2015 turned out to be a momentous year for us! While it was a lot of work, we came away with many milestones, marking our progress in many areas. Here is a quick recap of what we’ve been up to in 2015:
Fully Redesigned Android/iOS App
Our loyal beta users will remember our “Ambi green” app from last Christmas. We spent 8 months in beta, listening to our users to improve our feature set and finetune the user experience.With the the addition of our new UI/UX designer, Axel, and our new Android and iOS developers, Tom and Timmy, this year we completely rebuilt both the Android and iOS app, vastly improving the on-boarding process and overall interface. Unlike the beta app, the current app is gesture-oriented, far more responsive and offers a rich user experience through our improved smart modes and additional features such as historical graphs and customization details.
In less than one year we grew by 8 people, from a team of 11 to 19. Having additional support allowed us to scale up our production and manufacturing, streamline internal operations and ramp up our marketing and community management efforts. Without our newest team members, we would not have been able to increase our remote support by four times, manufacture over 10,000 units or ship to more than 360 cities.
Accolades and Awards
Having a larger team meant we were also able to mobilize ourselves to participate in various startup events and competitions around the world. In July, we attended our first Web Summit event, RISE, held in Hong Kong, and participated in the PITCH competition where Julian took home the grand prize. We were also honored to receive the Gold Award for Best Smart HK app from the Hong Kong ICT.As the RISE PITCH winner, in November we invited to attend this year’s Web Summit in Dublin, and more recently were invited to Jakarta as a finalist in the Samsung Singtel Regional Mobile App Challenge.
Ambi Climate in 39 Countries and Counting!
In the last 5 months, we took the feedback from our beta to test and manufacture our production units, obtaining FCC and CE certification and shipping out over 1000 units to date. With interest from distributors all over the world, especially during our participation at recent trade shows like the Electronics Fair and Global Sources, we’re happy to announce that Ambi Climate will be available at select retail stores in Singapore this holiday season. If you’re at ION Orchard in Singapore, stop by the Challenger Roadshow event before 3 Jan to check out Ambi Climate.
Media Reviews and Positive Feedback
Ahead of our retail debut in Singapore, we received positive media reviews from bloggers and journalists in both Singapore and Malaysia. Most notably we were pleased to find that CNET reviewer, Aloysius Tan, gave Ambi Climate 8.5/10 stars after testing a unit for 3 weeks. Check out his review to read more about his Ambi Climate experience:
- “To my surprise, the Ambi Climate does as it claims – the amount of power used when Ambi Climate was active [for seven hours] easily matched that of my regular use, which is turning it off after three hours.”
- “After spending about three weeks testing this, I’m pretty much sold on the idea. Given that most air conditioners in Asia are traditional, non-connected appliances, this device is an excellent add-on.”
- “The app is simple and easy to use.”
Singapore blogger Jeremy Li of JeremySG also had a favorable experience setting up Ambi Climate, keeping his room comfortable and learning how much AC energy he is consuming.
- “After using it for more than half a month now, I find it pretty useful especially when I am in the room working on my laptop or while sleeping. I like putting it in the comfort mode, so I can either leave it to the gadget to decide how cool my room should be.”
- “The Ambi Climate also respond when I tap on my original air conditioner remote, taking note what I have told the air conditioner to do.”
- “It does helps me to keep in check how much unnecessary cooling and my usual temperature setting to keep me comfortably cooled.”
We are also always delighted to hear how Ambi Climate is working for our users. Alexander found Ambi Climate keeps him and his family comfortable day and night:
2016: Looking Ahead
We hope to release some exciting new feature set updates soon, so please stay tuned. We’ll be heading to CES in January, so if you’re around, please stop by and say ‘hi’! You can find us at Booth 57011 in the Hong Kong Pavilion in Westgate East at the Westgate Resort and Casino.Wishing you a very merry holiday season!The Team at Ambi Labs
