BridgIoT is an Internet of Things company. We help you or your clients save costs from anywhere thro
BridgIoT is a technology company specialising in IoT devices. Our current focus is Geasy, a smart geyser controller, that connects the once humble geyser to the internet.
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Time Square Building, 10 Elektron Road, Techno Park Stellenbosch 7600
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BridgIoT was registered on 12/08/2015 by Innovus. BridgIoT was the result of years of research conducted by Prof Booysen (Thinus) and his students at the University of Stellenbosch.
The technology that was developed through the research was that of a smart geyser controller, named Geasy, working on the GSM network through GPRS services. The controller comprised of a water meter, solenoid valve, drip sensor, and various temperature probes required a plumber and electrician for installation thereof. Besides the costly installation, the physical hardware cost was also high as components chosen were high-end and easy to work with for students. This drove costs up and made the entry to market difficult. The MK3 Geasy was certified according to various standards for electrical and radio devices.
BridgIoT approached several insurance companies and geyser manufacturers in order to partner up and gain market access, however, BridgIoT was met with dead-ends in this venture. During this time, in 2017, the drought in Cape Town was the talk of the town and efforts to save water became more popular and received more media coverage. The premier of the Western Cape caught wind of the technology following a large scale roll-out of Geasies in Piet Retief and approached BridgIoT in order to sponsor some high water usage schools with water monitoring devices.
Shortly after, news had spread to Shoprite who committed to sponsoring 100 schools with the technology, now named Dropula. The #SmartWaterMeterChallenge was born as part of Shoprite’s funding campaign. The campaign received wide coverage on CapeTalk radio and challenged corporates to donate to the cause. The WCED also got involved and could match 40% of any sponsorships that were made. Following an additional 93 sponsorships from corporates, the WCED co-sponsored the 170 schools for the project for a grand total of 363 sponsorships.
BridgIoT rolled out GSM devices as fast as possible in order to start satisfying the demand but knew that the GSM devices would shortly run out of battery power. Thus, a Sigfox version of the Dropula was developed in order to become low-power. These devices were rolled out to the schools and was the first certified Sigfox ready device that BridgIoT had developed.
The #SmartWaterMeterChallenge gave BridgIoT a large financial injection and provided a runway and working capital for BridgIoT to find sustainable business. BridgIoT started to develop various solutions for monitoring purposes in different areas, such as agriculture, residential, and commercial applications, where the core of the technology development was the device connectivity. As BridgIoT’s slogan says - “Bridging the Internet of Things”. The direction of the company at this time was unclear and no one knew where future business was going to come from.
Finally, Nico Pretorius, the CEO at the time brought a business opportunity to BridgIoT in the shape of a location tracking solution requirement for livestock security and financing. BridgIoT piloted several technologies over the course of a 6-month period. During this time, November 2018, Nico Pretorius resigned as CEO and left the company to pursue this venture in his personal capacity. This resulted in considerable conflict between the parties involved and staff morale was low as BridgIoT was once again left without a clearly defined goal. The software IP was eventually sold, for much lower than market value, to Voyanti. The hardware IP was kept in BridgIoT for further development.
Arno Scholtz took over as interim-CEO. He attempted to rejuvenate moral and set clear goals for the company. Some of the employees had conflicts with each other, aggravated by living together which resulted in poor communication and uncomfortable office environments.
During March 2019 BridgIoT was looking into reviving the Geasy/Dropula product within an insurance model similar to that of a Discovery Vitality or Drive Insure model. Some effort was made to approach insurance companies and gain an understanding of the home insurance market in order to better structure a pitch to possible partners. This model would consist of energy savings for the end-user and risk reduction for the insurer.
Before the model was refined and pitched to any prospective partners, Genric Insurance approached BridgIoT with the same idea of using Geasies for this type of model. There was however considerable hurdles for BridgIoT to overcome. The Geasy modem was discontinued since it’s previous rollout, which meant both hardware and firmware required redevelopment.
All attention shifted to Geasy redevelopment and a joint venture, named TechITEZ, with Genric was established in order to provide technology for the insurance industry. Genric would be the marketing avenue with an established distribution and installer network which will aid the product to market.
Development is underway for a complete solution for the insurance industry, involving a user application, business API, installers application, operations interface and hardware for the solution. With knowledge of how geysers fail, by slowly deteriorating and starting to leak more-and-more. It can be assumed that a simple leak sensor would suffice to detect and prevent consequential losses resulting from geyser failures. As such, the water meter and valve were stripped from the Geasy solution but is still supported on the Geasy hardware, in order to lower the installation and capital hardware cost.
