NEER has proved that it has product market fit, and now it's ready to expand its tech offering to more customers throughout the U.S., CEO and founder Elango Thevar said.
The Kansas City-based startup developed a real-time water management platform that uses machine learning to help cities and private utilities save money and become proactive with water, sewer and stormwater maintenance. In addition to identifying leaks, NEER can predict failures in water, sewer and stormwater collection systems.
NEER has grown to 11 employees and plans to add a head of sales, a software developer and a customer success manager. It's also expanding its product lineup this year to include a new financial modeling tool and project optimization tool to prioritize which projects need attention first.
The startup has made valuable connections through the Arch Grants program, which came with a $50,000 non-dilutive grant, and it landed a spot in the Elemental Excelerator and Gener8tor accelerator, which included a $100,000 investment.
Raytown was an early NEER adopter and started with a pilot project for its sanitary sewer system. It has since signed a four-year contract with NEER and is using the tech platform for its sanitary and stormwater sewer systems.
"I saw it as a really innovative way to perform asset management," Raytown Director of Public Works Jose Leon said.
Raytown's sanitary sewer network, for example, spans 165 miles of pipes and 4,325 manholes. NEER initially used city data, such as maintenance history and geographic information system mapping, to create risk assessment scores for different segments of the system.
To validate the scores, Raytown picked an area of the city deemed "very high risk" and hired a CCTV company to televise the mains and expose their true condition. That effort determined NEER had a 92% accuracy rate. It spurred the city to expand its relationship with NEER and use the startup's analytics and assessments to help establish a seven-year capital improvement plan for Raytown's sanitary sewer system, Leon said. Raytown also is using NEER to monitor and forecast flooding throughout the city during inclement weather.
"It becomes a life safety factor," Leon said.
NEER's platform can help predict the extent of flooding and inform city workers which streets they should proactively shut down to ensure resident and visitor safety, he said.
"Even potentially, in a worst case scenario, is telling people to get out of their houses if water levels are going to get too high in a severe rainstorm," Leon said.
From a stormwater system perspective, Thevar said, NEER's platform also can help cities ensure that they're designing a system that not only meets current but future needs, such as land use changes.
NEER's customer base also includes the Johnson County Stormwater Management Program and customers throughout the Midwest and in places such as Texas and California. NEER also started gaining customers in a surprise niche – engineering consulting firms that are using the platform with their clients to make proactive, data-driven decisions.
"Our product market fit is there. ... They need this product," Thevar said. "At this time, our goal is to scale. We want to reach all 50 states."
