This app helps you control all your home appliances through your phone

I admit to having a quirky personality. I love stocking up on fun gadgets and entertainment devices, but I hate keeping track of where I left each remote control. Further, my OCD nature means I’m prone to the occasional panic attack if any of them goes missing. Life would be so much simpler if I could stay true to my inner desire of existing as a lazy hermit without endless clutter piling up around me.

Fortunately, Tekoia believes there are many more like myself in the world. The Tel Aviv-based startup claims to have developed the first universal smart remote for digital media, home automation, and internet of things (IOT). Their SURE Android App is free to download and utilizes WiFi and infrared to manage TVs, airconditioners, and media devices straight from your smartphone. Basically, it’s an app that can communicate with a number of home appliances.

“In my living room I have five devices […] with five different remotes. One could be broken, one might be missing batteries, and one no one knows how to use. In the end, essentially, the idea is to replace all of them with a universal remote that runs on the smartphone,” Tekoia founder Viktor Ariel tells Tech in Asia.

Massive potential

Viktor’s confidence in his product is not without reason. Research firm IDC predicts the IOT market will reach a dizzying US$1.7 trillion by 2020. VC firms are also doubling down; in a recent talk Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son predicted that the average person would have 1,000 internet-connected devices by 2040. That’s a whole lot of pesky remote controls you might have to keep an eye on.

“The idea is that today basically everyone is talking about IOT. Millions of devices will be connected to the internet but they also need to be connected to you. We are solving that problem,” adds Viktor.

Encouragingly, the startup claims it supports over a million different appliances, some of which date back to over 10 years ago. The experience is best on smart TVs as users can stream pictures and videos directly from their smartphone onto the screen as well as use the keyboard on their phones for a better browsing experience.

But how different is this from universal remote controls? Viktor explains the latter are far more clunky and difficult to use. They don’t have an adaptable, intuitive user interface. “With a smartphone based universal remote you basically have a supercomputer in your hand. It is also essentially free,” he adds.

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Seasoned entrepreneur

Viktor is a polished entrepreneur in his own right. His previous venture, Transchip, which started operations in 1999, developed cameras for cellphones. It entered into a joint venture with Samsung in 2005, after which the Korean smartphone manufacturer acquired the company two years later. Since then, Viktor claims, all the cameras on Samsung devices have been designed exclusively by his company. Viktor himself stayed on with the firm till 2009, working as the head of Samsung Israel. After that, he quit to teach at Tel Aviv University for a few years before conceptualizing his latest product. “I think it’s going to be bigger than cameras or cellphones,” he says.

Work on Tekoia started approximately three years ago, with the startup bootstrapped for a year as it worked on product strategy and execution. So far the company has raised two rounds of investment, with a cumulative amount of US$3 million. The app was launched about a year ago, and it has seen 1.5 million downloads so far with 500,000 monthly active users. Its rating is a healthy 4.3 out of 5 and Viktor says they’re the highest ranked universal remote app on the Google Play store.

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