Startup: Lumifi

Website: www.lumifi.com

Founder: Beatrice Witzgall

Pitch: Lumifi’s mission is to change the way we control and experience lighting through smart IoT enabled lighting technology.

Video Highlights

Mission:

To change the way we control and experience lighting through smart IoT-enabled lighting technology.

Macro Thesis:

For decades, lighting controls have been only for the wealthy who could afford to hire contractors, programmers, third party installers, electricians and lighting designers. The introduction of LED technology, smartphones and universal Wi-Fi access is now completely disrupting the traditional lighting control market, eliminating all these experts through a simple DIY technology.

Now, thanks to the “Internet of Things,” we can integrate a Wi-Fi chip directly into any LED bulb and control it directly through a smartphone as a convenient remote. This is making smart lighting easy, accessible and affordable to everyone, opening new market opportunities.

Market Sizing:

Smart lighting control sales are projected to increase from $1.3 billion in 2012 to more than $4.3 billion in 2020. Lighting is moving from being purely a source of illumination to a source of automation, intelligence and information. Smart LED lighting will record the highest growth of all Internet of Things consumer applications, going from 6 million units in 2015 to 570 million units by 2020.

There is an even bigger opportunity in the hospitality market, as hotel guests want personalized experiences and controlled lighting or music during their hotel stay.

Product Or Service:

LumiFi offers a smart lighting software platform incorporating lighting intelligence using fully composed, pre-configured lighting moods to enhance people’s lifestyles the way that Sonos does with music and Nest does with temperature. We are integrating various lighting manufacturers into one experience, since no single manufacturer alone can outfit a space.

Our patent-pending software incorporates various lamp properties and analyzes the parameters for each individual light in a specific space. Our software algorithm then assigns different lighting attributes to each fixture to automatically create a cohesive and meaningful lighting experience.

Real And Vaporware:

We launched our iOS home consumer app about 10 months ago and have been testing, improving and building new functionalities and adding manufacturer choices. We are currently in beta for our premium version that includes features like timer, scheduler, multi-room, unlimited bulb control and quick-assign for faster commissioning.

For the hotel market, we have an iOS and Android app that accesses location profiles via QR codes. In addition, we built and tested capabilities for pilot projects with permissions and profile sharing tools and are now developing an advanced server infrastructure and database to manage hundreds of rooms and thousands of lights in a hotel setting.

Why Us: As an award-winning lighting designer and architect, I’m a subject matter expert with deep established relationships in the industry and applied project experiences within lighting, hospitality and the interactive tech world. I’m passionate about how lighting can transform spaces and impact people. LumiFi was created out of real world frustrations and demands of my own clients who not only advised and directed, but partially hired me to develop a better solution.

Andrew’s Commentary:

About a year ago, I renovated a home and installed speakers in every room with Sonos controllers as well as Nest thermostats for two zones. To truly “put my home on the Internet,” I would have needed all the lights throughout the house to have been managed through a smartphone app that was as easy to manipulate as the one that Nest offers for my thermostatic controls. I looked at the vendors in market, but there was no obvious solution for my lighting needs.

In a few years, you won’t consider a home renovation complete without lighting controls accessed from an easy-to-use app on your smartphone. The market that Lumifi is pursuing is massive.

Want to make a Roadmap Video about your startup for the chance to be featured on Forbes? Learn more here.