Don’t tell Ketan Patel that something can’t be done. He’s likely to take it as a challenge, invent new technology and start a company so cutting edge it wins the Arizona Innovation Challenge.
That’s essentially how Naya Energy came to be. A colleague developed a smart meter to track how a company uses electricity. Patel, who has a background in analytics, suggested it would be great to develop an “easy button” so customers wouldn’t have to learn the ins and outs of electricity. His colleague said that wasn’t possible.
So Patel connected an Excel spreadsheet to the smart meter’s interface to show how it could work. Six months later, with the idea refined, the smart meter company became Naya Energy’s first customer.
