Igloo Energy

Idea

Introduction

Igloo Energy is a new type of energy supplier, we use data and technology to help reduce the cost and hassle in running a home.

The cost of energy for a home is complicated and doing something about it takes time and effort. For too long, customers have been forced to switch their energy supplier regularly to ensure they get a fair deal on price, but with limited information about why and how they use energy in their home.

We think its time for a change. We've built an energy company that doesn't want to sell electricity and gas. Our business model is designed to help our customers reduce the amount of energy they use, making their home efficient and cost less to run.

We offer one simple electricity and gas tariff and then use data on each home and its energy use to deliver personalised energy insights for our customers, with recommendations on products and services from LEDs and smart thermostats through to boilers and heat pumps sold on a fully installed and financed basis.

Intended impact

The idea for Igloo Energy started when Matt and Henry met in 2009 while working out how a smart thermostat could make gas boiler servicing more efficient in the social housing industry, while saving energy for their tenants.

Fast forward and with 10 years experience in the Connected Home industry, they saw a gap in the market to develop an energy company with a complete new proposition, one focussed on using data and smart technology to actually help customers reduce how much energy they use and to do so seamlessly in the background.

Many traditional energy retailers (including most new challenger brands) are generally not interested in helping their customers save energy or hassle, after all its how they make their money, selling as many kilowatt hours to as many as people as possible and teasing them with a cheap fixed rate before they switch onto an expensive rate after their introductory offer expires.

We're aiming to change that by building a trusted brand that delivers savings that stick.

Substantial accomplishments to date

In just over 18 months, we've grown to over 20,000 customers, with annualised revenues of over £25 million (Based on October revenues from unaudited accounts). At peak, we've been adding around 1,700 new customers a week to our platform.

Key achievements & milestones to date:

• We've built an energy supplier from scratch, with our own front and back-end systems and integrated an energy supplier billing & market messaging platform.

• Our mobile app is rated 4.6/5 iTunes and is the highest rated of any UK energy company.

• We've been awarded over £1 million in grant funding from BEIS & Innovate to support the expansion of our energy platform.

• We've built a fantastic team to support our customers and drive our future growth.

• We've grown strongly while maintaining good customer service ratings, with over a 90% satisfaction rating on our customer interactions, with one of the lowest complaint rates in the industry (2018: 24 complaints per 10,000 customers)

• We were shortlisted for the World's Best Energy Challenger Brand at the CHARGE Energy branding conference 2018.

• We've secured investment from some prominent energy industry leaders, including Petter Allison (ex British Gas).

We've also gained some great press exposure and regularly featured in the Telegraph, Evening Standard and Utility Week.

Monetisation strategy

There are four main sources of revenue for Igloo Energy:

1. Energy supply: we sell a simple competitively priced electricity and gas tariff.

2. Energy saving products & services: as our recommendation capability expands we plan to sell a range of smart enabled products covering everything from thermostats like Tado, smart lighting through to boilers, heat pumps and even smart appliances. A number of these are in trial for Winter 2018.

3. Demand side response (DSR) and Time of Use revenues: as we build a portfolio of installed smart devices with our customer base, we intend to work with National Grid and Distribution System Operators to unlock revenues to share with our customers. A trial on flexible Electric Vehicle charging that covers this area will be announced shortly.

4. Licensing fees: we believe our energy data platform has global application and will pursue overseas expansion at the appropriate time.

Use of proceeds

Our primary purpose in raising money through Seedrs is to give our customers the opportunity to benefit more widely from the success in building Igloo energy.

We've spent the last 18 months building out the energy supply aspect to the business, while winning UK government grants to support the build of our platform. We're now building out the home services offering to accelerate our growth and achieve our long term vision.

We will use the funds to do three main things:

• Expand our marketing activity and increase our rate of customer growth.

• Continue the development of our customer platform and expand the range of energy related products & services we offer, driving increased future profitability.

• Meet our working capital and collateral needs, in particular to support our wholesale energy trading position.

We would expect to complete a further institutional raise in the following 12 months to support our growth rate into 2020 and beyond.

Please note that the company has a working capital loan which it can draw on, up to £2.9m. The loan has a 15% interest rate and is repayable on the 26th November 2019. Funds raised as part of this campaign will not be used to repay this loan.