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Start-up alumni SAMP and TORWASH get us up to speed on their progress since their World Water-Tech debut in 2024, discussing their business development and the obstacles they’ve faced in the current fundraising climate.
SAMP: 3D asset management solution
Outline your technology solution in one sentence:
Laurent Bourgouin: “Using AI and 3D, Samp’s “Shared Reality” solution creates a collaborative 3D workspace reconciling technical data (inventories, drawings, CMMS, etc.) with 3D reality capture of industrial facilities to provide a unique and reliable source of truth to all teams.”
Tell us about your journey as an early-stage start-up, up to your recent funding success
Laurent Bourgouin: “We have largely accelerated the commercialisation of our solution, now covering more than 150 facilities across Europe, especially in the water industry. A new significant fundraising of €6 million achieved in summer 2024 is now fuelling our company to expand even more internationally and deliver faster our ambitious R&D roadmap.”
Looking back at the activity in the past few years, both regarding market dynamics and your company’s internal development, what is driving your strategy?
Laurent Bourgouin: “Several main industry drivers are supporting our fast growth:
- There is a pressing need to modernise facilities 10x faster to meet safety and sustainability goals.
- The scarcity of human resources to operate and maintain facilities is urging the industry to be much more human-resource efficient by providing the workforce with modern tools & solutions, in particular digital.
- The technical breakthroughs in reality capture (mobile Lidar, hand-held scanners, photogrammetry, drones) is making 3D scanning a commodity, completely changing the game for intelligent 3D reality models with no need for CAD.”
What are the main obstacles and challenges you anticipate as you move forward with your start-up?
Laurent Bourgouin: “Our main challenge will be to pick our battles. We are tackling a universal problem, the disconnect between outdated technical data and the constantly evolving reality of the field. Every single industrial facility on Earth is struggling with this problem. To remain leaders with our “Shared Reality” solution, we need to carefully select and phase our growth to new segments, both geographically and in terms of industrial sectors.”
What advice would you offer start-ups who are fundraising in today’s challenging economic and regulatory landscape?
Stéphane Evanno: “Companies able to prove the value of their solution with their customers, will no doubt be very successful. A challenging economic landscape can be tough but is an amazing opportunity for valuable solutions. Because such situations filter out all the noise and distractions caused by “nice-to-have” initiatives. It forces all stakeholders to carefully listen to the market in search for disruptive solutions to their main challenges. History has shown that most impactful innovations originate in downturn periods.”
How do you view the current fundraising landscape?
Laurent Bourgouin: “There is capital available today, and it is being channelled and refocused on real-world problems and solutions making a difference for society’s most pressing needs. This is good news for all startups proposing tangible solutions in the industrial sector.”
Torwash: next-gen sludge, biomass and plastics processing
Outline your technology solution in one sentence:
Levien de Legé: “TORWASH makes your WWTP sludge-free and converts all sludge and digestate into reusable products, like biofuel, biogas and recovered phosphate.”
Tell us about your journey as an early-stage start-up, up to your recent funding success
Levien de Legé: “We successfully commissioned the pilot plant and have finalised experimental work with better results than expected.
We have secured the partner and location for scaling up to a full-scale system, 10 x larger (WWTP at the pulp & paper industry). We have begun the design phase for this plant and hope to start construction mid-2025.”
Looking back at the activity in the past few years, both regarding market dynamics and your company’s internal development, what is driving your strategy?
Levien de Legé: “Our market strategy is driven by changing legislations on sludge treatment, like restrictions on land use (UK) and obligation to recover phosphates from sludge (Germany), causing shortage of capacity for sludge treatment and increasing costs. Our circular solution helps reduce costs for sludge treatment. Our organisation has strongly been focusing on the scaling process from lab to small pilot to large pilot to full scale demonstration plant. Moneywise, the whole development of TORWASH for sludge treatment has cost around €10 million. The demonstration plant takes around 50% of that, so we acquired additional financial knowhow to support the fund raising process.”
What are the main obstacles and challenges you anticipate as you move forward with your start-up?
Levien de Legé: “Investors (in the Netherlands) have become risk aversive and always want to step in the next phase, where we have revenues and the system has largely been de-risked.“
What advice would you offer start-ups who are fundraising in today’s challenging economic and regulatory landscape?
Levien de Legé: “Start raising money as early as possible. Gain expertise and guidance from the VC world. Make sure you’re consistent with your plans and deadlines, and inform investors in advance about any forthcoming changes.”
Could you feature at the summit? The World Water-Tech Innovation Summit has a proven track record of fostering connections between innovators, businesses, utilities, and investors. SAMP and TORWASH are just two examples of the many start-ups that have successfully launched from this event.
Join us in London on February 25-26, 2025 to meet over 600 water-tech leaders for thought-leadership sessions, start-up discovery, investor insights, and targeted networking. Get in touch.