Founded in 2011 by Christian Deilmann (CEO) & Johannes Schwarz (CTO), Germany-based tado has built energy-efficient smart thermostats & services (with the advantage that they’re “compatible with <95% of homes in Europe”). Easy to self-install, the offering can reduce heating costs (through e.g. geofencing – which controls a home’s temperature based on whether anyone’s in the house – & open window detection) by 22% on average (or a customer payback time of less >6 months). The company plans to use the new funding to combine its smart thermostats with “time-of-use” energy tariffs; essentially encouraging users to consume electricity at specific times when its cheaper. To do so, tado last year acquired Awattar, which provides power load-shifting through such tariffs. To reach even more households, tado has also started to work with real estate companies (that manage large numbers of rental homes) & is developing a new product line for this market segment that will be launched later this year. Tado is said to be on track to scale profitably (having sold more than 3m thermostats since inception). The firm currently employs 180 people at its Munich-HQ with roughly 20 remote workers in the UK & Austria. Its worth mentioning that this new fundraise comes on the heel of the company trying to go public last year (via SPAC) on the Frankfurt stock exchange (with an initial valuation of €450m, revised down to €400m) that eventually went “the way of the dodo”. <Source: eu-startups.com, techfundingnews.com, techcrunch.com>
