11 Sep 2024
Aerones is a world leader in robotic technologies for wind turbine blade inspections, maintenance, and repairs. This Latvian startup’s unique technology has revolutionized wind turbine care services, making them much safer, faster, and more cost-efficient. Now, the company is a member of the EIC Scaling Club in the Renewable Energies market group.
The founders of Aerones, Dainis Kruze and Janis Putrams, started their first ventures 20 years ago in the fleet tracking business. In 2016, they came together to build innovative drone technology. In 2018, while participating in the prestigious American startup accelerator Y Combinator, Aerones found the market fit in the wind industry. This led to a complete shift from drone-based solutions to robotics.
Just six years later, the Aerones team has achieved remarkable success. They've secured all the world's leading wind turbine manufacturers and asset owners as clients, effectively covering a majority of wind turbines globally.
This impressive feat is accompanied by another: pioneering robotic services in this industry. Aerones stands alone as the only company offering these services commercially on a large scale, a testament to their expertise in both technology and market leadership.
A company with such global-scale ambitions inevitably faces hurdles and challenges on its path to success. Yet, Aerones turned trials into stepping stones, emerging stronger and fueling their remarkable growth.
Endijs Bernics, Chief of Staff at Aerones, shares the company’s initial challenges: “The first difficulty was getting the technology ready to go to the customers and demonstrate our maintenance, inspection, and repair services in action. There were different trials and approaches, and the technology was changed and improved constantly.”
The second challenge Aerones faced was introducing robotic solutions to a wind industry reliant on rope access – a risky and outdated method. There were no existing alternatives beyond drone inspections that were limited to taking pictures and videos of the wind turbine blades.
Convincing customers that robots could service towering wind turbines was an uphill battle. The company conducted on-site demos at customer wind turbines, showcasing their technology in action and proving its effectiveness. Initial skepticism ran high, but successful demonstrations ultimately won customers over. Building trust through initial projects, Aerones assured clients of ongoing technology improvements and service expansions.
“Another hurdle was prioritizing services. With diverse needs in wind turbine maintenance (inspections, cleaning, coating, repairs, etc.), we had to strategically choose the initial offering that delivered the most value to customers and would also be aligned with our early-stage technological capabilities,” Endijs Bernics told us.
Currently, Aerones' primary goal is achieving sustainable growth, and the EIC Scaling Club perfectly aligns with this vision. According to Aerones’ Chief of Staff:
“The Ignition Forum in April provided a valuable platform to connect with network members, particularly the EIC Scaling Club’s extensive investor and customer networks. These connections have opened doors for future commercial partnerships and potential investment opportunities, serving as a supporting mechanism for Aerones' continued growth trajectory.”
About the EIC Scaling Club
The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.
The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.
The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.
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