Unicorn India invests in last-mile power distribution grid automation startup

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], Aug 4 : Early-stage venture capital fund house Unicorn India Ventures on Tuesday announced its fourth investment from Rs 400 crore fund two in Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled smartgrid automation startup Probus Smart Things.
Probus develops integrated hardware and software solutions for utility providers. It digitises the distribution grid and functions as an IoT platform based service.
The company raised an undisclosed seed round from Unicorn India which will be used for scaling up the platform and entering new geographies.
Co-founder CEO Anand Singh said India is a power surplus country but the distortions in power sector costed the Indian economy 86 billion dollars in 2016 alone.
"Using our IoT enabled wireless, modular hardware and data analytics platform, we cut through these issues and are enabling electrical utilities to make last-mile connectivity reliable by helping India achieve an efficient electricity grid within a fraction of their current costs," he said.
The solution gives the distributors real-time visibility of asset performance, outages and root cause analysis along with predictive and preventive maintenance through sensor data with scheduling and tracking of on-field personnel.
Anil Joshi, Managing Partner of Unicorn India Ventures, said the service is not just pertinent in India but will fare well in the rest of the southeast Asian market and Europe as well.