Toby Lewis, editor of Global Corporate Venturing, welcomed Carsten Bether, CEO of smart grid software developer Kiwigrid, and Frank Starrmann, managing director of utility company RWE’s Innogy Venture Capital fund, this morning to discuss their partnership.
Kiwigrid received an undisclosed amount of funding from investors including Innogy VC and corporate and state-backed VC fund High-Tech Gruenderfonds in 2013. The startup hopes to facilitate the Energiewende, the policy by which Germany plans to drop nuclear power entirely and replace it with renewable energy.
Both Starrmann and Bether pointed out that the disruption caused by startups such as Kiwigrid to established energy companies poses several challenges for both parties.
On the one hand, RWE is facing a future with thousands of smaller players challenging its business, and on the other, Kiwigrid has to communicate effectively with a corporation several times its size.
To illustrate the point, Bether noted that his four-person sales team has had to dedicate three people to deal with a team of 12 staff at RWE.
Both Kiwigrid and RWE share a common goal, however: to provide the needed connectivity of millions of devices to balance the system effectively.
When asked by Lewis about the success of innovative startups being hindered by existing market regulation, Bether predicted that the market will likely see big deregulation in the next 10 years – a process he asserted has already begun.