Girasol Energy, which develops a solar IoT platform, announced on the 31st that it has raised more than 500 million yen in a series A round. Participating in this round were the University of Tokyo Collaborative Creation Platform Development (Tokyo University IPC), Kansai Electric Power Group's K4 Ventures, Tokyu Construction, Mitsui Fudosan's CVC 31VENTURES, Yamanashi Chuo Bank and Yamanashi Chuo Management Consulting. Yamanashi Central Bank SDGs Fund, ANRI, jointly operated.
This follows a round conducted in December 2017 for Girasol Energy. This time, ANRI became a follow-on investment participation following this time.
Girasol Energy was founded by Mr. Min Lee, a former specially appointed researcher at the University of Tokyo's Industry-Academia Collaborative Promotion Headquarters, and Mr. Hiroyuki Ikegami, a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering. A startup born from the practical application of communication technology invented by Hideya Ochiai, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo.
In photovoltaic power generation, regular maintenance of panels and maximization of power generation performance will make it easier to make a business profitable. This maintenance activity requires a lot of work and effort, but Girasol Energy has established a method for automatically detecting abnormalities by collecting operating data from sensors that can be attached externally to the solar cell module.
In 2017, Girasol Energy was selected for the first start-up support program of the University of Tokyo IPC. He also won 3rd place and the Kashiwanoha Award at the Asia Entrepreneurship Awards 2018.
The company plans to use the funds procured this time to strengthen the recruitment of BtoB sales, project managers, product managers, software engineers, hardware engineers, and UI/UX designers as members to launch the solar power regeneration business.
via Girasol Energy