Meet our Premium Member Ramzi Bouzerda – CEO of Droople

 

Please tell us more about Droople

Droople is a Swiss based IoT & big data company with a strength of 18 drooplets, serving 90+ corporations across three continents. Droople is building the Internet of Water, connecting 100B+ water assets offline today worldwide such as sanitary ware, water treatment systems and appliances deployed on the last mile of the water grid in order to predict their maintenance, enable water-energy savings and provide sustainable impact data to manufacturers, operators, and end-users.

The idea came up in September 2017 at 3 am in my kitchen when I was filling the baby bottle of my son. I filled too much water and then poured out too much water. After 4 tries, I wondered why my faucet tap can’t help me do that easily by providing the amount of water I need. Because of this, Droople was born.

Tell us more about the main highlights of 2022. What are your plans for 2023 and what is your long-term vision? 

Since the start of the commercialization in May 2021 and an initial product-market fit for one of our solutions, we are facing a growth with larger customers, ramp-up of sales combined with doubling the team size. We are ready to take off in 2023 with the closing of our fundraising, the opening of a subsidiary in the US to better serve our customers there and doubling the team to reach our 2024 objectives. Our long-term goal is to be an established global (US, EU, APAC) leader in the IoT water management market for B2B customers, selling Big-data SaaS services based on retrofit or built-in capabilities.

 

 

What has been the biggest success that you have achieved in your startup?

We have acquired 100+ B2B customers on 3 continents in one year and half of commercialisation and with only 3.5M funding since inception. Recently, we have made a deal of 600 units for the HQ of the Private Bank Lombard Odier to make it BREEAM compliant.

If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently? What are your biggest learnings?

I guess I would onboard more water experts and spend more time raising money to develop a strong MVP even though I founded Droople from scratch. 4 years ago, we also were a bit ahead according to the market dynamics and the awareness about water challenges and market opportunities.

What motivates you to continue your business every day?

I was born in Constantine, a 2.500-year-old Numid city where water was and is still scarce. We (my mother and my grandmother) had to fill water tanks and bear them from the ground floor to the 11th floor of our building. Securing water for 2-3 days is something you can’t understand if you haven’t lived it. Now, I want to give a better world to my children by making water matter for people.

 

 

One piece of advice for someone who is just starting out with their startup?

“What got you here won’t get you there.” said Marshall Goldsmith. Keep in mind that your company is always evolving and you should be prepared for this in terms of team, organization, market, and operations.

What does it mean to you to be a member of the Swiss Startup Association? 

Personally and professionally, it’s a no brainer to be part of the Swiss Startup Community in order to network, leverage insights from peers and share lessons learned with them.

Would you recommend joining the Swiss Startup Association?

Yes, because together we are stronger.

Is there anything that we haven’t asked you that you would like to share with us and our community?

I think it’s time to launch a Swiss-based top-class accelerator program that could compete with Y-Combinator, TechStars and others because we have a strong ecosystem in Switzerland that is able to support this initiative. We don’t need more innovation but we need more risk takers and bring competencies together to create the necessary conditions for launching the next Google companies.

Reach out to Ramzi on LinkedIn

 

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