Konux

Overview

Konux is an industrial Internet of Things startup based in Munich, Germany.  Their focus in the emerging industrial IoT space is on infrastructure with their first offerings for  rail and subway system monitoring.  They offer a complete solution including cloud analytics, sensors, custom hardware, and AI based predictive forecasting.     

Systems like these give a real time and 'god' like view of public infrastructure that has been unavailable prior to today.  This allows preventive maintenance (i.e. lowering an operator's cost), reduces train delays, and rapid identification of any critical issues for increased safety.

They are a young company started in mid 2014.

Why I like Them

I like industrial IoT startups that seek to take a legacy industry (in Konux's case, rail operators) and seek to digitize it.  There are easily quantifiable cost reductions from this type of product that makes it an easy and sticky sell to industrial customers once they see the value.

In initially focusing on railway operators Konux has chosen a great customer base to focus on since it is large but for many parts of their network still operate using analog technology and manual inspections.  Konux has shown great early success due to their killer feature being the ability to monitor in real time rail switch monitoring, an area legacy technologies had difficulty with.

I also like that they withstood the siren call of Silicon Valley and have kept their company in the center of Europe to be based near their customers.  Europe is light years ahead of the US in terms of rail and public transit and growth will be swifter for Konux staying where they were founded.

Disclosure:  All information is from publicly available sources, I have not had any contact with a member of the company or its investors.