Almost no one cared about air purification. Until the coronavirus hit.
Trendwatch: 5 startups eliminating airborne contaminants you should know.
In these historical times, we are all very much looking forward to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Having the eternal question in mind: when will this crisis end?
The Coronavirus has already fundamentally changed our behavior, our way of communicating, working, and socializing.
But most importantly, we don’t know what is yet to come. How will the long term repercussions of this sanitary and economic disaster look like?
“Towards an increasingly ultra-clean, disinfected and sanitized environment”
In the past weeks, several new consumer trends have emerged. You probably encountered in the last days Stackline’s Top 100 Fastest Growing & Declining Categories in E-Commerce.
If we look at Stackline’s trends, we can see that besides the high increase of sales of bread machines, Air Purifiers and Humidifiers have seen an increase of roughly 100% since March 2019 (not mentioning the +292% increase of hand sanitizer).
And this trend is probably just at its beginning, especially with the recent events! Air purifiers were already expected to grow at a double digit pace by 2027, though the market itself is already worth some $20 billion worldwide.
NO, air purifier can not completely protect you from a virus.
However, they still help. It has been proven that air filtration can conceivably lower the amount of virus particles from the environment, according to a recent study from New England Complex Systems Institute.
Also, the link between air pollution and higher COVID-19 death rates is now quite clear.
At Glassdollar, we are tracking hundreds of thousands of startups, and we identify the most valuable ones for our customers. Working with some manufacturers, we actually received scouting briefings on innovative disinfection technologies for surfaces.
This reinforced our narrative on the office and industry of tomorrow. As they will slowly reopen, hygiene concepts are very much in need.
We believe that we will live in an increasingly ultra-clean, disinfected and sanitized environment.
Let’s imagine a typical working day: you are on your way to the office, leaving the subway and take the escalator. Handrails are equipped with UVC-Light (see video). Once in the office building, you cross a health security check.
In this futuristic world, employers will not only care about corporate wellness, but extend it to employees’ health. Everyone will be equipped with health tracking devices. A six feet office concept will be implemented, to keep workers at safe distances (Ford is actually already testing Buzzing Wristbands).
At the same time, factories and offices will implement smart HVAC and air purifiers, with integrated in-air pathogen detection.
Since this scenario could soon become reality we would like to focus on the air purification trend in this article - which could be beneficial for both, the consumers and businesses; from classical offices, to airplanes and industries.
5 Top Startups detecting or eliminating airborne contaminants
LifeAire Systems
Country: USA
Funding: undisclosed
Employees: 9
- LifeAire Systems did not design the systems for residential use yet, but for installation in hospitals, healthcare settings, and senior living facilities. Their air purification systems aim to kill or neutralize the most infectious biological pathogens such as COVID-19 (Coronavirus), or tuberculosis on a single pass through the system.
- The company can retrofit their systems into existing air handlers in hospitals and health care settings as part of the solution to address potential future pandemics, but we could imagine that industries will adapt such a technology to protect their manufacturing sites.
Get in touch: https://lifeaire.com/contact/
NuWave Sensors
Country: Ireland
Funding: undisclosed
Employees: 8
- NuWave develops a wide range of smart air quality sensors with a focus this time on both industrial and commercial environments.
The sensors have multiple applications from particle, CO2 and chemical monitoring to the continuous detection of airborne pathogens. - NuWave’s clients include healthcare facilities, manufacturing, food processing and clean room environments as well as research and environmental monitoring.
Get in touch: https://nuwavesensors.com/contact-us/
Novaerus
Country: Ireland
Employees: 34
Funding: $10M from Eight Roads and F-Prime
- Novaerus’s portable air disinfection units reduce indoor airborne pollutants such as viruses, bacteria, particles allergens and odours that lead to infection, allergies and irritation.
The company developed a patented ultra-low energy plasma technology. - Novaerus’s customers are mainly hospitals at the moment, however they are also targeting schools and the construction market.
Get in touch: https://www.novaerus.com/contact-us
Country: Netherlands
Employees: 9
Funding: undisclosed
- VFA focuses on air cleaning and disinfection from hazardous airborne contaminants such as fine particles as well as bio aerosols like bacteria, viruses, spores and fungi, among others. VFA’s air purification solutions help purify indoor environments — and at the moment largely healthcare institutions — by removing airborne viruses, pathogens and dust particles.
- Additionally, VFA also provides air purification based on gasses and smells
Get in touch: https://www.vfa-solutions.com/en/contact/
Country: Italy
Employees: 50
Funding: €1.9M
- Instead of developing sensors, Airlite offers innovative smart paints, acting as air purifiers. So far the paints are sold mainly to individuals or architecture companies. The technology is effective at eliminating bacteria, reducing pollutants (such as NOx, SOx, NH3, CO) and lowering painted surface temperatures.
- Currently, the company is developing products for industrial applications, an ultra-low thickness transparent coating with anti-pollution, self-cleaning and anti-bacterial properties for ceramic, metal, plastic and glass substrates.
Get in touch: http://www.airlite.com/contact-us/
A new trend has emerged and it is here to stay
Several startups are already offering innovative air quality and purification solutions removing airborne pathogens. Even if most solutions were addressing health institutions, we do think that consumers and businesses will follow this trend, and that startups will change target group.
Some successful startups such as Molekule (raised $96.4M) or Aeris (to give credit to European companies) can already be highlighted here.
Most commercially available consumer air purifiers are High-Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters, and are of course not highly effective against Corona as highlighted by this very good article from Buzzfeed, still, this shows an interesting trend that I believe is here to stay.
I’m Clément Segal
Startup Analyst at GlassDollar. I’ve been scouting and analyzing startups for a couple of years now. Comments and feedbacks are always welcome.
Please get in touch via: clement@glassdollar.com
At GlassDollar, we are building the most extensive data engine to scout startups. We cluster and track millions of companies across the globe to help customers like Daimler, Henkel, Miele and Rabobank to integrate the most interesting startup technology into their value-chain.
We are eager to contribute as much as we can to overcome the crisis. Our main goal and value has always been to foster connections between people, and enable startups founders to be connected with corporates. Which is why, as a humble contribution, we are currently offering FREE startup scouts to any Covid-19 inflicted pain points, so that any institution can ask us to find startups on defined topics.
(use this form to brief us: https://glassdollar.typeform.com/to/p1s3NV)
Lots of thanks to @ann_catherine for the precious feedback as well to @fabdudek
