7 Questions With… Phyo Ko Ko, CTO of Evercomm
This entrepreneurial interview of high potential entrepreneurial talent and startups is done by CusJo in collaboration with NTUitive which is Nanyang Technological University’s innovation and enterprise company. NTUitive supports the University’s mission to develop an innovative ecosystem to encourage innovation, foster entrepreneurship and facilitate the commercialisation of research. If you feel you are a high potential startup and would like to share your story with the world, contact us to express your interest now.
How would you describe who you are, what you do, as well as what your organisation does?
I am a father, entrepreneur, and a developer who loves working with Machine Learning and Data Analytics.
I am currently working as CTO as well as a Software Architect for Evercomm, which provides End-to-end Energy Optimization Solutions through data analytics, this includes problem identification, solution recommendations, continuous monitoring and control.
How did you end up doing what you are presently doing, what are the problems you set out to solve and what are some of the solutions you are providing as a result of that?
I started off as a researcher at Digital Signal Processing Lab, NTU where I also met Ted, my co-founder. We share a passion for making new things, we used to stick together a bunch of gadgets lying around in the lab to make something interesting. and so, naturally, we participated in hackathons.
And one such event was Code Extreme App 2013, where we won the first place but the biggest takeaway from there was we learnt that there is a lot of support from Spring for startups and also get to know mentors, from NTUitive to approach (Frankie).
And from there, Evercomm was born, and we set out to solve energy visibility problems using wireless IoT solutions, so it is cheaper, more scalable. Now we have not only solved energy visibility problems, but also provide data analytics on the data for optimizations, visualization and control.
What makes these solutions so valuable and how are you attempting to further innovate on them?
I would say they are valuable because we offer complete end-to-end energy solutions to our clients. We collect data using our own wireless sensors, do data validations on the collected data so they make sense, and we do data analytics to identify the problems and provides recommendations. To tie everything up, we also provide visualization through our web portals.
For further innovations, we are currently working on smarter data collection using edge analytics. Currently, our sensors are very capable, but they collect a snapshot of the power usage every minute so there is a lot of information that you can miss like phase information, impulse response, load shifting etc. So, what if we can collect every millisecond and instead of sending all data back, process them on the spot, and only send useful and noteworthy information back to the server? With this capability, we can do predictive fault detection, wear and tear detection, well before they happen. This have a potential to massively cut downtime needed for fault recovery, and also optimize inventory keeping.
Another area we are trying to innovate are data analytics portion. We used to license out technology from NTU but now working directly together with schools such as SNTL under Prof Gan Woon Seng to quickly translate and commercialize innovations. We already have research project funded by Singapore government and Israel innovation authority, and we want to deepen our research collaboration in Israel with NTU innovation center in Israel.
What is your take on your industry over the next 3 years and how are you planning to capitalise on what you see happening?
Three years from now would be 2020, which is the first milestone for COP21 Paris Agreement set back in 2015. So, I believe governments and organizations across the world will be trying even harder to achieve the goals set out in COP21 by that time to reduce greenhouse emissions. So, we will position ourselves as key player for energy optimization solutions and hopefully help governments and organizations make meaningful impacts towards the set goals.
If individuals or organisations would like to seek you out to collaborate, what sort of collaborations would you be welcoming of?
For organizations, we are looking for domain experts in various industries to collaborate with to solve energy challenges. For individuals, we are always looking for people with passion to solving problems that have meaningful impact.
You’ve obviously set out to succeed in your endeavour, what would be some of your genuine measures of success outside, of just monetary gain?
For other measure of success, if our solutions that we are offering have a positive impact on client’s operations as well as on the environment, I would consider it a success. Since we are already collaborating with universities like NTU, if we can help researchers translate their innovations quicker to market, I would also consider as a success.
What in the world today excites you and makes you hopeful of a better future?
Apart from my usual excitement for new technologies and gadgets, I am pretty excited about how the public getting more and more aware of the climate change and how the governments are really pushing for policies towards greener solutions. And our job in this is to becomes one of the main tools to that people can use to reduce energy consumption across various industries.
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