Smart City Startups Serbes Startups Strawberry Energy, which recently announced its expansion in London, announced a partnership with Multinational Ford Automotive. Together, they deploy smart benches in London to offer pedestrians a free solar energy load and Wi-Fi access while they sit and rest across the city. The collaboration will initially provide 20 Smart Ford benches for those who walk, cycling and driving in the city.
“The Ford Motor Company Fund is to improve people’s lives through innovation and access. Thus, when we find transformational projects such as smart benches and work with partners like Strawberry Energy, it is not only a home run for Ford Motor Company and our goals, but for the people we serve, ”comments Jim Vella, President of Ford Motor Business Fund.
Smart benches penetrating London
Last year, the Serbian startup and portfolio company of Bulgarian Fund Eleven Ventures, Strawberry Energy raised € 455,000 in a crowdfunding campaign for the expansion of its network of smart benches. Strawberry energy is already present in 31 cities in 17 countries, including the United States and the Middle East, but the European market is the main objective of Milisavljevic. So far, the company should have deployed around 200 products in the benches of Serbia and has managed to achieve its objectives from the end of last year.
The growth of the network of smart benches in London is however the first important step for the Serbian company, which has already signed a contract with the local government and installed 20 parts in the city. It seems that the partnership with Ford will further accelerate this process.
Strawberry Energy was founded in 2011 by Milos Milisavljevic, who was at the time a student in engineering at the University of Belgrade. The company’s initial product was a solar bench called The Strawberry Tree, which captures solar rays and transforms them into usable energy so that anyone can charge its phones and mobile devices and use wireless for free. The strawberry tree was the first public solar energy charger and has been used more than 10,000 times in the first 40 days, the company said.
To better adapt in public spaces, however, strawberry energy had to develop a smaller, more efficient and more marketable product, therefore the team offered the smart bench. This second product is again a to solar energy Bench, but much more compact. It has sensors that collect data from its environment and could possibly operate in a network of intelligent city infrastructure objects.
“Even if we always produce the strawberry, our main objective is to focus on the intelligent bench because it is much more evolving and offers more monetization opportunities,” said Milisavljevic earlier. The 13 -year -old team, based between Belgrade and London, is also working on new products from the range of Smart City infrastructure.
Free energy, expensive data
The strawberry tree is intelligent and there is also money growing there. Before the crowdfunding campaign, the company had already collected 1 million euros BulgarianSerbian and British investors and he will soon start to increase another round to continue expansion.
Even if the startup is not yet profitable, it generates income from sales. Surprisingly, the main source of income is not the benches themselves. “We offer benches as a space for advertisers – both the brand of the physical bench, but also the distribution of digital content via the Wi -Fi Citizens Free Citizens. The next step is to start monetizing the data we collect on air quality, traffic and pedestrians in public spaces, “Milisavljevic explained to us in a previous conversation.
Two -thirds of Strawberry Energy customers are private sector companies such as Orange, Ford and Canary Wharf. For public sector customers, the rules are different – local governments do not pay for benches networks and data.
Strawberry Energy works on the Intelligent City Infrastructure Market which is estimated to reach 1.2 billion by 2022. Of course, products such as smart benches represent a very small part of this market and the Serbian startup n ‘ is not the one and only actor. There are several younger companies on the market such as The Croatian include with their Steora bench or the American SOOFA.