects and like, you know, demanding. It's not like product in the box. You cannot just sell and forget.
00:44:51
Speaker
it's It's a joint project that also contains or presumes some joint research, or some you know or customization, adaptation and that kind of stuff. But also there are now several ah like opportunities to to make this business ah scalable.
00:45:15
Speaker
And for example, after you have enough data sources and after you have all the data on a strict scale resolution about the quality in cities, these data or services based on data will become um useful and will become on high demand for many other customers. For example, I don't know, insurance companies. They also want to know what is their quality at the location where the customers live.
00:45:44
Speaker
ah To improve the you know insurance models or I don't know for example even So in many many more so and maybe maybe one day we will come to this business model. We will see
00:45:58
Speaker
Interesting. Interesting. Very interesting. ah How much time does it take for your deployment? like If an industrial complex wants to work with you, then I assume you will set up sensors in a particular area. and all of that will they There must be some deployment time. What is that? um I would answer in the following way. ah we can help say We can start fast.
00:46:25
Speaker
And typically, we start from a small part of the future project. We start from ah deploying a couple of sensors and from deploying a very simple math module. And this period of time can take, I don't know, one month, not more than that. But to complete full-fledged project, it can take one year or two years. It it will strongly depend on customer needs.
00:46:57
Speaker
okay okay And we it always try to split these projects into maybe three parts to start work like immediately because it's also, it will ah I mean, even to educate our customers to use our solutions will take part and they can start you know learning how to use them after the first initial stage. And even if after they have some small portion of our product, they will start you know learning.
00:47:26
Speaker
Okay. What is the use of math in this? So essentially from what I understand, the air voice platform is sensors plus math, which then presents on a dashboard ah some recommendations or some information or some insights. oh howard How does the math help you? like It's a very good question. um Yeah. And like, first of all,
00:47:51
Speaker
ah When we are talking about math, we are talking about numerical atmospheric models. We need to be able to simulate um you know atmosphere.
00:48:04
Speaker
ah We need to to know how to simulate all the air flows, weather conditions. We use transportation models to predict how pollutants spread along with these you know air flows in atmosphere.
00:48:20
Speaker
And it's a kind of hierarchical model. So basically, we start from a global forecast system. It's not us. It's something that we can take like every 12 hours, every 24 hours. It's like forecast for the nearest 24 hour in global scale. It's forecast of the weather condition or atmospheric condition.
00:48:40
Speaker
And then we apply. Who sells this data? Global forecast data. It's international. It's publically available. By the way, it's, ah you know it's ah ah how to say, bless John Kennedy, because he was the one who creates all this meteorology data available and free. It was a very famous pitch. I mean, he ah he said something like, really from the same planet. and or like all this, you know, environment is like something that we use in common. And it happens, that's, I mean, that happened that all these ah global institutions that work in the field of better forecast, typically they give um at least like low resolution data for free and you can have what everyone can access.
Future Plans for Air Quality Sensors
00:49:31
Speaker
But it's only the first step because the resolution is low. And and this comes from satellite?
00:49:36
Speaker
ah it' It comes from satellite, it comes from ah ah like math mode, but it's it's it's it's ah like literally, it is very big, you know, but large code, um yeah like simulation of the atmospheric and a lot of math, I don't know.
00:49:55
Speaker
Navier-Stokes equations, or at least some approximation of Navier-Stokes equations, are used to solve it. So they have data, of course, and it's also ah real time-time data, or nearly real-time data. But ah this data is used to adjust models, and they always they use a lot of computers, a lot of processors, ah to simulate. And it's a never-ending story. They always are you know calculating and of this forecast and huge amount of these numerical resources are used to to simulate it. So, and we start from that, from from a global forecast system. It is ah like, say, let's simplify, it's like weather forecast, but within the low resolution.
00:50:42
Speaker
And then we apply some more methods. For example, there is like well-known and narrow area of specialist like group of methods called WRF. So we use them to yeah increase like spatial and temporal resolution of the weather forecast or the of this you know atmospheric air flows. And after that, we use um some transportation models like ah chimera and some some more. It's very professional. It's it's it's names of these systems or of these you know families of courts for professionals. And after that,
00:51:21
Speaker
And this already exists, and it's accessible. And after that, we use physics-informed machine learning approaches to adjust all these big models and big systems. And we use to adjust them and to train our neural network networks. We use real-time data. So it's hierarchical models. And it's quite professional and quite ah complicated part. By the way, it's a quite, I mean, generally speaking, you have to have a lot of researchers to develop this. It's not easy and very professional. And and of course, ah for example, if we're talking about like state scale resolution of air pollutants,
00:52:12
Speaker
ah It will take years to develop it. But what we do, we managed to understand how to work with different universities. So we have a lot of partners from universities in different countries. And we managed how to work with them. So basically, we gave them like data or some infrastructure and they run the research.
00:52:35
Speaker
and So for example, they can create some adjustments to existing models. And these if these models are like small parts are successful, we can integrate it back to our platform and they will have like ah payments like as a you know license payments. So it's a good model. And that's that's why we work with a lot of you know great minds, bright minds all over the world.
00:53:03
Speaker
Amazing. So basically instead of having the fixed cost of hiring researchers, you pay researchers when they are successful. like ah the bars Yes, in general in general, yes. Of course, we cannot, I mean, when we're talking about like high tech company, of course, you cannot rely on the external researchers. So they have a hierarchy of the problems we solve. For example, and if we have speaking about like five years plans, we divided all these research and development problems into three groups. The first one, it's a kind of, you know, must have.
00:53:36
Speaker
And we cannot afford o ourselves ourselves to rely on somebody external and like 95% of all the work is done inside and like The second one is something that is kind of important. And yes, we believe that it can be like useful part of our product. But if we do not, I mean, if you, for example, if we will not ah do it in time, not, not a big deal. It's like, and here we can make like joint research is 50 50. And speaking about like really, um,
00:54:12
Speaker
ah ah like difficult, but but ah and like visionary technologies. And when we have, for example, only like small chance that yeah that it can be but potentially created, we can ah afford to give it to researchers. And it's the, you know, the field, it's the job to find because of course, yeah, so it's like well structured research flow.
00:54:39
Speaker
Interesting. What is on your roadmap for the next five years? What are the problems that you want to solve? ah the is said your map yeah this This roadmap like is like from from the helicopter ah view it is divided into streams. first is like and and by the way It's very important to distinguish between the development of the technologies and development of the products. It's different.
00:55:11
Speaker
Because but even when we're talking about development of technologies, it's significantly yeah much more risky. Because like there are always risks that technology will not be developed. Speaking about products, it's something closer to business. And to develop products, you have to be sure that technology is ready. So that's two streams.
00:55:32
Speaker
So speaking about technologies, if are talking about air quality monitoring and management systems, we have, I would say, three main streams. The first one, we want to make air quality sensors a really small, ah really reliable, and really, really cheap. And there is no like fundamental limitations to do it as small as watches. Technologies are not developed well yet. Of course, some pollutants, I mean, concentrations of some pollutants you can already measure within very small shape and within lower cost.
00:56:12
Speaker
But we are talking about ah measurement of concentrations of all the you know a typical air pollutants. We are talking not only about CO2 and PM2, we are talking also about gaseous compounds like NO2, SO2 and some more.
00:56:30
Speaker
And it will take a lot of efforts to create it really small, and we follow several approach approaches how to do it, and we work with some institutions. And probably, if you would if it will be lucky enough, in five years, we will create something real small. And after that, you can ah literally stick this sensor to any wall inside building, how outside building. And you will have absolutely transparent ah you know picture about air quality with really high resolution in real time. It's challenging. The second ah like technology technological flaw is to improve
00:57:14
Speaker
ah special resolution of air quality maps. So we need to know what is happening on ah like ah on each and every you know street or quarter in the city.
00:57:29
Speaker
And of course you can deploy it like, I don't know, 100 sensors, even if the sensors are reliable enough. You don't know what is happening between them. And here we apply, we already work on that. We already have some products. We have all these continuous maps. It's like quite high resolution, but this is a map.
00:57:48
Speaker
There's a math problem. Yes. Yes. And it's, it's rather, it's rather, uh, uh, I mean, I believe in a physics informed machine learning approach. So we have like two options. So for example, we can create a really, um, accurate math model or physics model of the atmosphere, but that will take.
00:58:07
Speaker
forever to you know to ah ah to calculate, to simulate, because it's a really, I mean, it's three dimensional problem. And it's really costly in terms of operations of processor. it It would be never solved in this way.
00:58:23
Speaker
because it's like very ah like very complicated. and not yeah Another approach is to treat all this like air environment in the city as a black box and say I ah can create a neural network and I will train shop ah drain it to sorry to ah to answer all my questions. But it also doesn't work because we don't have enough data, enough data sets and a lot of like people And there is something in between. when When you can say, I know something about physics behind these processes. But these physical models, they have a lot of parameters I do not know. And these parameters is exactly this neural network that can be used to you know to solve this problem. That's a good approach. By the way, we have some initial project with the University of Arizona in this field.
00:59:16
Speaker
and it's like ah Yeah, ah very ah very promising. It's the second technology development ah direction. And the third one, I would say, but it's maybe it's not about even like literally technologies, but something between technologies and products. When we are talking about ah indoor air quality monitoring and management systems, we are working on.
00:59:40
Speaker
It's very important. ah yeah First of all, ah but I don't know, probably one month ago there was a like nice and interesting article from World Economy Forum and they tried to figure out how like humanity can reduce energy energy consumption in global scale. And as I remember, the first bullet point was a kind of to use AI-based approaches to control HVAC systems in each and every building. And it will reduce, if we measure energy in terms of money, it will reduce $2 trillion per year, something like that. It's a huge
01:00:31
Speaker
how to say, a huge potential to reduce energy consumption. Because yeah, it's but it's also very important ah to ah to mention, not to confuse our like viewers, that air quality inside the building, it's always ah coins with two sides. You have air quality, but at the same time, the better air quality, is the higher the energy consumption consumption. And we are talking not only about improving air quality, we are talking about finding the balance between air quality and energy consumption rates, right?
01:00:59
Speaker
And imagine that we set this task to ourself, so we can, for example, measure all the parameters in like any building, and then we need to provide ah algorithms of automatic control of all the existing HV systems. And it's a big deal ah how to control them properly, how to find this balance. Because if I have enough time and enough resources, of course I can create like model aerodynamical model of the building and they will know how to you know how to control all these thousands of handlers and in this in this building in order to find balance but it's it's crazy I mean it's a very time-consuming approach and we need to find the ah develop the algorithm or approach that will help to control these HVAC systems automatically again i think and some you also need the small sensors
01:01:53
Speaker
Definitely like watching this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but but speaking about indoor air quality. I think that sensor they are already Quite I mean quite good because like again There is no need to measure like s so to and or to and all ah all this, you know complicated stuff seal 2 p.m 2.5 maybe a little bit Organic compounds in general like volatile organic
Pricing Strategies and Consumer Education
01:02:14
Speaker
amount. It's enough. So speaking about indoor Here ah here like sensing technologies are good enough, but algorithms that help to analyze help to ah Make or help help you to get recommendations what can be done and that can control all your existing each way system It's a big deal. It's not rather about the technology starts or it's rather about
01:02:36
Speaker
very complicated engineering problems. But yes, we are working on that. Okay, fascinating. ah And on the product side, what is the roadmap? So these are all technology roadmaps. Yes, ah speaking about products, I can um how to say ah distinguish but two of them. it's It's exactly, I mean, like two two product clients, we will work for sure, and maybe we'll work on something else after ah we will have ah some extra feedback. but So, of course, speaking for example, speaking about air filtration or breezers, ah we need to completely solve, I mean, now of course, now breezers are good enough to remove all the you know pollutants, like PM2 and half,
01:03:28
Speaker
and some of molecular compounds, molecular pollutants outside. But if you're talking about ah ah filtering out or removing particles, it's easy part. We can apply like HEPA filters and here these technology and product is here. But when we are talking about um ah removing all these gaseous pollutants,
01:03:52
Speaker
it is I mean this product or this part of the product can be and should be and must be improved because for now ah it is it can remove like many of existing pollutants but not all of them and that's why the next generation of breezers we are working with it's like ultimate solutions that also remove all these gaseous compounds. For example, the most complicated part to remove is CO, not CO2, but carbon monoxide.
01:04:22
Speaker
And it's this problem is not solved here yet. I mean, only like you know this um mask when firefighters use it can remove it. But the problem is that this mask, this you know capsule, leaves only for several hours. Because these catalysts they use, they ah for them, like water is a poison.
01:04:44
Speaker
And after they capture you some water, they stop working. But this problem must be solved if in the ventilation systems and breathers also. And it will be a kind of creation of this module that help you to remove all the ah complicated and difficult gaseous pollutants. But it's like next next generation. Also, we are working on, ah as I already mentioned,
01:05:12
Speaker
integration of breezers and ACs. They could be integrated either ah in terms of control or in terms of the same you know same elements, same hardware. And it's about breezers. And speaking about indoor air quality monitoring system,
01:05:34
Speaker
What we will do, like besides all this you know holistic system for big buildings, we are going to launch, and I hope that we will launch really fast, a small, I would say sub-product. We call it air quality checkup.
01:05:48
Speaker
it is It will be our first product in the box that can be easily installed in each and every office. And you can get initial understanding of what is happening, what are the reasons, and what can be done. And it will be kind of your first step toward clean and fresh air. So this is three parts. We are working currently. and ah But of course, we change. We adjust our product plans on a yearly basis.
01:06:16
Speaker
Because for now, we have a lot of feedback and a lot of insights after one year of working in Indian market. And of course, well our like vision of what we will do in terms of products will change accordingly to amount feedback we have.
01:06:36
Speaker
yeah Okay, this I want to try and understand a little bit about what is the pricing that you're thinking of and what pricing you have been doing. ah What would be the pricing for like a freezer for for consumers? Are you currently selling it or is it only for? Yes, yes, yes. yes but Yeah, we will we we are already just selling it.
01:07:01
Speaker
ah For now, like like first of all, all our prices are absolutely transparent and available on our site. We have our website, dnair.in, and all prices are there. And we have ah like more than one freezer. That's why like prices are a little bit different. but they are around So the price for one freezer now is like less than one lakh, but not far away from that.
01:07:29
Speaker
100,000 rupees. But next year we will have also significantly cheaper ah like family members of this product line. We are working on that right now.
01:07:44
Speaker
Speaking about indoor solutions, they prefer working as a, you know, in SaaS, according bit to the SaaS model, or even like monitoring as a service, mass model. And these this part strongly depends on the scale of office they are working with. If they're talking about like big buildings, really big like skyscrapers, for example, ah like subscription or model, if they're talking about full-fledged system,
01:08:11
Speaker
It can be, I don't know, $50,000 per year, something like that. It's like a typical check. But it's very beneficial for them because they can, after they apply it, the this ah how to say the presence of that system and like a good performance of this system affects the business in two ways. If you're talking about like big buildings, it's about businesses. So first of all, they can how to say They can have more money from tenants because there is a dependence between the prices of you know your assets and air quality. And it's like confirmed. And the second beneficial part is that you can potentially reduce energy consumption rates.
01:09:02
Speaker
So like two ways to benefit from it. So this is not much for big buildings. Moreover, for some buildings, I am not sure about India, but for some speaking about some other countries, for example, United States. ah for some of them to be able to monitor to kind and to control air quality, to improve air quality and air safety, and to be able to communicate about these religious tenants, it's a kind of existential problem. It's not about like 10% of the revenue profit. Because after the COVID, a lot of people run away
01:09:36
Speaker
And they don't want to go back. And that's why a lot of these buildings, operators, they work like below the brick oven. I mean, they lose money. And they need some more tenants to start yearning. And that's why some of them are ready to pay a lot of money to improve air quality, to make it safe, and to be able to ah like you know so communicate,
01:10:02
Speaker
to to so to advertise that air quality is safe. Yeah, well, industries and I see this again, it's also it strongly depends on the project. So a like range of of prices can be like really different starting from, I don't know, $20,000 up to millions of dollars, it strongly depends on the scale and on the problems that they are going to to solve. What is your ARR right now for AROS?
01:10:35
Speaker
yaard It is a revenue, right? Yes, a will they would do hundred yes so sorry sorry, because ah still some terms in English are not very familiar for me.
01:10:48
Speaker
from like Since we like started it recently, it took time not even to to understand the market, but rather to learn how to work. ah This year, our revenue I hope will be something around $1 million, dollars not more than that, but it's good to to start. This is all from India?
01:11:17
Speaker
Yes, yes, because because now we have only, I mean, IntelliCity Air India works only in India. So we have Air Voice, but all the Air Voice team decide not to defocus, not to, how to say, not to spend time working on other markets. They decide to support IntelliCity Air India, and 100% of resources is focused here, and they work only in India, because it's, of course, like, you know, we have requests for many countries.
01:11:44
Speaker
But it they sound so they so they sound good. But to make this to to convert this request to sales, it takes a lot of effort. And I mean, it never works like that, right? if youre if At least if you are not selling, like I don't know, mobile applications or mobile
Building Relationships in India
01:12:02
Speaker
games. In this case, of course, it can be spread ah differently. But if you do in something high tech and hardware and software and, you know, in engineeringical up ah complicated stuff, it will be always, I mean, it will always request or require like a lot of efforts on any given territory. So yeah, it will be all, this like first initial like million dollar will be from India. And then we are thinking that we will be able to grow quite fast. We'll see where we'll come. But in our projections, we believe that in five years,
01:12:41
Speaker
the scale of our business in terms of revenue will be like it will be several hundreds million dollars it's possible it's it's challenging but it's possible and at the same time valuation will be like I don't know one billion because it's like fast growing markets and High margin products. So yeah, that's what we think about it. And we will see ah we can end as we and Understand we can how to say we can mistaken in terms of time. It can take Longer than we see now, but in terms of potential We will be there Maybe not in five days. Maybe in seven. Maybe in ten. That's the limit. Okay, I
01:13:26
Speaker
And you want to remain India focused for how long, for how many years before you start going to other countries? ah We will see. I mean, now we have decision. ah So first, ah like, first of all, ah at least for these next year, we will be focused on India.
01:13:44
Speaker
And then we will see. It will strongly depend on how our Indian team will be performing. Because we will also going to create here like R&D departments and some more departments and and we will see. If it it if in if our industry in India will become relatively independent, and at least independent in terms of operations, not independent in terms of, you know, strategical, you know, view. We'll be able as like core team, international, we'll be able to focus somewhere.
01:14:17
Speaker
so good Okay, so do you have like a pipeline of like cities or like I'm just curious how will you sell this to a city or ah to industries? What is the way ah like your Indian partners have those relationships to do these sales or like?
01:14:35
Speaker
Yes, we have, I mean, our Indian indian partners, they have very, how to say, broad network, and it's very it's very useful, and we start working. for For example, if we're talking about industrial companies in cities, we start collaborating with CII.
01:14:53
Speaker
and so big agency that, you know, includes a lot of industrial companies. We started to work with at least two cities. It is Indore and Puna. And by the end of this year, we are going to complete our first project. We are already working. We are in these projects. And also... These are paid pilots with Indore and Puna? Yes. I mean, one is not paid, another is paid. But to start, I mean, it's
01:15:27
Speaker
For us, it it doesn't really matter, is it paid or not? But yeah, paid pilots is better not because of the money, but because of the... How to say it? It means that like our counterparty is really... and yeah like involved in this. and like yes even yeah it is it By the way, it can course and the price can be, I don't know, one dollar. It's enough because it means if they pay you even one dollar, it means that all these wheels is rolling and at least they officially pay.
01:16:01
Speaker
So, yeah, and speaking about industrial companies, we have at least we have one. um Yeah, it is Jindal still in power, and we have paid projects with them. And I think that for this year, it's enough. And moreover, now we are like speaking about these outdoor solutions for citizen industrial companies.
01:16:25
Speaker
It's already not our first priority here in India because we i mean we are focusing on sales solutions for ah big buildings. so Firstly, AirVoy's indoor platform and our future AirVoy's QG Cup because here we have more chances to make to be more useful. Because when we're talking about cities and industrial companies, yes, we solve the like problems. But in terms of air quality improvement, it's like far away from air quality improvement. Of course, it's the first step. So to to be you know more useful, of course, we are focusing rather on air quality inside buildings. And it's a priority system to monitor, to analyze, recommend, to control. And some solutions, like breezers and some other
01:17:13
Speaker
ah like similar to business. This is our first priority for now. Yeah, and speaking of ambient air quality, after we complete first paid pilots, we will see how to organize this workflow and how how to organize this business department.
01:17:33
Speaker
the The indoor solution of our voice, Does it need you to like do fresh installations? like If you have to install breezers, is that like centrally installed along with the HVAC system? or how like yeah What is the impact on a building when you work with a building? Yeah, it's it's it's it's a good question. ah So ah oh first of all, ah i mean yeah we start from a stoning air, voice, and door monitoring management system. And after we collect data, and after we you know understand what this building is you know looks looks like, up yeah ah we can understand what can be done to improve air quality. And then we have different options. So first of all, if you're talking about big buildings where ah all HVAC systems already exists,
01:18:31
Speaker
And there are a lot of that kind of buildings. We can do the following. And ah ah typically in these buildings with already existing HVAC systems, ah ventilation systems, ah there is no space to install breezers and more of there is no need to install breezes. What can be done?
01:18:47
Speaker
we can ah After like monitoring and analysis, we can do different type we can provide different types of recommendations. ah Some recommendations are like a kind of dynamic recommendations. For example, ah how they can adjust HVAC systems themselves, how they adjust regimes of um how this HVAC system works.
01:19:13
Speaker
And it will also help because all these, even like expensive and really, really expensive HVAS systems, they typically they work far away from optimal. It's like 90% cases. The second category of recommendations we can do, it's like they are a little bit more complicated to follow, but it's... rather about small like technical or physical changes in HVAC systems. For example, we can suggest to add some filtration section, or we can suggest adding some extra you know ducts in the recirculation regime, something like that. And that can be also done
01:19:51
Speaker
And in this case, ah like typically you can like improve a performance of your ventilation systems, I don't know, several times. And we have a really great case, last bit so one of the last pieces in one of the buildings that belongs to GSP.
01:20:08
Speaker
they also they had like really, you know, advanced installation system and they thought that everything is okay and they under control. And after we like monitored, we we found out that levels of PM2 and half are really high, but at the same time, they they already used filters and they used ah really good filters. I mean, at least have to say it was,
01:20:36
Speaker
These filters, they had labels that they are good. But it turned out to be different, right? And we we changed the filters. But to change the filters, we ah ah but how to say, we made some um changes in HVAC boxes. Literally, we created some extra extra hardware. We implemented filters. we We did some more recommendations. And after that, ah we lowered concentrations of particles from 10 to 100 times in this building. And now air quality is just perfect. And the third category of recommendations that can be done, it is like when, for example, you cannot ah
01:21:19
Speaker
You cannot, how to say, use only like smaller josh and adjust this small adjustments. Sometimes you need to, you know, to reconstruct all the intellations system. Sometimes it happens.
01:21:34
Speaker
all the cases, but sometimes. And we can do that recommendations. We can do ah we can explain how it can be created. it will Of course, it will cost a higher price. so So it's rather about ah monitoring, analysis, recommendation, and automatic control. And it's very, very important part of this HVAC industry. It is like literally missing part of HVAC system industry. They spent huge money to install.
01:22:04
Speaker
they work far away from Optium. And so we we suggest spending 5% more money, but gets out of these HVAC systems 10 times more value. So that's the basic idea. But in the cases where, for example, browsers can be installed For example, if they do not have HVAC system in like each and every room, and if they don't have facets made of glass, of course we can recommend to install breezers. Okay, okay, okay. And ah is the home market a focus for you? ah Yes, if you're talking about breezers, yes.
Living in India
01:22:50
Speaker
Okay, okay.
01:22:50
Speaker
but what What do you mean? Sorry. Home as a consumer market. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. In this term, yes, of course. But the i mean now with we work, like and we also have like direct sales to end users, and what our strategy is to work with our like dealers, distributors, architects, and so on. Because we are not going to create direct B2C sales department.
01:23:20
Speaker
It's necessary to start ourselves. It's necessary to sell at least, I don't know, 100, 1000 browsers to collect all the necessary feedback to train our like installation team because it's not enough to buy a browser. You need to make a small hole in the wall and to install it properly and so on. and afterward so What is the size of the reason? Like, around the size of a wall clock?
01:23:46
Speaker
It is like I don't know books, okay like a TV what photo cent television Not not big TV, yes, it's like ah I say 50 centimeters and 40 centimeters. Okay. like Okay. so Okay. Okay. Got it. Okay. Okay, and I'm just wondering if the I mean, do you see a big demand for a freezer? I just am not convinced that in the Indian summer ah there is enough demand for a product like this. Maybe for places which are not hot, like say Bangalore would be a good market.
01:24:23
Speaker
but yeah Yeah, it's it's it's a like fair question, and what's yeah what do we see? First of all, speaking about hot or like cold weather, it doesn't really matter, because as I already mentioned, a freezer doesn't replace a sea. Anyway, you need, you must use air conditioner to cool your air down.
01:24:52
Speaker
The AC will become less effective if there is hot air coming from outside. You have the similar amount of like income. where If you do not use a freezer, you have opened windows, you have seals, sorry, sleets, and anyway you have the same amount of heat coming from outside.
01:25:12
Speaker
That's my, how to say, statement. brezer well you And and it there is always that kind of, it's called like infiltration, because otherwise you will suffocate. So you have all these flows, but they are not under your control. They are like, you know, from notes sealed well, windows and so on. So when you put breezer, it makes some extra pressure inside. And that's that's how all these extra flows are stopped.
01:25:40
Speaker
And this this means that balance in terms of energy in terms of heat is not ah is not destroyed, and we already have experience of exploitation of breezers during this summer. We already installed, I don't know, like 100 something breezers, and yeah, and they work like, I mean, they work perfectly, and there is no this this issue. Of course, I mean, the most, how to say, well the most um difficult question is the following.
01:26:16
Speaker
ah will be breezers, will they become a kind of um ah important and new part of mindsets or not? Because of course now it's quite difficult to explain the difference. After we managed to, for example, to install a freezer for somebody, this black person after that is really happy and can understand what is different and is really happy using it.
01:26:43
Speaker
And we have very good feedback, right? But it's very, but it's quite challenging problem to explain and to explain it's not in face to face meeting, but sometimes even in face to face meeting, it's not this easy. But explain it like using, you know, marketing tools and and so on. And this is the challenge, right? And this is ah the like problem we need to solve. Yeah, but again, speaking about heat, we can, I don't know, we can ah send you a freezer, we can give you a freezer for free you will oh and you can feel it, how it works. Okay, okay thank you so much. Okay, is there a maintenance cost of the freezer? Like you need to change the filter every year or something like that?
01:27:27
Speaker
Yes, we need to change it ah it. It depends on city speaking about, for example, daily, google ah you will need to change it three times a year, according to our experience here. And what does that cost? the filter Again, it depends. i mean it it depends as ah ah First of all, all our prices are transparent and on our side. I do not remember like ah like exact numbers, but you can see. But the price is also in, how to say, it's another part. If you are looking at this situation as a business, we need to understand that prices, it's something we can
01:28:13
Speaker
it's It's also a part of product, right? And we have different options or wide options to, how to say, two to choose the pricing model. And for now, we say that, yes, we will start from ah like the top end breezers in terms of quality, in terms of efficiency, and so on. The prices are relatively high, absolutely green. It's not for everyone, for now, of course.
01:28:39
Speaker
ah But that's how we typically start. And then we will see if there is, if we will see the demands in the, like how to say, like a little bit lower levels of and apartments and so on. Of course we will create or we'll offer a business within different price models, with lower price and so on. Moreover, ah prices will strongly depend, not prices but cost, of course they will depend on ah on on the volumes we can we can produce.
01:29:09
Speaker
So, I mean, the prices is it's not something forever. It's only, I mean, it's a part of our product and it's a part of our product strategy. and Right. Understood. Okay. ah Let me end with this question. What are your observations about India?
01:29:25
Speaker
as an outsider coming to India. like yeah First of all, now I hope that I'm not already an outsider. So first of all, I am arranging an apartment here and in Gurugram and I spent a lot of time here in India.
01:29:41
Speaker
And ah my observations are the following. So when I first time came here two years ago, it was quite ah difficult for me because everything was so colorful, so noisy, so, you know, tasty, ah crazy, spicy. And it was not... I would not say that it was not comfortable, but it was a little bit, you know,
01:30:11
Speaker
strange but when I came here my fourth time something changed and something switched in me and I start ah feeling really really comfortable more comfortable than in many more countries I feel, ah I don't know, I like it. I love it, ah that all this, you know, what is happening throughout. I love the, I would call it like smell of freedom. It's very, very important. I don't know why, but I feel like it. And yes, I really i really love and I feel comfortable here. And it will be my home for next a couple of years at least. Thank you so much for your time, Dimitri. It was a real pleasure.
01:30:57
Speaker
Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me.