Meet Eneida.io – a member of the EIC Scaling Club Renewable Energies group with the goal of expanding the network of zero-emission neighborhoods everywhere. We talked to José Oliveira, VP of Product at Eneida, to learn more about the company's work, challenges, milestones, and more.
The mission statement of Eneida is simple yet ambitious – zero-emission neighborhoods for everyone, now. The company is focused on ensuring that low-carbon technologies can connect seamlessly to power grids while maintaining stability. José explains: “We know that those connections will have certain instability. Demand peaks and periods of large production without consumption will have voltage challenges that need to be addressed. We at Eneida provide visibility on what happens in the grid and what will happen in the hours ahead.”
The solution includes low-voltage monitors installed in secondary substations, which measure voltage and current on every outgoing circuit. The data is processed and displayed on a web-based platform, letting Eneida's clients see their grid operations, access analytics, and decide which actions to take to mitigate constraints and avoid power outages.
José notes that Eneida's solution stands out in how quickly their sensors can be installed: “We have clients installing 80 secondary substations per day with eight teams in the field. This is quite unique and has a high impact on the total cost.”
Eneida's headquarters are based in Coimbra, Portugal, but its origins go back to Lisbon, where the company founders first met at a university. Eneida was founded in 2012 and has seen considerable growth during this time – when José joined the company, it was a team of five, but now Eneida has 73 employees.
One of the main driving forces of Eneida is the desire to make significant societal contributions through their work.
“I'm very proud to say that our mission has a relevant purpose. It has been highly appreciated by both clients and investors, and it's played a crucial role in attracting the best partners. Our mission has been the key to our success,” says José.
This sense of purpose is deeply embedded in the company culture. Eneida operates with a client-first policy – the client's journey is always at the forefront of any decision-making. “We need to address client challenges. We need to support clients daily,” says José, illustrating how different teams at Eneida approach collaborative projects.
Growing at such a rapid pace hasn’t come without its challenges. “Growth is our biggest challenge, particularly when it happens fast, and we need to continuously change the way we work,” says José. Over time, the Eneida team has learned how to improve its workflows to become more efficient and overcome these growing pains.
Other challenges include navigating international markets. Eneida's second-largest market is New Zealand, which means that coordinating with clients there often requires meetings at midnight or early in the morning because of the time zone differences. Nevertheless, strong partnerships in the region have helped smooth out these logistical hurdles.
Looking back at Eneida's milestones, José highlights their first major contract signed in 2016, four years after the company was founded. “We signed our first big contract in April 2016 in Perth, Scotland, and from 2016 to now, the UK has been our largest market every year. We are very proud of that,” he says.
A few years after securing the deal, Eneida opened an office in London. In 2020, through their connections in the UK, they signed their first partnership agreement in Sydney, Australia, which allowed the company to expand its operations in New Zealand. That same year, the company completed a successful Series A funding round, raising €4.5 million, and earlier this year, they secured a Series B round of €10.5 million.
Asked about Eneida's membership in the EIC Scaling Club, José expressed excitement about the opportunities this presents. “We were delighted to be invited to join the EIC Scaling Club. This is a group of experts in growth, and it's one of our biggest challenges at the moment,” José says.
“We have learned a lot from the sessions we've had. We are much more confident about how to proceed with the improvements we need to make. We have new connections, and more importantly, we have a new courage to face business risks. It has been an amazing experience to be part of the EIC Scaling Club,” José concludes.
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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