Last week, we met Casper, CEO and co-founder at Sensohive that has created a series of beautifully designed and powerful sensors. We are very proud to have Sensohive figuring among the best startups from our startup program.
Let’s know him and his startup!
INTRODUCTION
- What is Sensohive?
Sensohive is an IoT Danish startup founded in 2014 that gathers 9 employees.
We offer construction companies and precast concrete element productions to monitor concrete curing in real-time. The Maturix-solution offered by Sensohive enables clients to increase capacity, reduce product waste, reduce heating and save time making documentation.
The sensors developed by Sensohive are used by partner companies to other markets as an integrated service. The largest partner is the Nordic Food service company eSmiley who uses the sensors for automatic temperature documentation for food companies (HACCP). eSmiley has more than 10.000 clients.
- How did this idea come up?
The three co-founders, Tobias, Tim and I had experience in utilizing the benefits of wireless sensors and data, but in a B2C context. The aim with Sensohive was to move it into a B2B context and help businesses gain the benefits.
- What was your first product and how did people react?
The first product we launched, Orbit 3, was a 100% self-made wireless sensor for the food industry to automate temperature control. It was as very nice solution and the first 100 clients using the system were very excited about saving time using these sensors.
- How amazing is your team?
In our own opinion, we have one of the best teams. It is a perfect combination of talented developers and experienced sales people. We are today 9 full time people in the company (grown from 4 people in August 2017).
PRODUCT AND SALES
- What is your selling model?
We offer partners to purchase hardware and an integration service. Construction companies (our end clients) purchase access to a software platform in order to enable curing monitoring and automatic report creation.
- Do you think people are familiar with IoT today?
I think people in general know the term “IoT”. Most think about smart home equipment like Philips Hue or something similar. But the IoT-world still has to prove to general people the value and idea about “connecting everything”.
- Any big customer you can name?
An example could be that we serve a subsidiary from Heidelberg Cement Group. Besides, we serve many larger clients together with eSmiley in the food sector such as Shell, Hilton, Horesta etc. with the Digital HACCP platform.
- What is the hardest part of your job?
IoT is still new and we and our partners need to conduct a lot of proof-of-concepts to validate the value of the solutions. That extends the dialog from initial sale to reaching large volumes. In general, looking at the IoT-world, we are still on a validations and POC-level. We will contribute to move to large volumes this year.
WHAT’S NEXT?
- What makes you confident for the future?
We start to see a growing interest and investment willingness from large corporations into the field of IoT. They have the projects and challenges from which we can find volume. They have the power to move the IoT-world from the POC-stage to proven solutions where volumes are shipped every month.
- What is next for Sensohive?
We will focus our resources on helping existing and new clients within the construction sector with our concrete curing solution. We hope to use the global network of Sigfox operators and partners to scale globally.
A BIT ON SIGFOX
- Why Sigfox? How is it different from your point of view technology wise?
Seen from a technical perspective, Sigfox is about moving data from device to cloud. Sigfox has some benefits in their offering compared to competing solutions as the ability to ship devices across borders without the need of local roaming agreements – just one large network.
Sigfox is not only a network of antennas worldwide but also a community of component producers, device makers, solution providers and operators. All working together supplying the best possible solution for end clients. A global network of highly talented people and organizations are in the end the main and most valuable asset in the Sigfox network.
- What would you change at Sigfox?
I would be better at sharing stories. There must be a lot of interesting stories to share to help people in general to understand the opportunities in IoT.
- How was the Sigfox experience?
Sigfox is a great partner. They deliver a strong service and try to connect all the relevant people in the whole community together. Everyone knows that it is a massive task to cover the whole world in a single IoT network. There are many steps in this process. So, there is also a learning curve, where you, as a solution provider, go hand in hand with Sigfox to find the right use case and needed setup.
A WORD FROM SIGFOX
“Sensohive has been a great partner since day one. They came with a clear idea of what they wanted to achieve with Sigfox, and they delivered it in a record time. Another thing that impresses me is how mature and skilful they are. Coming with a production sample ready to produce in less than 4 months is something I’d never seen before. They are now capable of shipping their devices almost everywhere in the world to grab the best business opportunities. “ Anthony Charbonnier – Head of startup relations
