One year after they were selected for the first Gener8tor programme in Luxembourg, Asets has expanded to Canada. Founder Ashwini Oke explains.
As a designer of steel structures for the energy market for over 22 years, Ashwini Oke faced an ongoing challenge working with fragmented mechanical design software.
From process software to structural software and piping software, there was only one single model that joined the dots between these platforms. The market needed a challenger and Oke was the one to build it.
In 2018, she began developing an integrated design suite or, as she calls it “A Rubik’s Cube, which is nicely interconnected, so that one engineer can talk to another virtually in the cloud. And there’s only one single model out there.”
In 2021, she launched the platform and a year later, it was selected by the newly created Luxembourg Gener8tor accelerator programme. As part of the programme, the startup received €100,000 in exchange for a 7% stake in the business. Oke and her team also underwent a 12-week course, including mentoring and rapid-fire meetings with investors. The programme was like rocket fuel for the startup which, in January 2023 announced it raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding through specialised tech VC Right Side Capital San Francisco.
Then, in February, it launched its Asets-CA office in New Brunswick, Canada. The office, which will serve as a base for a future team of five FTEs, was a strategic move to expand into a region with a high density of engineering companies.
“It’s a totally focused and exciting year. We’ve got lots on the radar.”
Asets founder Ashwini Oke
“We are reinventing the way we deliver engineering projects and that requires a completely innovative, open, entrepreneurial mindset of members using our products,” Oke said, adding: “This is a strategic move to have our customer and technical support housed in New Brunswick.”
Asets-CA received an undisclosed amount in equity funding from the New Brunswick Innovation Fund. It is also working closely with the University of New Brunswick.
“Universities, which are more focused on bringing newer solutions to the market, can play a very enhancing role with innovation-led startups and that’s also something that we are focused on,” Oke said.
Asets, which is structured into three departments covering domain, technical and simulations, recently recruited interns to its team of seven. It is also hiring for other roles to work on sales and development. During 2023, the firm is focused on attracting engineering customers and partners with awareness of the energy and sustainability market in Luxembourg and Canada.
“It’s a totally focused and exciting year. We’ve got lots on the radar,” said Oke.
This article was first published in the Silicon Luxembourg magazine. Get your copy.
