“We are the small, passionate team known as Enreport,” Dmitry Novikov, co-founder and CEO of Enreport, explains matter-of-factly when presenting the 7-person team behind the company. The core team at Enreport has worked together for over 12 years, with two of the founders, Novikov and Dmitry Chekhunov, having known each other for much longer than that, owing to them having grown up in the same town in Yakutia in the Russian Far East.
“Before Enreport, we saw that there were many energy issues that could be addressed in many ways, and successfully completed over 100 energy efficiency projects,” Chekhunov continues, saying that it’s this experience, combined with the collective know-how of their team, that led to them starting Enreport.
The project would eventually see them sponsored for a start-up visa by Business Finland in 2021 – something that the co-founders are all immensely grateful for – and subsequently take part in both of the University of Helsinki’s Deep Tech, AI & Sustainability entrepreneurship programmes, the 2-month Compass pre-incubator and the 6-month NEXUS incubator, to successfully develop their know-how and expertise into a start-up with global potential.
At NEXUS, the team, consisting of the 5 core co-founders in Novikov, Chekhunov, Aliya Shaykhullina, Maksim Diakin, and Paul Nazarov, supplemented by Andrei Koltsov, and Leilani Clement, has been finalising their offering with the help of NEXUS Senior Mentors Sam Laakkonen from Techstars and Dr. Svetlana Marmutova of Accenture. Together, they’ve created energy management software focused on optimising power usage in a wide range of applications.
As Marmutova explains, the product that Enreport is working on is becoming increasingly relevant to all businesses. “Grid flexibility brought by the increasing share of renewable energy, high power costs, and the importance of environmental management mean that energy management is now an inevitable part of running any type of operation.” With their solution, the Enreport team is helping companies have a better understanding of their energy consumption, but also manage that consumption in accordance to whatever goals they’ve set, be they focused on the size of their energy bill, or their carbon footprint.
“Current energy management systems are very difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to deploy. It takes an average of 1.5 years, countless hundreds of thousands of euros, and four or more engineers to complete the process,” Novikov illustrates before further highlighting the rigidity of current EMS offerings
As he continues, Novikov explains how Enreport’s solution cuts down on all of those numbers and adds in a new level of flexibility into the mix: “We provide fast customisation of any production process with a drag and drop interface based on AI-driven digital twins. Because we have prepared physical models for all equipment types, customers don’t need to spend millions and years deploying energy management systems. All they have to do is open up the equipment list in our interface and drag and drop their hardware into the order in which it’s laid out in the real world. This allows them to create a production process scheme in a matter of hours, and once it’s done, our AI engine immediately starts calibrating things based on historical data.”
Once the system is set up, Enreport’s toolkit allows for companies to forecast their energy consumption and work to reduce costs, compare energy efficiency between pieces of equipment utilising digital twins, identify ways to minimise costs during their workflows, and easily run simulations to determine if they would be better served in terms of efficiency and productivity by ordering new equipment.
As Laakkonen summarises, with the wide and ever-increasing range of machinery that the team has analysed and created digital twins of, Enreport’s product allows it to be deployed in any industry, and with the relative simplicity with which it can help deliver energy efficiency and optimised consumption, the sustainability and impact potential is beyond huge.
“To top it all off,” he adds, “the team is on top of their game in harnessing AI to solve critical energy consumption issues,” meaning that however good the product is now, it’s bound to be even better in the future.
Creating this kind of solution isn’t easy, and in order to achieve these kinds of results, the team needed serious talent. Luckily, that’s exactly what they have: “I think Maksim might be a robot,” Chekhunov says referring to co-founder Diakin, laughing. “He seems to know how any piece of equipment works. I suspect he has some kind of machine slot hidden on him somewhere that lets him communicate with the machines directly.” In addition to hardware expertise, the team has strong capabilities in coding & AI development, with Chekhunov describing Nazarov as “the smartest guy we’ve ever met” whose two native languages were “Python and math”.
As for the rest of the team, in addition to bringing experience from all those energy efficiency projects, all have their own strong suits. Shaykhullina comes with a long background in consulting and project management and acts as the head Global Business Development. As for Chekhunov, the COO, his experience is in sales and monetisation, with his co-founders describing him as someone who can find opportunities anywhere. Lastly for the co-founders, Novikov comes with a resumé full of energy asset management expertise, as well as a few author credits.
“The team members have such a unique combination of industry experience and tech-knowledge!” Marmutova says, approvingly. “I love their can-do attitude and sense of humour, and really like how they approach problem identification and searching for a solution.”
Laakkonen agrees, adding only that the team is “a really motivated bunch”.
When asked how NEXUS has helped them, the team is especially grateful for the help that the mentors have given them, as well as the connections they've gotten from participating in the programme.
As NEXUS approaches its end, Enreport is beginning to look at the future and what steps to take next. Currently, Enreport is looking for clients and opportunities for further PoC’s, having already conducted some early cases with heavy industry, power companies, and retail. Those interested in finding out more about the team and their product can check out their website or reach out to Novikov at novikov@enreport.io.
Sam Laakkonen, Contingent Managing Director at Techstars and Senior Director of Sustainable Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Cambridge
Sam started his career as a management consultant in the City of London from where he was headhunted to join his first startup, FirstMark Communications, which raised the largest telecommunications Series A round in European history, $1.5 billion. At FirstMark, Sam was responsible for building and running the company's Spanish office, which would eventually grow to a 5,000km network, 65 employees, and €300 million in booked revenue before a trade sale exit to Colt Technologies.
He has subsequently been an early employee at Spotify, privately invested in over 25 startups, had 3 further successful exits from companies, helped well over 100 startups to accelerate growth, and worked for the European Commission to distribute over €1 billion in equity and grant funding. He is currently a Contingent Managing Director at Techstars, responsible for building a Sustainability Accelerator in Helsinki, Finland. He has also been the Entrepreneur-In-Residence for Techstars Amsterdam and a Lead Mentor on a number of programmes including Techstars Lisbon, Techstars Korea, Techstars Oslo, and Techstars Boulder.
Svetlana Marmutova, PhD, Strategy Analyst at Accenture
Svetlana is energised by working on sustainability and technology solutions enabling it. She has worked at a cleantech startup in Finland as a product development engineer and has gained hands-on experience in the wind power industry in Benelux working in a multicultural team. She recently joined Accenture's strategy practice, intending to leverage her impact in sustainable development of the society