As part of the Builtworld Innovation Contest, Smartivate is listed as one of Europe’s Top 100 PropTech Companies in 2020 presented by BUILTWORLD in cooperation with PwC. The companies are identified based on the most relevant challenges and topics of the future. They navigate through the fast and ever-changing built world technology landscape. Especially in today’s turbulent times, the future must be shaped to unfold benefits for the people and the built world. The PropTechMap 2020 provides a unique perspective to utilise the innovation ecosystem in the world of tomorrow.

Find out how an idea elevated to a successful business in an interview with Renewables Now: Smartivate, offers a platform for plug-and-play smart home devices. The ENERGY INNOVATOR column by Renewables Now is published with the support of EIT InnoEnergy, the European sustainable energy accelerator.

The Smart Home Configurator developed by Smartivate went online on Homeandsmart.de – Germany’s leading consumer portal on smart home, connected living and e-mobility. With over 600k users a month, Home and Smart is a platform that regularly introduces new gadgets, innovative projects and groundbreaking technologies and explains the impact it will have on the end user. 

Smartivate had the chance to present itself at the Euro-Asia Economic Forum held in Xi’an, China. It was indeed wonderful to see tremendous opportunities in the biggest market in Asia for Smart Homes. Smartivate was also ranked as one of the top Start-ups in the Germany-China Innovation Competition held in Dongguan City on 09.09.2019.

Here’s some interesting news! Smartivate was chosen for the InnoAlliance Germany China Innovation Competition as one of the semi-finalists and this event is scheduled to take place in Dongguan, central Guangdong Province, China. The German startup association, responsible for the event is already in China along with 41 German startups from various fields such as Health / BioTech, GreenTech, Artificial Intelligence and Smart Traffic / IT. In addition to meetings with the Chinese Start-up, Investors & the business community, the delegation will also have the chance to get to know the Chinese market & its offerings. We are indeed glad to have been provided with a such an opportunity.

We’re happy to announce that our product – ‘The Configurator for Plug & Play Smart Home Devices’ was awarded the prestigious “SmartHome Deutschland” Award for the year 2019. Smartivate was one of the top three nominees out of a large number of contestants from across Germany. The award ceremony was hosted in the historic City Hall of Berlin by SmartHome Initiative Germany eV, a cross-industry federal association based in Berlin. The SmartHome initiative recognises the commitment and high technological level of smart home products and projects in various categories. The focus is on German or European companies, startups and student projects since 2012.

In June 2019, Smartivate was selected as one of the top 15 startups out of 230+ contestants for the A1 IoT Challenge, organised by the A1 Telekom Austria Group. As one of the top performers of the IoT Challenge, Smartivate was chosen to be part of the IoT Forum, held on Wednesday, June 5^th, 2019 in Vienna.  As a participant, we had our own space in the A1 startup area and had the opportunity to present our product to the event visitors.

On 01.02.2019, Smartivate had the chance to be part of the StartupBW-2019 summit held at the Stuttgart Trade Fair Center. The summit was packed with a highly motivated Start-up ecosystem striving to help shape our future with their cutting-edge technologies. With the special focus being internationalization, the event was attended by over 75 Start-ups from many countries. It was indeed a privilege to introduce Smartivate’s vision & product and also share a few thoughts on the Start-up Scene & the on-going experience with the high level political delegation of Baden-Württemberg joined by Minister-President Winfried Kretschmann, Minister for Economic Affairs Labour & Housing-Dr.Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, State Secretary-Katrin Schütz and the Mayor of Baden-Baden – Margret Mergen. We thank the Economic Development Authority of Karlsruhe and AXEL the energy accelerator for all the support services.

Smartivate is mentioned on EIT Alumni Community impact report of 2018. Check it out for more contributions by other members of the EIT.

This day marked another milestone for Smartivate at the EXPO Real held in Munich. We were part of the  Nassauische Heimstätte – Bits, Bots und Apps – Digitalisierungsstrategien in der Immobilienwirtschaft – podium discussion. Our representative Matthias Luthe talked about various digitization strategies in real estate and smartivate’s role correspondingly. Laura from Freshenergy – Berlin, representatives of GdW Bundesverband deutscher Wohnungs- und Immobilienunternehmen e.V., FutureManagementGroup AG were present.

On 9th Oct., Smartivate had the chance to pitch and present the smart home configurator to the gathering at the new New Festival in Stuttgart. Many thanks to AXEL – Der Energie-Accelerator &  CyberForum e.V. for having given us the opportunity to be part of such a cool event. It was indeed a place for people passionate about tech and entrepreneurship.

We are happy to announce that Smartivate was chosen as the winner start-up along with FreshEnergy at the Hubitation Finals held in Sep. 2018. Hubitation is an initiative of the Nassauische Heimstätte / Wohnstadt group of companies based in Frankfurt am Main and Kassel. Strategy for digitization and sustainable urban development were the key objectives. The two start-ups will soon jointly work on a pilot project.

The jury chose Smartivate as the winner of the German housing industry’s competition for start-ups called ‘hubitation’. More than 30 start-ups from all over Germany registered for the competition and participants of the finale were welcomed by the Hessian Minister of Economics Tarek Al-Wazir.

The team was greeted by the Mayor of Karlsruhe – Dr Frank Mentrup, the Consul General of India for South Germany – Mr Sugandh Rajaram and other authorities of Karlsruhe city administration. The dignitaries ushered support & wished success to Smartivate. It was showcased as one of the emerging Start-ups in the BW region.

We at Smartivate are excited to announce our association with the Economic Development Authority of Karlsruhe. Thanks to the Indo-German Network, Karlsruhe for all the support.

Smartivate showcased its ‘Proof of Concept’ exclusively at Hannover Messe 2018, stationed at Hall 17-B74. We thank our partners Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and AXEL – Der Energie-Accelerator for guiding us all the way.

Here’s an article written by Krishna Reddy, Online-Community Manager, InnoEnergy.

It all began on a cloudy Saturday morning when a dedicated bunch of people came together under one roof to tackle a challenge; a unique one perhaps. For some it was a personal investment with the challenge itself and for others, a professional curiosity of addressing the problem from the customers’ perspective. Nevertheless, all of them showed up (almost) on time and we began the day with an informal gathering alongside some fresh coffee and pretzels.

The challenge we were about to tackle was of Smartivate’s, an upcoming start-up working on building a single platform which offers exclusive tailor made solutions to all your smart home needs. Smartivate is at the brink of making smart homes a reality to each one of us by providing access to its various benefits in a much more refined and convenient way. Smartivate solves the problems of compatibility, connectivity, etc., and provides the user with unique packaged solutions tailored to their budget, needs and requirement in a quick and hassle-free manner. Also, did we mention it’s founders Anand Narasipuram and Jeevan Dasan happen to be InnoEnergy Alumni (ENTECH)? This is an outcome of the Knowledge Innovation Triangle model of InnoEnergy, which by the way is also reflected in the business policies of Smartivate of educating the customer while doing business.

Smartivate is in the process of developing their MVP and could foresee a few challenges that needed to be tackled. This was when the idea was talked over with a few like minded alumni in a brainstorming session, which concluded with defining the challenge as “How can we (Smartivate) create a valuable user experience on our platform to facilitate and retain customer engagement?” The CommUnity Karlsruhe, along with guidance from trained alumni ofthe, then sprung into action to develop and execute a Co-Creation workshop to address this big question.

The participants at this workshop were from diverse backgrounds. Along with students and alumni of InnoEnergy, there were entrepreneurs from the start-up environment of Karlsruhe, experts in CRM and IT consulting, Academia researchers, a well known resident doctor and an expert in Linguistic studies. The motivation in the room was similar to that of sea explorers who were about to embark on a voyage to explore the turbid waters of E-commerceworld & find new land.

As the day began, first officer Volkan Işık (Local Manager, CommUnity Karlsruhe) gave a quick intro of the build of the ship, introducing the CommUnity and welcoming everybody to this exciting journey. Soon we raised our sails and undocked from the harbour as our captain Tiago Mendes (Junior Project Manager, Open Space Studio) carefully guided the boat and its people to catch some favourable winds throughout the rest of the day.

We began by exploring ‘what’ features and traits of an e-commerce platform attract different users. Each participant delved into their previous experiences with the e-commerce functionality to collect and share observations with their small workgroup. The participants then put themselves in the customers’ shoes to analyse which of these features are of importance to Smartivate’s platform and assess them according to their significance. Each group presented their observations in a construed manner. Midway through our journey, we stopped to re-fuel our ship with some fresh air-dropped pizzas and soon enough we got back to running our ship at its full speed. We dug deeper into the construct of developing efficient, attractive and sustainable customer engagement and retention models. The rich diversity of the participants helped the creative juices flow and each group came up with innovative ideas. The voyage reached its landfall after each group presented their ideas in their own uniquely crafted way. Every participants’ distinctive perspectives helped this expedition transform into a successful outcome.

So where did we start and where did we end up? We started with a ship full of explorers eager to ride into the turbulent seas and ended up in a newly discovered land complete with all the tools required to build a new civilisation. While we wait at the shore, Smartivate will continue this expedition exploring the land that lies ahead. While our scopes and radars are re-calibrated to find other such explorers, we will continue to guide them when needed and we wish them all the success in this grand endeavour.

Nonetheless, the CommUnity of Karlsruhe is indebted to all its volunteers who stood up and took the responsibility of organising such an event. The CommUnity is determined to provide more such exposure to its members through various kinds of events in the near future.

Pictures from the event: Business Case Challenge with Smartivate | Flickr