Canadian cloud-based machine learning (ML) software platform Pani has been honoured with the distinction prize in the Breakthrough Technology Company of the Year category at the 2023 Global Water Awards held at the Global Water Summit (GWS) in Berlin, Germany.
The GWS, hosted by Global Water Intelligence, brought together participants from over 40 countries and major companies such as Veolia, ABB, Schneider, Aquatech, Colgate, L’Oréal, and Aqualia. The summit highlighted breakthrough technologies, future disruptive trends, and leading projects from around the world. The active participation of end customers in the voting process further emphasises the industry’s demand for its approach in establishing a new category of operations AI for water management.
“What began as a hypothesis to address the technology gap in desalination and wastewater plants in early 2022 has transformed into a proven category of technology known as process operations AI (Ops AI) for treatment plants,” said its CEO Devesh Bharadwaj. “With US$8m in seed funding and years of background research, we have developed a new technology layer on top of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA).”
Within a year, Pani has doubled its team size, increased the number of facilities using its platform by over 2,000% in more than 10 countries, and demonstrated the impact of Ops AI on plant performance and operating risk. Its technology has shown to reduce operating costs by up to 15%, increase water production by up to 12%, predict compliance issues and downtime up to 30 days in advance, with trusted accurate predictions of over 94% based on third-party tests.
Pani has been deployed in large desalination plants in the Americas and Saudi Arabia, wastewater treatment facilities in Europe, and industrial treatment plants in industries such as F&B, pulp and paper, and mining. Pani has forged relationships with Coca-Cola, Abunayyang, Aquatech International, Sawaco, Aditya Birla, Osmoflo, and the Orange County Water District.
Pani also identified the need to accelerate the adoption of digital technology in emerging markets, which contribute to 65% of global emissions but often lack instrumentation and appreciation for decarbonisation over other priorities.
To address this, Pani engineered its product to allow facilities to adopt Ops AI based on their existing equipment, sensors, and resources, and evolve with them to maximise ROI and time to value. Pani estimates a 5-10 times faster digital transformation compared to business as usual, opening doors to what has been an underserved market in an already digitally nascent global treatment sector.
