The Philippines is one the most disaster-prone nations in the world. Its geography makes it susceptible to earthquakes, typhoons and floods. Felix Ayque, an IT worker, began compiling cyclone alerts and sending them to communities. Komunidad is an environmental intelligence platform that collects data from both government and private sources and transforms it into customizable analytics so clients can quickly respond to possible disasters.
Wavemaker Partners, with participation by ADB Ventures (the venture arm of Asian Development Banks), led the funding. The startup, based in Manila and Singapore, announced that it had raised $1 million seed capital. This will allow Wavemaker Partners to expand its reach in Asia and to add new features to its platform.
Komunidad was founded in 2019 and has clients in Vietnam, India, Cambodia, and Vietnam. It serves multiple sectors including utilities, education, agriculture, mining and local governments. Ayque was an IT developer for several weather agencies before launching the startup. This included the New Zealand MetService, which is owned by the government. After Typhoon Haiyan, also known as Super Typhoon Yolanda in 2013, Ayque began to create cyclone reports by himself as a consultant.
These reports were created to assist businesses in responding faster to natural disasters. Typhoon Haiyan struck at a time when outsourcing was growing fast in the Philippines. Many foreign companies set up multiple offices here. Businesses often transfer work to other offices during a typhoon. The first email from Ayques contained manual analysis of possible cyclones.
As companies (including energy providers) needed to address climate change, the demand for his reports increased. Komunidad started to earn enough revenue to allow it to grow and to hire staff, including data scientists, software developers, and business development team members based in India or Southeast Asia. The new investment will be used for building a scalable platform.
Komunidads data sources includes major players such as The Weather Company, which was acquired by IBM in 2015. Tomorrow.io is a weather intelligence platform. There are also several smaller providers of environmental and weather data.
The platform converts data into dashboards that are relevant to customers' needs. Ayque said that we act as a system integrator, bringing only the relevant data to customers and telling them that this data is the most important. Komunidad offers customers the opportunity to create their own alert systems. In the Philippines, for example, many customers use Viber to send out alerts.
Komunidad's tools are useful for customers working in the energy sector. They help predict power consumption based on temperature. Local governments have also used it to cancel school closures. Komunidad was a tool that cities used to monitor the population density during the pandemic. This allowed them to determine which areas needed more crowd control.
Komunidad's competitive advantage is its ability to understand what data is most important in various areas. Komunidad recently signed a deal to work with Assam State Disaster Management Agency, (ASDMA), in order to concentrate on lightning and thunderstorm alerts since Assam is one of the most lightning-prone Indian states.
Each country has its own profile and Ayque stated that we recognize that our approach must be centered on the community and then expand to business.
Komunidads customers need to respond quickly so it makes easy-to-understand visualizations out of raw data reports. These reports are often difficult to understand for people who don't have technical backgrounds. This could be a simple bar graph with warnings in red, yellow, and green or maps that turn red when a major weather event or environmental disaster is predicted to occur within six hours.
Komunidad will use part of its funding to launch customizable dashboards that allow clients to drag and drop widgets. This will be similar to creating websites in Wix or WordPress. Komunidad will use the seed round to expand its business in India, Thailand and Cambodia, as well as to grow its sales team and purchase more data sources.
