BaselArea.swiss: Which problem does your company aim to solve?

Dominik Trost, holo|one: In general, our solutions utilise Augmented Reality to quickly bring know-how to where it is needed. This translates to offering intuitive means of maintenance support, such as holographic checklists or reporting tools, as well as AR enhanced remote assistance for companies to provide electronic information to sites around the globe, alongside common audiovisual calls. We also use holograms and animations as storytelling tools, and are developing an app entirely dedicated to design and presentation purposes. Most of all, we believe in keeping things simple: Our apps concentrate on a core set of powerful features and can all be managed through our browser-based management portal. People should be able to use our apps with as little effort as possible.

Roy Chikballapur, MachIQ: We help machine builders and manufacturers to gain equipment and asset performance. To that end, MachIQ provides a software for machine builders to simplify customer support and to monitor their machines, hence reducing unplanned outages for their customers. For manufacturers, MachIQ created a software that helps with predictive support and that combines useful functions for plant managers, controllers and the maintenance team alike. In short: We bring machines to life.

Philippe Kapfer, NextDay.Vision: We simplify communication between machine manufacturers and their customers and makes them safer. Normally, connections between two contacts are insecure and vulnerable because one or even both sides have to open the connection. This makes them vulnerable. Also, you usually need to interrupt the workflow to validate a partner. Our API is designed to help companies create integrated software. For example, a company can update its machine remotely and integrate the validation workflow directly on the customer side. The customer just logs on to his smartphone. He does so by signing in by hand. Afterwards, the manufacturer can update the machine from a distance. This leads to a traceable and rule-compliant process.

When and why did you found your company?

Philippe Kapfer: NextDay.Vision has been around since mid-2017. Before that, I wrote a book on the security of computer systems as part of my master’s thesis, showing how Windows can be hacked – corporate computer systems are easily attackable from the inside. For fear of such attacks, many companies do not use the cloud, for example, and try to keep their systems closed. In discussions with machine manufacturers and their customers, I realized that there is a lack of solutions for this. In the course of digitalization, the question naturally arises as to how we can make connections secure. My company provides answers to that question.

Roy Chikballapur: When I was with Schneider Electric in Paris, I helped to digitalize industrial offers for different companies. However, by talking to the machine builders and manufacturers I learned that they struggled with much more basic problems. One of these fundamental problems is customer support – it simply takes too much time to look up customer and serial numbers and to fix stuff. All the while, the machine is not producing anything and only generates losses for the respective company. I had the idea for my company in 2014, in 2016 I launched MachIQ.

Dominik Trost: It all began with the presentation of the Microsoft HoloLens: We saw the presentation live and knew that AR will be a big thing using head-mounted devices. Soon we got the first device and had lots of workshops with companies from different areas of business. We immediately realized the benefits of this technology and companies saw their AR use cases too. After assessing the market potential in Switzerland, we founded our company just at the end of that year, first concentrating on individual showcases. We soon realized that a standardized approach better satisfies corporate needs, but there was still a lot of work to do: This year, we almost exclusively worked on developing ‘sphere’, our new AR platform that will be released at the end of November.

How did you learn about the i4 Challenge and why did you apply?

Dominik Trost: Markus Ettin, industry 4.0 and automatization manager at Bell Food Group, suggested that we might be a good fit for the i4.0 Challenge and motivated us to look deeper into it. Though having an international outlook, we found it important to strengthen the regional awareness for our technology as well, so we took our chances…

Philippe Kapfer: For me, the Challenge was like another litmus test. I wanted to know how our solution was received. In the Industry 4.0 Challenge, I had the opportunity to have my project reconfirmed by industry experts. At the same time, the jury acknowledged that we were actually bringing something new to industry.

Roy Chikballapur: We were in touch with the BaselArea.swiss team thanks to their support in us relocating from the Canton of Vaud to Basel-Stadt. Sebastien Meunier, who was responsible for the initiative posted about the i4 Challenge on LinkedIn and this is how we found out about it. I believe that the discussions on BaselArea’s LinkedIn community are very relevant to what’s happening in the Industry 4.0 sector and this is what motivated us to apply.

What does the term “Industry 4.0” mean to you and why do you consider the topic significant?

Dominik Trost: To us, industry 4.0 is the logical evolution of industry with the tools and technologies that are available or being developed. Like the ‘4.0’ epithet already suggests, we think that it is the industrial revolution of our generation, adding immense amounts of productivity, safety, and interconnectivity. It is therefore obvious to us that industry 4.0 will remain the hot topic over the following decade, and now is the ideal time to get on board.

Philippe Kapfer: I believe that “Industry 4.0” is often used to sell a new product or service. Often the technology was there before and is merely used differently under the title Industry 4.0. For me, that label first and foremost means that the industry is evolving.

Roy Chikballapur: I think there is more to the phrase. I agree that a lot of focus today seems to be on the technologies that enable the digitalization of processes, the generation of useful data and the algorithms that many expect will replace human beings in several functions on the shop floor. At Machiq however, we focus on the business model transformations that these technologies will bring about when they are deployed at scale and we find few companies are preparing themselves for this.

Here is an example: Most machine builders consider the sale of spare parts and the delivery of maintenance and repair services as their “Services Business”. However, their customers are actually buying the experience of zero unplanned outages. With the improved ability to connect machines and to analyze performance data in real time, outages can now be prevented.
However, in doing so, machine builders will likely reduce their spare parts revenue. Are they ready for this? Not as long as they stick to current business models. But what if they offered a “Netflix of spare parts and services”-contract where the customer instead buys uptime.

What if a yoghurt producer could pay his equipment supplier based on the number of pots of yoghurt produced per month? This would force a shift from a capital expenditure-heavy model to an operational expenditure-based model, even in the machinery industry. The Industry 4.0 model will force suppliers to collaborate with customers and competitors to collaborate with peers. It is our task to accompany all parties to take this transformative journey in a step-by-step manner that does not disrupt the current business models unnecessarily.

Where do you see the development in the region?

Roy Chikballapur: We settled in Basel primarily because of its location at the heart of the machine building industry in Europe. In a 300 km radius we have the largest concentration of leading machine building companies in every important industry. What was also a key attraction was the Canton’s focus on Industry 4.0. While there are many startup hubs across Europe, they tend to focus on more “sexy” topics like Fintech, Blockchain and AI. Personally, I hope that the region instead takes up something that is more concrete and “real” as its focus area, capitalizing on its strength as a life sciences hub but also as a center of industry and logistics. We would like to see more collaboration among Industry 4.0 startups to integrate each of our products to develop more comprehensive offers for our customer base. We would also like to increase our collaboration with larger industrial companies in the region. I am certain that such a focus on the i4 theme will accelerate innovation and position Basel as a hub for Industry 4.0.

Dominik Trost: As a software company with a standardized product, our outlook is not as much regional, but rather national or defined by language barriers. Looking at the state of AR in Switzerland and Germany, there are indeed more pockets of development here than in other places, mostly in the form of individual startups and university programs. However, AR is still generally viewed as an experimental technology, despite applications being proven viable and beneficial. There is nowhere near as much drive and competition as in the US or East Asia – both a chance and a ticking clock for us.

What are your plans for your company?

Philippe Kapfer: We currently have customers mainly in the Jura and in the French-speaking parts of Switzerland. In addition to our products, I also offer training and audits on information security systems. In the future, I want to put even more capacity into development. We are targeting both the national and international markets with our security software and API. The cybersecurity market is growing by ten percent annually, but not enough people can respond to this development. NextDay.Vision provides the software that satisfies a need and makes it easier for companies to meet high security standards. We want to anchor cybersecurity in the mindset of the industry. This includes enabling connections between customers and manufacturers without sacrificing data security. We are confident that we will continue to grow with our product and vision.

Dominik Trost: At this point, almost anything is possible. We are actively building up our network of distributors and are also looking across the borders, already promoting our solutions in Germany and exploring our options in other countries. It is very likely for foreign competition to enter the European market, which makes it important for us to act quickly and decisively. We have, however, built a competent team and are very confident in the quality our products, so we are looking forward to what the future holds.

Roy Chikballapur: MachIQ has positioned itself as a neutral, brand agnostic player offering software products that connect machine builders and their industrial end-user customers for asset performance management. Machiq’s software creates the dynamics of a “data cooperative” for Industry 4.0. Common data benefits everyone on the system, but is managed securely so that it does not compromise the relationships that companies have built with their suppliers and customers or the competitive dynamics between business peers. Our vision is to become the “Business Operating System” of the Industry 4.0-enabled world. While many companies aren’t thinking about it, the moment we present our vision to them, they immediately get us and they get what we are trying to do. We are experiencing strong growth in our customer base. Consequentially, we are focusing on hiring the right talent and growing the team fast enough right now.

Text: Annett Altvater

About

Roy Chikballapur is an engineer in computer science. During his career, he worked in Bangalore, Bejing, Hongkong, Paris and Nice in companies like Schlumberger and Schneider Electric before locating his startup MachIQ in Basel.

Dominik Trost co-founded holo|one and is the Marketing Manager. He studied Business Administration and Management. In 2015 he founded Comptex Solution Engeneering, in 2016 holo|one.

Philippe Kapfer has an engineering degree and holds a Master degree in Information Security Management. He wrote the book “Internal Hacking and Countermeasures in a Windows Environment” before he founded NextDay.Vision in 2017.