STAND Up! partners in Tunisia have launched 19 challenges this year, through The Switchers Open Eco-Innovation platform. Experts from CITET have pre-selected 12 proposed solutions among 25 received, which were then presented at the pitching and selection event held on April 13^th.

MFCPôle/Neotex -the Competitiveness Cluster of Monastir- published an open innovation challenge focused on the “Control, mastering and optimization of the consumption of natural resources as electricity, water, gas or fuel”. The optimal solution was found with the proposal “My Smart Box”, from the Tunisian start-up Digi Smart Solutions.

Ms. Afef Bohli is the CEO and founder of Digi Smart Solutions a company that is ranked second in the Tunisian national invention competition. The company is indeed pioneering innovation in the field of water quality management and IoT (Internet of Things). Afef Bohli recently won the “Next Women Tunisia” prize on innovation sponsored by Expertise France.

The proposed solution for this challenge is a package of hardware and software service to monitor the use and quality of water and/or other natural resources in real time and be alerted about anomalies. At the stage of textile production and treatment, a Smartbox with IoT technology measures dozens of water parameters in real time. The data is then sent to a cloud dataset which analyses it and proposes choices to optimize the use of water or energy in the process, through an accessible user interface.

The proposed solution will improve both efficiency and sustainability. It focuses on these two pillars:

1. Energy efficiency: SMART energy monitoring systems help companies reduce energy consumption, lower energy costs and reduce their carbon footprint.
2. Water conservation: SMART water monitoring systems help organizations identify and fix leaks, reduce waste water and thus conserve this precious resource.

Within the STAND Up! eco-innovation voucher scheme, the entrepreneur will be awarded with a voucher set worth 20,000€, to implement studies, to conduct market analysis, kick-off a pilot project and strengthen the start-up’s team.