This investment carries considerable risks and may lead to a loss of the entire assets invested. Projected returns cannot be guaranteed and may be lower than expected.
Thus far, homeowners willing to modernize their house and to make it more energy efficient have had to browse countless craftsmen forums and have had to deal with various legal requirements, grants and subsidies, and certifications. Energieheld ("energy hero") is changing this situation. Energieheld is a platform for energy-efficient modernization, counsels homeowners on all the different modernization activities and subsidies there are, and connects customers with suitable craftsmen. In this way, homeowners get everything they need through a single website. With more than 3.8 million website visitors, we are the market leader within a growing multi-billion market, and we reached break-even point in late 2015.
Accounting for 40% of total energy consumption in Germany, buildings are the most important factor in climate change. In fact, energy consumption of buildings in Germany is higher than that of the entire German industrial sector or that of the transportation industry, which is why buildings cause considerable carbon dioxide emissions.
Every year, over 1,000,000 property owners in Germany want to change this and to reduce their building's energy consumption, thus saving money and helping fight climate change.
Support Climate Protection through energieheld
Property owners in Germany, however, have the problem that they have to choose from a large number of measures, manufacturers, and technologies in order to improve energy consumption of their buildings as much as possible. In addition, people frequently have difficulty searching for a reliable craftsman business and navigating the multitude of possible subsidies and public grants for their project.
energieheld has recognized these problems as well as the related potential of a growing multi-billion market that has hardly been digitized so far. This is why we enable property owners and craftsman businesses to improve energy efficiency of buildings in a simple, transparent, and relatively inexpensive manner.
#1 Platform energieheld Focuses on Customer Acquisition Online and Digital Processes
The leading online platform for energy-efficiency improvements to buildings with a total of more than 3.8 million visitors, we focus on customer acquisition online and handle the entire process from a customer's first inquiry to the project's realization on our platform.
As improvements to buildings are personal projects that require much counseling, however, we also have highly qualified customer service representatives that provide personal and independent counseling to customers in these people's buildings.
energieheld is unique because it combines digital, regional, and personal service.
This leads to a WIN-WIN-WIN situation for everyone involved:
- Customers may improve energy efficiency of their buildings in an inexpensive, high-quality fashion and save up to 30 %.
- We help craftsman businesses collaborating with us make their processes efficient and digital, and we provide these businesses with valid projects from new customers.
- energieheld receives a highly lucrative commission of 10 % from partner businesses after a project has been completed.
Whenever property owners want to improve energy efficiency of their buildings, they come up with a long list of questions, but in many cases, they hardly find anyone who can answer these questions. energieheld has created a solution to this problem that completely satisfies customers.
We place special emphasis on personal and independent counseling of our customers. Indeed, modernization of a building is not the type of project where people can easily compare technical data and prices online. Providing advice solely over the telephone is not sufficient either if a company wants its customers to be fully satisfied.
When energieheld handles the process, it is simple and efficient. Together with our customer counselors and qualified craftsmen, we support our customers throughout the entire project, that is, from the first inquiry to the project's completion.
To acquire customers, energieheld relies on its high-reach online portal (www.energieheld.de). We have succeeded in providing a neat, logical, and transparent overview of all relevant information. Moreover, we are making it easy for all customers to get started, no matter whether they are already sure what they plan to modernize first (quotation form) or whether they are looking for information first (online energy check). As many as 95 % of visitors come to our website through search engines. This shows that there is huge demand within the market and that customers are searching for solutions to their problems.
We know all of our craftsman businesses personally and closely collaborate with these businesses over the long term. Our platform lists every detail about the available craftsmen and all services they provide, thus enabling customers to find precisely the craftsman they need. This is why we can ensure high quality and optimum energy-efficiency improvements at all times.
energieheld receives a commission of 10 % from partner businesses for its services. In other words, if a customer completes a project with our help, we receive 10 % of the net invoice amount from the craftsman business. The good thing about this is that our service is completely free and non-binding for property owners and will remain so in the future.
As we are closely collaborating with our partner businesses, we have a success rate of almost 100 % in terms of commission payments. We make sure that we receive the commission by
- Knowing our partner businesses personally
- Closely collaborating with both craftsmen and customers
- Handling the entire process digitally and having it updated regularly by craftsmen, customers, and our customer counselors
- Providing craftsmen with valuable new customers on a regular basis
- Interacting with customers after the completion of their project in the context of quality assurance
energieheld is an independent and comprehensive online platform that handles the entire process of building modernization for customers and craftsmen digitally. Customers get a good price for their modernization project, whereas craftsmen get attractive new customers. All parties involved can access our platform, which leads to high levels of efficiency and transparency and to the lowest prices possible.
Because all steps of the process are digitized, energieheld has detailed data at its disposal, both from property owners and craftsman businesses. Based on these data, we will further improve the process from the first inquiry to the project's completion, thus making it even more efficient in the future.
Our competitive advantages at a glance:
- Independent advice and high levels of transparency and efficiency for everyone involved
- The unique combination of online and offline business reflects customers' needs today: receiving information and submitting inquiries online while still getting personal and individual counseling.
- A wide range of different modernization activities provides great potential for upselling and a high customer lifetime value and guarantees independence
- Significantly higher added value than in the case of pure lead-generation models
Through the above things, we distinguish ourselves from all service providers who provide solely an online platform, thus acting as a middleman for craftsmen and customers.
energieheld Focuses on Customer Acquisition Online and Digital Processes, but Has Regional Counselors
Based in regional offices, our "energiehelden" (counselors) are always in contact with customers and craftsman businesses, thus ensuring smooth handling of all projects. This regional approach has already led to a high level of customer loyalty, so it is now relatively difficult for other companies to compete with us. In addition, this approach has increased our revenues.
Indeed, we are generating €600.00 in average revenue per project today rather than the €15.00 we would generate in the case of anonymous redirection of inquiries. Our regional approach is similar to that of other highly successful businesses, for instance to that of Interhyp.
Interhyp as a Role Model – Comparison with Another Market Segment
Interhyp (a subsidiary of ING Group) is the largest broker of real estate loans in Germany. With more than 1,100 employees in 66 offices in Germany, Interhyp generated over €100 million in revenues in 2014.
Founded in 1999, the company received €14 million in financing from renowned venture capitalists like Earlybird. In 2005, Interhyp went public, thus enabling investors to realize €44.6 million (i.e., 318 % of the capital invested).
Interhyp has proved that the combination of personal counseling, regional offices, powerful online acquisition of customers, and a platform focus is a successful strategy and an interesting investment opportunity.
Thus far, more than 3.8 million visitors have come to www.energieheld.de via search engines (e.g., Google). We personally counsel these customers if they are from the regions around Hanover or Bremen, where our offices are located. All other customers are currently redirected to our partners. The regions where we do not yet have any offices still offer huge potential, for we simply have to serve demand through our own offices in such regions.
Low Customer Acquisition Costs Guarantee Profitability
We are especially proud of our very efficient customer acquisition strategy: Of the 250,000 visitors coming to our website each month, more than 95 % are due to organic search requests (SEO) and direct website access. Consequently, we have virtually no customer acquisition costs.
Another advantage of our business model is that it pools all the different modernization options (e.g., the facade, the roof, the heat, etc.) on our platform. Indeed, 30 % of our customers send us inquiries about more than one project (e.g., modernization of both the facade and the heat). Personal counseling of customers enables us to offer every third customer another option, thus increasing revenues significantly.
Business Partners with Considerable Potential for the Future
energieheld is already closely collaborating with public utilities and financial service providers. These companies can provide their customers neither with easy online access to information on energy-efficiency improvements nor with helpful advice on this subject. This is how energieheld supports these companies:
Our business partners use our (fee-based) online tool "energy check" on their website. If our business partners' customers submit inquiries, we can counsel them in an independent fashion, thus receiving both licensing fees for our online tool and additional customer inquiries for free. We will expand this energieheld affiliate program in the future (see section on our next steps).
The target group of energieheld consists of property owners and craftsman businesses.
Property Owners
In this segment, we have roughly 1,000,000 customers (private and commercial property owners) per year; these people either want to improve their buildings' energy efficiency or have to do so because of legal obligations.
Craftsman Businesses
energieheld collaborates with qualified craftsman businesses. In Germany, there are approx. 200,000 such businesses focusing on the sectors relevant to energieheld. Approx. 90 % of these businesses have 20 or less permanent employees. For now, energieheld focuses on partnerships with these small and medium-sized craftsman businesses because these businesses require external support in dealing with digitization and customer acquisition online.
Huge Market with Rapid Growth over the Next Years
energieheld focuses on one of the last multi-billion growth markets in Germany; this market is both expected to grow rapidly over the next few years (source: Roland Berger) and has not been digitized yet (source: DIHK 2014), but it will face digitization within the next 5-10 years.
The German market for energy-efficiency improvements to buildings had a volume of approx. €40 billion as early as in 2010 (source: Roland Berger). Until 2020, this market volume in Germany is expected to grow to approx. €80 billion (i.e., by 6.5 % each year).
This rapid growth is boosted by the following trends:
- Measures taken by the German federal government in the context of energy transition and efficient use of heat (e.g., the CO2 building modernization program).
- Strong demand for "efficient buildings" from property owners
- High potential for savings and cost reductions with regard to energy consumption
The German federal government has also identified the huge potential for energy savings in buildings and has put this item on its agenda for sustainable energy transition. German Federal Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks is sure that energy transition cannot succeed without more efficient use of heat (source: German federal government).
As we reached profitability in Q4 2015 and increased revenues by more than 100 % compared to 2014, we have already proven that our business model is successful and profitable. We will now use this proof to work on the further growth of energieheld.
Roll-out of Our Successful Model
energieheld is already the leading platform in energy-efficient modernization of buildings. We have reached the proof-of-concept stage and now want to roll out our business model successfully. While doing so, we are focusing both on hiring and training new customer counselors and on acquiring new craftsman businesses and developing regional networks.
Other key aspects of further growth will be investments and the further development of our platform. Our platform has reached a stage of development that enables smooth processes and efficient training of new customer counselors. As a company whose business is 100 % digital, however, we know how important further improvements to our platform and additional helpful features will be. Therefore, we plan to hire additional IT staff (depending on the total amount we raise).
Expansion
We plan to integrate the first additional service as early as next year: In 2015, we received numerous inquiries from craftsman businesses that asked us to expand our platform in a way that enables such businesses to also manage their own projects (e.g., projects for customers who contact the business directly) on the platform. We want to offer our partner businesses such an SaaS (software as a service) solution as soon as possible for the following reasons:
- Additional monthly revenues that do not lead to any direct personal costs
- Increased interaction of craftsman businesses with our platform that increases general efficiency of the partnership
- Relatively little work necessary to develop the SaaS solution because our platform already includes most of the features necessary
In the last two years (2014 and 2015), we focused on gaining a clear understanding of the problems customers and craftsman businesses are facing and worked on solutions that enable efficient, transparent, and inexpensive energy-efficiency improvements to buildings.
We have successfully done so, so we now want to make our services available to customers outside Hanover and Bremen. Consequently, we will use part of the total investment to open regional offices and another part to improve our platform and develop additional services.
An important factor in our expansion will be the cost-efficient opening of new offices. While opening the energieheld office in Bremen, we gained valuable experience with regard to both the cost structure and the hiring and training of new staff, so we can now scale up our business efficiently.
Planned Measures
€100,000
- Opening of another office and expansion of IT team (1 full-time employee)
€500,000
- Opening of 4 additional offices and expansion of IT team (3 full-time employees)
- Development of additional fee-based services for craftsman businesses (SaaS solution, website development)
€1,000,000
- Opening of 7 additional offices and expansion of IT team (4 full-time employees) and sales team (2 full-time employees: a sales expert for acquiring craftsmen and another for acquiring affiliate partners)
- Expansion of our platform to Switzerland and Austria and further development of various new services for craftsman businesses
- Development of a partner module for public utilities and other external businesses (affiliate module)
- Investment in Google and Facebook advertising
Our previous investors include renowned people from the German digital economy. Martin Sinner (CEO of Saturn/Media Markt Online and founder of Idealo), Robert Gentz (board member of Zalando SE), and Philip Magoulas (Shore GmbH, ex-Zalando) have been our angel investors since 2013. Our previous investors have an in-depth knowledge of developing and scaling up digital businesses and an excellent network; we can use their expertise anytime.
- proKlima industry award for energieheld (2013)
- Winner of StartUp Impuls (2013)
- EU grant for further platform development (2014)
Energieheld GmbH
Schwarzer Bär 2
30449 Hanover, Germany
+49 – 511 – 270 203 59
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