innogy Innovation Hub, which identifies, funds, and mentors game-changing technologies and ideas, has completed a seed investment in UK-headquartered AI powered CCTV monitoring company, Calipsa.
Financial terms have not been disclosed.
The investment will enable Calipsa to further refine its product and support its growth strategy in the UK and Europe, leveraging the Innovation Hub’s extensive global network.
Founded in 2016 by Mohammad Rashid Khan and Boris Ploix, Calipsa aims to transform how Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) video monitoring and analysis is conducted. The Calipsa platform is built on state of the art deep learning techniques to automatically analyse CCTV video feeds and provide actionable real-time alerts and notifications to human operators seated in control rooms to enable faster and more efficient decision-making.
Calipsa focuses on theft and burglary prevention in the commercial security industry to protects assets such as commercial buildings, construction sites, manufacturing facilities, waste management plants, solar and agricultural farms and retail outlets. Being a cloud-based software platform, Calipsa leverages existing CCTV hardware, requiring no up-front capital expenditure for its customers.
“We are delighted to welcome innogy Innovation Hub as a new investor and partner,” says Mohammed Rashid Khan, co-founder and CEO of Calipsa. “As well as providing financial backing, they take a very hands-on approach, providing access to their fantastic network of industry contacts. With their support we look forward to growing our company and achieve our ambition to become the market leader in CCTV monitoring.”
Annemie Ress, Managing Director for innogy Innovation Hub, says: “We identify and back innovative companies and technologies that have the potential to transform infrastructure for the benefit of all and Calipsa’s technology is a great example of that. By automating video monitoring, they are helping to transform assets like buildings into smart organisms. Since launching the product in mid-2018 they have attracted a number of large customers, which is great validation for the product. We have been incredibly impressed by Rashid and his talented team and are thrilled to partner with them to accelerate their growth.”
There are currently around 250 million professionally installed CCTV cameras in the world. The market for alarm monitoring services exceeds USD50 billion globally and shows double-digit annual growth, driven by decreasing camera costs, improved networking and a growing appetite for security. Calipsa’s monitoring platform reduces false alarms in excess of 50 per cent.
