Meet TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award 2019 Winner Flyability: A Flying Round Thing
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From YouTube phenomenon to global market leader: how Flyability’s spherical drones have become a runaway hit.
The taxi driver at Lausanne railway station was certain: the journey, he said, must lead to the headquarters of Nespresso. Ten minutes later, the misunderstanding was resolved. Although the office building on Route du Lac in Paudex was built for the Nestlé subsidiary, since last February it has housed the EPFL spin-off Flyability.The ground floor is undergoing reconstruction. Behind locked doors on the first floor the final assembly and quality control of Flyability’s drones takes place. And one floor above that is sales and marketing. “People work here or on the plane,” explains CEO Patrick Thévoz.The reason for this is that Flyability’s main markets are the US and Canada: the two countries provide more than half the company’s turnover. The US alone has 59 nuclear power plants with almost 100 reactor units, and about half are inspected regularly by the drones from Paudex.What is astonishing at first glance is quite logical, since it all started with Fukushima. After the disaster on 11 March 2011, Adrien Briod, a young engineer at EPFL’s Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, wondered if it was really necessary to send people to the irradiated nuclear reactors to inspect the damage caused by the meltdown.Flyability’s current CTO came to the conclusion that there must be a better way. “What Adrien had in mind was a collision-proof drone that could move in extremely confusing terrain,” says Thévoz.MASSIVE WORDLWIDE RESPONSE
On 30 October 2013, Briod put a video on YouTube that showed a new type of (spherical) drone in action, flying through a roof structure and a forest. The images of the flying robot, floating like an indestructible soap bubble through the undergrowth, triggered a massive response and the two-minute clip had soon reached several hundred thousand clicks. Enquiries from all over the world reached Lausanne.Much of what landed in the researchers’ mailbox was pretty crazy; for example, someone had the idea of exploring caves on Mars with the new drone. But one email was very serious: the sender was the employee of a Japanese highway operator that was looking for ways to simplify inspection of motorway bridges.
They were in business. Briod and Thévoz built the first flying robots and shipped them to Japan – but not before founding Flyability in September 2014: “Otherwise,” says Thévoz, “we would not have been able to invoice for anything.”Now Flyability employs 80 people and to date 350 satisfied customers have ordered 600 drones at a unit price of about CHF 25,000. The business model functions just as it did on the first day. Flyability designs the drone, integrates the sensors – various cameras, acceleration sensors, gyro stabilisers and distance meters – writes the control software and assembles everything into a spherical grid of carbon fibre elements.
Thévoz and Briod have never had to pivot. They took five years to develop the second product generation launched in May of this year. Elios 2 – the name of the new platform – is a completely overhauled version of its predecessor. Apart from the quality of the recorded data, only the user guidance is fundamentally new.“Elios’ navigation was comparatively demanding,” admits Thévoz. The pilot training cost the plant operator time and money, and for many potential customers it was easier and cheaper to send people with ladders into buildings.
Thévoz and Briod have never had to pivot. They took five years to develop the second product generation launched in May of this year. Elios 2 – the name of the new platform – is a completely overhauled version of its predecessor. Apart from the quality of the recorded data, only the user guidance is fundamentally new.“Elios’ navigation was comparatively demanding,” admits Thévoz. The pilot training cost the plant operator time and money, and for many potential customers it was easier and cheaper to send people with ladders into buildings.
The new drone Elios 2 is very easy and intuitive to use. “Before we had a Blackberry - now we have an iPhone,” says the CEO. And he is convinced: “This will push open the door to the mass market for us.”The prerequisites are in place: the Vaud-based company has gained a foothold in the key target markets – nuclear and fossil energy production, chemicals and open-pit mining. And at the same time, market development is bearing fruit in Asia. “In the medium term,” says Thévoz, “China, the oft-cited factory of the world, could become our most important market.”Financially, further expansion has been secured: Thévoz and Briod have collected about CHF 15 million in risk capital so far. In addition to Swisscom and a French sustainability fund, investors include the investment arm of US chemical company Dow Chemical.
WINNER IN DUBAI
The view from the meeting room ranges over Lake Geneva to the French shore. On the windowsill stand the testaments to all the entrepreneurial and innovation awards won by Thévoz and Briod to date, including a sculpture made for the United Arab Emirates’ ‘Drones for Good Award’. In 2015, Flyability won in Dubai against 1,000 competitors and received prize money of USD 1 million.“What we have experienced in recent years has been crazy,” says the Flyability boss. At the beginning, he had to clean the toilets himself, later he took care of the sales and now he must manage the rapid growth.The biggest challenge is recruitment of experienced sales and distribution staff. The expert reservoir in Arc lémanique is big enough in itself, as there are countless international companies with first-class people, many of whom would be interested in joining a start-up. However, the management methods common in a corporate are transferable to a start-up only to a limited degree.The 33-year-old engineer is therefore challenged on two fronts: he has to make new employees aware of the necessary changes immediately, and he has to find career-changers who are able and willing to listen.In return, managers with a flair for flat hierarchies have an opportunity to become part of an extremely exciting and ambitious project. Nespresso managed to change consumer habits from Paudex, and the capsule coffee is now part of everyday life in millions of households and offices. Thévoz and Briod have something similar in mind: “In five years’ time,” says Thévoz, “the global standard in the area of industrial inspection should be called Flyability.”
Flyability SA: Drone-based inspection solutions
Flyability is a Swiss company building solutions for the inspection and exploration of indoor, inaccessible, and confined spaces. By allowing drones to be used safely in the most complex indoor spaces... Read more
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