To address the global energy crisis and moving towards clean energy, solar is often cited as one of the top technologies to harness energy. However, over the years, the adoption of rooftop solar, especially in the residential segment, has been at best lukewarm.
Call it long ROI, high upfront costs, cumbersome procurement or technological complexity – whatever the reasons be, residential customers have always been reluctant to put solar on their rooftops.
Here is a company that endeavors to change that. Based out of Singapore, we spoke to Ankit Sheoran from Wattmonk Technologies to get his perspective and vision on the industry
reogma: Can you take us through the uniqueness of Wattmonk Technologies?
Wattmonk, a Singapore Headquartered Cleantech firm with offices in India and the USA, has taken the solar industry by storm. Within a short span of 2 years since inception, they have become one of the largest solar technology and services companies in the residential rooftop sector. Built on strong businesses principles, the firm has crossed $ two million in annual recurring revenue without any external funding and generates profits.
reogma: How would you describe Wattmonk Technologies’ mission?
Wattmonk is on a mission to accelerate solar adoption to fight global warming. Our integrated web platform helps solar businesses to close solar deals faster. Wattmonk provides a one-stop platform for all the needs of a solar business, from customer engagement to solar installation, which helps them to manage their business more efficiently and smoothly resulting in quicker installs and higher profits.
reogma: We’re interested to know how your product strategy will help achieve the company’s mission.
The uniqueness of the platform is that besides being a SaaS platform, solar installers can also order services like solar designs, engineering stamps, interconnection requests and PTO services through the platform. Wattmonk has one of the largest in-house teams for these services in the country and delivers thousands of requests every month. With the fastest turnaround time and industry-beating prices, it comes as no surprise that Wattmonk is the chosen platform for solar installers across the US and boasts of a few Top 10 solar installers as its customer.
reogma: Based on your experience, what do you think are the major impediments in adoption of technology in this industry?
Wattmonk has a long term vision to become the defacto platform for solar businesses. Less than 2% of roofs in the US have solar panels installed on them and a lot needs to be done to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel based electricity.
When talking about Wattmonk’s short-term and long-term goals, he mentioned that in short term we will continue to expand our reach across various states to help solar businesses become faster and more profitable. In the long term we would continue to add more technology and service products to our platform which would have two benefits. First, the existing solar businesses would continue to become faster and more profitable. Second, the solar entrepreneurs of the future would find it easier to enter the industry because the platform would manage everything for them. This would lead to increased employment as well as accelerated solar adoption.
reogma: Finally, what do you see Wattmomk accomplishing in the next couple of years?
Wattmonk has always been on the path to become a data and technology company. We collect millions of data points every month. We invest heavily in automation and data sciences with our in-house technology and R&D team. Very soon we would start to launch these data based solutions which would change the way the industry currently operates.
Solar industry has shown tremendous growth even during COVID and companies like Wattmonk are working hard to be at the forefront to help the world fight against the threat of global warming.
Wattmonk would be actively participating across different Solar exhibitions across the US.
