Outsmarting Microweather in 40 Countries, This Boston-based Weather Tech Startup is Encashing on The India Opportunity Ratan Tata is among the early investors in Climacell, which was started by three Israelis
By Aashika Jain
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ClimaCell, an American weather technology company started by three Israelis, is set to encash on the opportunity that lies in Asia, particularly India.
Entrepreneur India caught up with one of the three founder, Shimon Elkabetz, to know more about the company's India plans.
In a conversation, CEO & Co-Founder Elkabetz explained how the company is creating data in the world that is useful in places where data is lacking or insufficient.
"What we did specifically in India over the last three years was looking at what we call weather of things (WoT), virtual sensors - things that are not supposed to sense the weather but we can use in order to create reliable weather data and so we started with cellular networks, told Entrepreneur India.
With 100 employees, the WoT company is aiming to repurpose wireless communication networks for advanced weather forecasting.
In their attempt to predict prediction accurately, the company is modeling work around WoT such that by reverse engineering to signal in the air to weather data, it can be predicted where and in which part it is raining in India.
"Now we can provide solutions to all kind of industries and sooner to the consumers," Elkabetz said on the sidelines of the OurCrowd 2019 Global Investor Summit where the company announced a global forecasting system over 35 cities in India to provide 24 to 48-hours alert with very high accuracy.
Customer Base
Elkabetz thinks companies in the airlines, agriculture space and specifically in the renewable and energy space in India can make for potential partners in due course in India.
The company has been scouting for potential airlines partners in India. In the past, ClimaCell has worked with airlines such as JetBlue, Delta airline among others.
Having risen up to $68 million in Series B funding, ClimaCell is focused on products such as HyperCast weather software for web, tablet, and mobile, and the Microweather API.
First Mover Advantage
Besides being among the first players in India, Elkabetz also thinks ClimaCell's approach gives the company an edge over others peers.
"It's all about the data; the traditional approach is to come and install sensors and then maintain them. This is not scalable because if everything is software-based we can do it rapidly. That's how you can take the country from a low weather data to almost like in the US, without breaking the bank!," Elkabetz said.
He counts his second advantage to be the potential to turn those data points to reliable weather models – how you take this data and make it valuable is something very unique to us, he said.
Entrepreneur India's staff met Shimon Elkabetz of ClimaCell as a part of their visit to Israel for the OurCrowd Global Investor Summit in March 2019.
