SME story: Interview with Carsten Sonne-Schmidt, CEO of Digital Energy

What inspired you to start Digital Energy?

We started our business with the aim of making a positive difference in the energy sector.

We noticed that the supply chain of energy businesses is often overlooked when it comes to emissions reduction, despite being responsible for 80 per cent of emissions.

Our Environomics solution integrates sustainability and profit targets into an AI-augmented digital solution for industrial supply chains, benefi ting both the environment and profi tability. We are passionate about doing more with less and bringing positive change to the energy industry.

What are some of the challenges you faced when starting off?

Working with large industrial clients to transform the way they work requires a willingness to take risks and make changes from the stakeholder. The energy industry has been trained to have a risk-averse culture, so it has been challenging to convince new clients to take a leap of faith with a startup.

However, as we built our reputation, trust and impact, it is becoming easier to find new partners.

Tell us about your offering, its USP and business model.

Our Environomics solution is a unique tool, integrating sustainability and profit targets into an AI-augmented digital solution for energy industrial supply chains. We work closely with a mix of energy and digital experts to ensure parity between the problem and the tech solution, making our business model unique.

Our approach offers our clients a more efficient and profitable way of doing business, while reducing their carbon footprint.

Give us an overview of your funding and how you plan to utilise it.

Our business has been customer and founder funded to date, with a strong focus on getting the right data and use cases to build and scale Environomics.

In 2022, we managed to grow by 100 per cent, but we believe with capital support, we can accelerate that growth. We plan to spend our next funding to build out our tech to be faster plug-and-play, provide more aggressively priced proof of concepts (POCs) and further build our brand.

We are seeking to raise $6m to grow our revenue by four times over the next 24 months.

What are some of the expansion plans you have in your pipeline?

We are currently partnering with a selection of global industrial service and supply chain providers to disrupt decades-old business models in the energy sector.

Through our partners’ existing agreements and networks, we plan to disrupt thousands of supply chain networks and thereby expanding our reach and impact.

How has MBRIF helped the business?

MBRIF has been instrumental in supporting our business in several ways.

Firstly, they provided us with specialist knowledge support in areas outside our core domain, such as legal and marketing. Secondly, they invited us to numerous networking events where we were able to build our brand and connect with potential clients.

Lastly, MBRIF has warmly introduced us to a selection of venture capital funds that could be a good match for our onward journey, providing us with valuable opportunities for growth.

Also read: SME story: Interview with Joost van Oorschot, founder and CEO of Maana Electric