Why AgFunder invested in Tablepointer

Editor’s Note: Energy management startup Tablepointer recently announced a $3 million seed round led by Wavemaker Partners, AgFunder and ENGIE. Angela Tay, senior investment associate at AgFunder Asia, explains why AgFunder chose to invest.

Efficient energy usage is a vital component of Singapore’s infrastructure going forward. According to the most recent report from Nordic Innovation House, roughly 80% of the nation’s electricity consumption comes from the industrial and commerce and services sector. As population grows and consumption rises, resource-strapped Singapore has an “urgent need to ensure greater sustainability in the energy sector.”

For businesses especially, energy is one of the easiest elements to manage, and yet is often one of the most overlooked because staff have neither the time nor the right skills to implement energy conservation practices or maintain equipment on their premises.

Tablepointer aims to be the partner of such businesses, helping them optimise energy usage and increase profitability.

We see strong parallels between Tablepointer’s energy management solutions and the farm management hardware and software category.

The Tablepointer team installs IoT devices at each customer’s location(s) that collect data from the most energy-consuming equipment such as air conditioners, refrigerators, and exhaust fans. Tablepointer’s algorithms constantly self-optimise to determine the location’s energy needs using the gathered ambient and operational data. Tablepointer then installs automatic controls that regulate each piece of equipment based on trained demand.

The Tablepointer business model is a simple “pay-as-you-save” SaaS model where the company takes a portion of any measured energy savings. (Actual numbers vary depending on the business.)

But while the farm management sector in Asia is highly competitive, to date, there haven’t been any other solutions like Tablepointer’s for small- and medium-sized business operators and facilities on the continent.

Tablepointer’s beachhead market is food and beverage outlets, but its technology could work in any decentralised facility with high energy consumption, multiple pieces of equipment, and companies that have multiple outlets. Cloud kitchens, food processing facilities, and hotels’ and conference centres’ central kitchens are some examples.

The team behind the technology is also critical to its success.

Tablepointer CEO Jason Tang was the European Bureau Chief at Singapore’s Economic Development Board, and also drew up Singapore’s industrial development blueprint for industrial automation, engineering services, building technologies and smart cities. He then led the Asia-Pacific businesses of MANN+Hummel, a global air filtration specialist.

It was at MANN+Hummel that Tang discovered a white space in the global market for energy efficiency solutions for small- to medium-sized facilities, and he set up Tablepointer in 2019. 

We believe Tablepointer will be able to take a huge bite out of the large F&B market in Asia and beyond, and we are proud to partner with them to help bring about energy efficiency to brands in the region and achieve solid CO2 reductions.