An Indonesian firm is offering “clean air as a service”

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Hello reader,

Anyone who’s lived close to Indonesia – especially around 10 years ago – would be acquainted with the yearly haze and smoke that would waft over from the archipelago. In an era before Covid-19, when wearing a mask wasn’t common, many of us would either avoid going out on hazy days or find other ways to deal with it.

It was incredibly unhealthy of course – at times, the pollutant standards index would even enter the “hazardous” range. On those days, you could barely see the building across the road and everything looked like it was out of Silent Hill. As stressed out students, we’d joke that despite all that, the sky still looked “brighter than our futures.”

At one point, Singaporeans complained so much that it prompted Indonesia’s vice president at the time to retort that we should have instead been thankful for having “enjoyed nice air” for the other 11 months in the year.

If only we had the solution from today’s story at the time. Indonesia-based Nafas is touting “clear air as a service” to help businesses – let’s see how bright its future is.

Today we look at:

• An Indonesian firm taking on pollution
• An electric motorbike startup filling its tank with US$8 million in new funds
• Other newsy highlights such as Hodlnaut being put under investigation and Sequoia Capital apologizing for investing in FTX.

— Jonathan

P.S. We can all benefit from a community that looks out for each other. That’s why we’ve come out with an automated hiring tracker list. You can contribute to it by filling out this form with information on job openings at tech startups. New entries will be updated 10 minutes after submission of the form.

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Clear skies

Image credit: Timmy Loen

I find it amusing how almost anything can be packaged “as a service” nowadays. We already have the common “software as a service” and others like “platforms as a service.” Well, now we have “clean air as a service” from Indonesia-based Nafa.

• Two-pronged: Besides setting up clean air zones for businesses on a subscription basis, the company also offers two devices: The first is an air-quality monitor called AirTest, while the other is a purifier called Pure40. It has sold over 2,000 of these devices, and since 2021, recorded around US$500,000 in sales.
• How app-licable: Nafa also has an app that informs users about both indoor and outdoor air pollution. This information can be used for many things, including knowing if it’s best to exercise indoors or outdoors at any point in time. The data comes from a network of around 140 outdoor sensors that the firm has helped set up in Jakarta and its satellite cities.
• Pre-emptive health checks: Nafa’s solutions do more than just provide pollution information to users. Its sensors can also measure gases like ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide and dioxide. Combined with the firm’s proprietary algorithm, this data can be used to help predict health outcomes.

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