Shayp has worked with sustAIn.brussels to develop their Business Plan and Market analysis for their product. This is an interview with their managing director and co-founder, Grégoire de Hemptinne (GH) to discuss his experience with sustAIn.brussels on his digital and sustainable journey.
Q: Can you tell us about your work at Shayp?
GH: Shayp is a company where we develop solutions that help a.o. -large real estate owners identify anomalies in terms of water usage. Mainly in respect to leaks, ensuring that they are detected and fixed as soon as possible. In many cases, 95% of water anomalies remain unnoticed or unreported because many do not have access to the ticketing system of the larger corporation. The leak detection works similar to how a fire detection would work. The core values of Shayp is impact, we have turned our business model around impact in the interest of social good. Ensuring that in the long run, the sustainability of our customers. We have gamified the experience in such as way that everyone can get the most out of it.
Q: Can you tell us about your role within Shayp?
GH: I am the managing director and one of the co-founders. The company was founded almost seven year ago. There were three founders, one is an architectural engineer, he had the knowledge of buildings and environments. The second one is an active hardware engineer, he designed the sensors and I am the computer science engineer, who created the anomaly detection.
Q: How does Shayp contribute to sustainability?
GH: Firstly, helping buildings becoming more resilient towards the stress of water and minimizing water damage. Secondly, water is used as a key source in some businesses, such as cement creation. When water sources are scarce such as some south European countries (where we have been expanding to), being able to control and make sure that the water is used in an optimized way could prevent any unexpected withdrawal of water. We therefore contribute to ensure the conscious usage of resources. The third way in which Shayp is sustainable is through the philosophy of Lavoisier expressing that you cannot improve something that you cannot measure. Meaning that now that we can measure the process and usage of water, harvesting rainwater and other technologies can now slowly be implemented.
Q: What are challenges that Shayp has faced prior to the collaboration with sustAIn.brussels?
GH: Shayp's product was already thought out and created, we already had a few customers, the challenge we were facing was due to the energy crisis, the market was shifting, the prices of energy doubled, tripled, quadrupled. Due to the crisis, clients prioritized energy over water. Ultimately the problem was the value proposition of Shayp and what target segments, whether we were targeting the right customer.
It came to the point that we decided to take a step back and see the bigger picture, we could not continue down the route we had set and were looking for external professional advice. During their collaboration with sustAIn.brussels, they had established two target audiences. The first segment being customers that have a lot of building but has very little water usage. The way to approach was not about the amount of water they could save but rather the time to find the leak would be diminished. The need to frame the solution as operationally efficient. The second customer segment has huge consumption of water: they would have a variety of buildings, municipalities, for example, typically have swimming pools, or older buildings. This customer is more interested in saving water because they do not understand why their water bill is so high and Shayp becomes the solution to ensure savings. The motive behind every customer may differ and understanding what the customer would want out of the product, this deliberation occurred with sustAIn.brussels.
SustAIn.brussels helped us to address the market in different ways depending on who the prospecting customer was. The most valuable services were the customer analysis and segmentations.
Q: How did Shayp come accross sustAIn.brussels?
GH: Shayp was very present in the Brussels ecosystem, being part of Agoria, having partnered with Sirris in the past.
Q: What were Shayp's expectations when starting the collaboration with sustAIn.brussels?
GH: The initial expectation was that the focus would be on the product. We were pleasantly surprised that the focus was on the commercial aspect of the company. Identifying the market and ensuring that the product is advertised in the best way. Which was our main challenge.
"From Water Data to Business Growth: The Expert Advice That Took Our Business to the Next Level!"