Finalist | Vebbu (Croatia) – Smart Home by the HVAC specialists

The HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) sector bears the highest potential for smart home solutions with enhanced energy efficiency . The startup Vebbu from Zagreb is offering a solution which focuses on precisely these fields. The highlight: The developers are experienced HVAC specialists, offering simple usability at an extremely competitive price. Check out our short interview with the CODE_n finalist.

Further information: CODE_n CONNECT | Website

Where did your idea for the company come from?

5 years ago, we started working with personal wireless networks when the term IoT was not even a common term. We immediately saw that the world is about to change and entered the field where we have most expertise (HVAC, or heating, ventilation and air conditioning).

For which kind of audience is your product or service intended and what problem is it solving?

The global smart thermostat market could be worth nearly $1.4 billion by 2020, up from about $100 million today, according to a new market study from Navigant Research. And the EU will be the biggest market worldwide by 2017. Currently, there is no automated, wirelessly networkable and smart heating/cooling system for end consumers. There is no heating/cooling and energy preservation system that can be installed without engineers and wiring, either. The price of control devices for heating/cooling and their installation (especially in a network) is so expensive that it is a significant barrier to entry and the return on the investment for such control units takes years.

Tell us a bit about the company’s founders like their professional or industry background and the origins of the founding idea.

It’s a highly specialized team in a very specific HVAC domain (scientific publications), which is looking forward to making the technology part of the Internet of Things. Vebbu was created through the joint efforts of seasoned HVAC industry professionals and researchers investing 15,000 hours in R&D.

• Damir Serfezi, mechanical engineer
• Hrvoje Lasic, mechanical engineer
• Ruder Novak Mikulic, industrial design

To put it in a nutshell: What makes your solution special in comparison to existing smart home solutions?

The Vebbu smart thermostat allows users to customize the temperature in their home or office, individually by space. You can also change conditions based on schedules or behavior. You can control the system via the Web and smartphone applications. Installation (no wires, no engineers) and simple usability, together with extremely competitive price, are among Vebbu’s biggest advantages. No matter how many devices there are in a personal network (50, 100 or more), Vebbu can handle it. Vebbu goes deeper into HVAC problems then any existing competitor.

Vebbu’s value proposition: incorporation of different HVAC components (radiators, boilers, floor heating, fan coils, etc.) in a single, wireless peer-to-peer network, with customized temperatures in each location in a cheap and easy way, thus offering outstanding added value and simultaneously answering market needs.

See Vebbu live on the CODE_n Stage on Tuesday, 17.03.2015.