SmartClean Bags US$3.4M Funding to Bring Efficiency into Cleaning Industry Using AI, IoT

SmartClean Bags US.4M Funding to Bring Efficiency into Cleaning Industry Using AI, IoT

SmartClean Technologies, a startup providing IoT- and AI-powered solutions for the cleaning industry, has secured SGD3.7 million (US$2.7 million) in a pre-Series A funding, co-led by SEEDS Capital (the investment arm of Enterprise Singapore) and an unnamed environmental services company in Singapore, its Founder and CEO Lav Agarwal told e27.

Other strategic investors who joined the round are Ecocare (a leading hygiene company in Indonesia) and co-CEOs of Oneberry Technologies (a security automation company in Singapore).

This round, which was closed earlier this year, brings Smartclean’s total funds raised to date to US$3.4 million, which also includes venture debt.

Agarwal further added SmartClean is currently in the process of raising US$10 million in Series A from several investors, including a large VC firm with operations in India and Southeast Asia. This round is expected to close in March 2021.

SmartClean was founded by Agarwal, Abhishek Mishra (PhD from NUS), and Stella Aw. Launched in early 2017 at CapitaLand’s IoT accelerator programme, SmartClean is working on “reimagining the next-gen cleaning industry” and building IoT solutions which will monitor spaces, learn from the facility data and autonomously run cleaning operations of properties with a team of cleaners and robots.

“The system uses advanced data analytics, Machine Learning and predictive algorithm to compute usage and cleaning requirements, which are used to send alerts to cleaners with detailed work instructions and used by managers to plan resources in advance. This helps the industry to move from scheduled to on-demand operations, increasing productivity by over 30 per cent and improving service quality, resulting in net savings for the organisation,” he explained.

SmartClean is also rolling out a one-stop SaaS platform, called Matrix, for MSME cleaning companies to digitise their back-end operations, including workforce management, contract management, audit and payroll.

SmartClean was commercially launched after a year-long trial in 2019 and has expanded to both commercial and public properties, such as Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Jewel Changi Airport, State Court, NParks, Bus interchanges, and JTC Summit.

It also has ongoing projects in Singapore, India, the UAE, Indonesia and Malaysia, and is starting off in Hong Kong, Australia and Thailand.

Currently, the startup is employing 40 people and planning to grow this number to 80 by the end of this year.

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