£1m invested in smart home system invented by 21-year-old
21 year old British tech entrepreneur Yasser Khattak has exceeded £1,000,000 invested, just hours after launching a Seedrs crowdfunding campaign this morning as he prepares bring smart home system, Den, to market.
Yasser Khattak went from ‘a teenager with a dream’ to a 21st Century Thomas Edison when he reinvented the lightswitch with his startup Den. The intelligent light switches and plug sockets are easily swapped with existing fittings, and will save energy, monitor real time consumption in the home and send safety and inactivity notifications via the app.
The entrepreneur spent his youth pouring over books about iconic entrepreneurs Alan Sugar, Steve Jobs and James Dyson, in love with the idea that ‘anything is possible’. He came up with the idea for Den aged 15, having heard James Dyson talk about ‘identifying problems we face in our daily lives and solving them with product invention’.
Den today launches a £1 million crowdfund on Seedrs having hit its previous funding round target in just 45 minutes. Yasser now 21, has also successfully lured ex Amstrad boss – the man that made Alan Sugar hundreds of millions in revenue – Bob Watkins into the Den, as the legendary London businessman is announced as Managing Director. Watkins was the most referenced person in Alan Sugar’s autobiography; the first ‘entrepreneurial’ book the ambitious founder read making it all the more fitting that Bob has now joined Den.
Bob Watkins, former Amstrad CEO now MD at Den, says: “I am delighted to join Den and build the business into a global Smart Home brand. By creating user-friendly solutions that bring together the largely separated standard non-wireless switching market and the home automation market, Den is on a mission to power millions of homes around the world. The brand potential in a mass-international is limitless and we are delighted to bring a host of new investors into the fold. The plan is to to drive Den towards a £100 million valuation by the end of 2018 in preparation for a successful acquisition by 2020.”
Den will make an appearance in households around the globe from September when the Smart Home technology provider that promises to save the UK economy £2 billion in wasted energy costs hits the shelves. The startup hopes to hit £2 million worth of pre-orders by September when the greatly anticipated products will be shipped to customers, retailing between £20 and £60.
Yasser will see his innovative appliances stocked in retail giants including Argos, Amazon, Sainsbury’s and Maplin and the next generation light switches and sockets are currently integrating with Amazon Alexa and Nest and a number of major homebuilders homes ready to power households around the UK.
Den’s key mission is to offer an eco-friendly home automation system with a recognisable and user friendly design, however the product has groundbreaking features focused on enhancing safety and energy efficiency in the home. The appliances will send users a notification via the Den app if a loved one has not been active in their home for a certain time frame, for example if they haven’t turned on a light or switched on the kettle. Having Den in your home will also decrease the necessity of moving around for elderly and less mobile.
Its smart technology will also tell you if you forget to turn off your iron or hair straighteners, and if you fail to respond to the warning, Den will take the initiative and turn the appliance off for you. If you’re on holiday, you’ll be told if there is unexplained activity in your home and Den’s light switches will automatically click themselves on and off to look like you’re home.
That’s not all; Den will also save you money. The UK could save more than £1 billion* a year by turning off appliances left on standby, such as mobile phone chargers and televisions, and the average home wastes up to 16% of electricity by leaving appliances on standby. Den can turn everything off from the touch of one button before going to bed or via the app after leaving the house, as well as monitoring energy usage in real time for appliances.
Yasser Khattak, CEO and founder, said: “Most of us forget to turn the lights off when we leave a room, or to unplug our phone chargers when they are not in use. Unnecessary consumption amounts to over 16% of the UK’s annual energy usage, a figure that is large enough to power almost 2.5 million homes. At Den we believe our products could make a significant impact on unnecessary consumption, helping save our environment and reducing the cost of living and however bold it sounds, we aim to wipe out the existing standard of switches around the world over the next few years.”
