Agsam builds battery intelligence using Formcept
About:
- Domain: Battery intelligence
- Revenue: Sub-$1Mn
- GTM: Sales-led
- Interviewed in: 2024
The trigger:
Agsam is an energy-tech startup based in India, that develops AI platforms for battery data analysis. We identified a pain point in the battery monitoring industry - once the data gets collected, there is a gap in terms of analyzing the data and providing value to their customers. That is the gap that we aim to fill with Agsam.
So if you look at the pyramid structure on top, you have got the fanciest ChatGPTs of the world and the Zooms of the world. But eventually the base fundamental layer is batteries. And these batteries will fail over time. They are consumables. So they age over time and they can also fail prematurely. And so that is how the battery monitoring industry has come about. Traditionally, there are a few battery monitoring companies. What they do is they put a sensor on every battery, collect the data and then show the electrical values in a user interface. The pain point, what we perceived there is “what would the user do by getting to know that this particular value is this much”. We were putting the battery monitoring sensors in the field, but still the customers were not getting value out of that, right?
25-30 years back, there used to be what are called battery experts - guys who have dirtied their hands on these batteries, who knew the in and out of the battery. They would know if this parameter is like this, the battery is going to behave like this, etcetera. In the last 20 years, there has been a dearth of battery expertise in this industry. There was no solution addressing that pain point. So that was a trigger for me to get into this domain or try to build this startup.
“So if you look at the pyramid structure on top, you have got the fanciest ChatGPTs of the world and the Zooms of the world. But eventually the base fundamental layer is batteries. And these batteries will fail over time. And so that is how the battery monitoring industry has come about. Traditionally, what they do is they put a sensor on every battery, collect the data and then show the electrical values in a user interface. The pain point, what we perceived there is “what would the user do by getting to know that this particular value is this much”. We were putting the battery monitoring sensors in the field, but still the customers were not getting value out of that, right?”
The solution:
There were two choices in front of me. Should we build our own team and go to the market? Or we try to partner with people whom we can trust. That’s when we met Suresh and Anuj from Formcept.
We built a flagship product along with Formcept, called BattDoc or Battery Doctor. It consumes all the electrical values automatically. And uses AI and ML to process it. And then provides recommendations to the customers, such as: ‘Within the next four to five months, you need to replace this particular battery in this particular location”. And here, I am talking of 20 to 30,000 batteries. To give another analogy, the battery monitoring system industry is like your ECG machine. Which churns out graphs. So you still need a cardiologist to interpret that graph and try to tell you what you should do. Medicine or a stent, or a bypass or open heart, whatever. Same thing we do for batteries. That's why we have kind of coined it as called BattDoc.
We built what is called a minimum viable product with them. The BattDoc server that Formcept had built, their understanding of the ecosystem in this domain, and the ease with which they handle data, that is all super impressive, though. Once we got some output, we thought they had a lot more potential to offer, which we are harnessing in our slow way. We felt that the Formcept’s server power could be utilized not only for batteries, but for various other things in our domain. So we have kind of added other portfolios like UPS generators onto our platform. We call that Wattch platform. It's an IoT platform, basically. So we have introduced platforms to other verticals apart from batteries. We are confident that Formcept would do the job as long as we bring the domain knowledge. The way they have architected the product server, it is super easy to graduate from A to B, to B to C, as long as they know what to do. They have given enough thought into this product and have done a fantastic job.
For the batteries and electrical domain, we worked out an arrangement to partner exclusively for this domain, and on top of it, add the application that customers could use. We come from the domain of batteries, energy, energy storage. Suppose I give you a bunch of electrical data, what do you do with the data? If it's Facebook or WhatsApp data, you are looking at consumer data. You have some sense of making it. But if you give you electrical data, for example, an ECG graph to Formcept, what would they do? That is what I mean by the domain expertise to understand that particular data.
“We built a flagship product along with Formcept, called BattDoc or Battery Doctor. It consumes all the electrical values automatically. And uses AI and ML to process it. And then provides recommendations to the customers, such as: ‘Within the next four to five months, you need to replace this particular battery in this particular location”. And here, I am talking of 20 to 30,000 batteries. As we started working together more closely, we felt that the Formcept’s server power could be utilized not only for batteries, but for various other things in our domain. So we have kind of added other portfolios like UPS generators onto our platform. We call that Wattch platform. It's an IoT platform, basically. The way they have architected the product server, it is super easy to graduate from A to B, to B to C, as long as they know what to do.”
The result:
We started the first demo or MVP way back in 2020. Till now, I log into the same user credentials, the same software. Not even once, I have had any issue with that. What we wanted out of that MVP, Formcept gave it and yeah, pretty much it kept on. There were improvements that were done on that. As we speak today, the demo site that we use is the same MVP which was created long back with few minor tweaks. So that gave us the real confidence that, yes, we can bet on this horse, I'll put it that way. So that is why we decided that, in these select domains, we will do the heavy lifting in terms of positioning with the customers. And we take Formcept support as and when required.
They are on top of the world, based on whatever I have seen - and I've seen other monitoring systems, and I have built my own IoT platform as well. Compared to all those things, Formcept is very versatile. So today, confidently, we go to the marketplace and claim that our strength is prediction. We will predict what will happen, and when it will happen on these machines. So far, we have always spoken with confidence to the customers, because we know that Formcept is behind us. So far, Formcept has not disappointed me.
I keep talking to global customers in the battery monitoring industry. They're all five to six years behind us in terms of software. These companies are in the USA, Germany, New Zealand, but when it comes to what we are doing, the software, the way data is handled, this industry is miles behind. Maybe eight months back, I was in Germany. There was a US CEO and the promoter of this company was there. They are a 30 year old battery monitoring company. They have their own software. was pitching to them. We have some engagements going on with them. When they came back, somebody asked me, how was the meeting? I said, for once, I stood tall in front of the Germans and Americans. That power or the confidence of that came to me because of BattDoc or the server or the support. It's more of the platform that Formcept provides. From that perspective, in my view, Formcept should be the global standard - it stems from the strength of the platform, what they have built.
“Formcept is very versatile. So today, confidently, we go to the marketplace and claim that our strength is prediction. We will predict what will happen, and when it will happen on these machines. So far, we have always spoken with confidence to the customers, because we know that Formcept is behind us.”
