From Energy Management To AI Solutions, Meet The 30 Under 30 Entrepreneurs Who Are Helping Companies Thrive
Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia
From energy management to AI solutions, this year’s young entrepreneurs in the Enterprise Technology category are helping companies thrive.
When China announced national goals for carbon neutrality in 2020, Zhu Yueyang decided it is also time for him to launch his own business. Based in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, Zhu’s Small Eel is an energy-management company that helps commercial property owners reduce their energy costs and carbon footprint.
Zhu is one of the entrepreneurs on this year’s 30 Under 30 Asia: Enterprise Technology list who are finding innovative solutions to help companies thrive in a competitive environment.
His platform’s smart sensors, today found in industrial parks, offices and malls in eight cities across China, monitor energy consumption to determine where cost-saving cuts can be made. Other products include smart lighting and temperature controls to help customers conserve power when not needed—this can lead to significant savings, says Zhu, citing a Beijing mall that reduced its air conditioning bill by hundreds of thousands of dollars last year.
forbes asia
Customers pay Small Eel a cut of the amount they’ve saved. “The core of what we do is reducing the energy costs of commercial buildings,” he says by phone. “By 2027 I want to make Small Eel one of China’s largest energy service companies and help my country reduce carbon emission.”
The Chengdu-based company has raised 138 million yuan ($19 million) from investors including China’s K2VC and Zhencheng Capital. In March Small Eel completed its first projects overseas, installing its software at a mall and office building in Singapore, and Zhu hopes to next expand to the Middle East.
AI-powered solutions
Entrepreneurs in this year’s 30 Under 30 Asia list are also employing AI to create new products and services for their enterprise clients.
Take Aryan Sharma and Ayush Pathak for example. Established in early 2023, the duo’s Induced.ai raised in the same year $2.3 million in funding from investors including OpenAI CEO and billionaire Sam Altman. The startup seeks to teach robots to understand and perform repetitive backoffice jobs such as writing emails and shortlisting job candidates. Its investors also include Peak XV and former Y Combinator partner Daniel Gross.
Meanwhile in China, Jin Xin and Wu Yanchen develop AI models specifically for the solar industry. They are the cofounders of Beijing-based Visual Dynamics, whose SolarSketch platform can help to evaluate designs, do cost-benefit analyses and calculate potential electric output.
Their compatriot Ling Tiange is also using the technology to provide dubbing services to sectors including animation, gaming and live streaming. Established in 2021, his Dubbing AI processes and alters voice clips to achieve various effects. The company has raised $3 million to date from investors including China’s Source Code Capital and MiraclePlus accelerator.
Optimizing existing technology
This year’s listees also want to help companies deploy large language models (LLMs). They are tweaking this essential technology underpinning the likes of ChatGPT, so that it can tailor to various corporate needs.
In South Korea, Hyungjun Kim’s SqueezeBits optimizes AI models for specific cloud services. Its software helps companies lower the cost of running AI models, democratizing the popular but pricey technology.
Hyungjun Kim, cofounder of SqueezeBits.
Supplied photo
Cofounded by Esha Manideep Dinne and Varun Vummadi, India’s Giga ML has developed a platform where enterprises can upload processed datasets and use them to fine tune existing models such as Meta’s Llama2 for specific uses.
Singapore-based, Rachel Hu’s CambioML also helps to extract datasets suitable for the training of LLMs. The startup says its platform can analyze and clean up data from a variety of sources including images, PDFs and web pages, which can then be used for improving tailored models.
Assisting workflow management
AI isn’t the only area where innovation abounds, as this year’s listees have also come up with products to improve workplace collaboration.
In India, Aditi Sinha and Rishabh Jain cofounded workflow management firm Locale.ai in 2019. The company’s software integrates data from platforms such as Salesforce and Google Sheets. It also alerts team members to issues like low inventory levels and unresolved customer complaints.
Aditi Sinha and Rishabh Jain, cofounders of Locale.ai.
Supplied photo
Meanwhile in Singapore, He Jiachen, Long Yinan, Wei Yipei and Wang Yifeng have raised $10 million in total funding for Affine. It is an open-source workplace collaboration tool that allows users to track tasks, share documents as well as to visualize the thought process through online drawing and writing. Their investors include Redpoint China Ventures and Sinovation Ventures, which put $8 million in the startup’s pre-A financing round alone.
Check out our complete 2024 30 Under 30 Asia: Enterprise Technology list here, and the full 2024 30 Under 30 Asia coverage, click here.
