Teppo Hemiä, CEO of Wirepas, on Building Investor Confidence in India’s Smart Metering Market Through Guaranteed Connectivity

In this interaction, Teppo Hemiä, CEO of Wirepas, delves into how the company’s Wirepas Certified platform is reshaping India’s smart metering landscape by linking technology performance directly to financial accountability. With its “pay-only-if-it-works” model, Wirepas is giving utilities and investors a risk-free framework to scale digital infrastructure, delivering predictable ROI, operational efficiency, and reliable connectivity across India’s most challenging environments.

1. You’ve launched “Wirepas Certified” in India, where clients pay only if their smart meters connect and perform. In simple terms, how is this different from the way smart-metering projects worked earlier?

With Wirepas Certified, we put ourselves in the same position as AMI SPs. Payment from the utility to AMI SP is tied to verified connectivity and functionality. This extends accountability to us while giving utilities certainty. Instead of “install and hope,” they now have a performance-guaranteed model, where the skin is in the game to solve any issue preventing meter acceptance. At large, it leads to simplifying deployment, reducing risk, and improving budget predictability.

2. For a utility provider in India, what does this guarantee mean for their bottom line — in terms of cost savings or risk reduction?

The guarantee gives comfort to utilities that the players in the value chain are truly accountable for performance. Utilities save on troubleshooting, maintenance and network redesign costs. It allows for faster scale-up, more predictable budgets and reliable operations. In short, they achieve lower operational costs, reduced financial risk and faster ROI, all while ensuring consistent, reliable connectivity across diverse geographies.

3. If a meter fails to connect or meet the criteria, you’re saying the service is free. How do you make sure that this doesn’t become a big financial risk for Wirepas?

On one hand, we rely on proven technology, with over 10 million meters already connected in India and meeting the criteria. Our self-healing RF mesh network and redundant deployment strategies minimise exposure. By verifying performance at each stage and leveraging a decade of IoT deployment experience, Wirepas ensures that financial risk remains manageable while scaling rapidly. On the other hand, the whole value chain fails if a meter fails to connect so it puts collective accountability to deliver performing technologies. Today, many technology providers do not have any meaningful incentive to guarantee performance. We took this role proactively to help the Indian smart metering program to succeed.

4. India is targeting hundreds of millions of smart meters. From a business view, what kind of revenue opportunity does that represent for Wirepas, and how soon might we see that scale up?

India’s 300+ million-meter AMI program is one of the world’s largest. Even capturing a modest share represents millions of meters and recurring multi-year revenue streams for everyone involved. Growth will accelerate as integrations with local AMI players expand, with substantial scaling expected over the next 2–5 years as Wirepas becomes a trusted, performance-guaranteed platform.

5. Many of our readers worry about cost, reliability and complexity. How does Wirepas-Certified make deployment easier and cheaper for Indian utilities compared to older models?

Wirepas Certified eliminates gateways, simplifies integration with Head End Systems and enables meters to self-configure. Remote updates and monitoring reduce on-site maintenance and troubleshooting. Utilities can deploy meters faster, with predictable costs, lower operational overhead and greater reliability, avoiding the complexity of traditional multi-vendor, cellular or gateway-heavy systems. Wirepas Certified solution is the same regardless of meter manufacturer or Head End System provider, which enables us to focus our investments on one platform, instead of project-specific investments. All in the value chain benefit from this.

6. For the average citizen, why should they care about connectivity solutions like yours for smart meters and IoT systems? Does this affect their power bill, reliability, or service quality?

Reliable and low-latency smart-meter connectivity ensures a unified and smooth user experience. That’s the underlying target of the RDSS program. Citizens benefit from fewer service interruptions, faster issue resolution and more consistent electricity supply when nearly 100% of meters are covered. Over time, utilities can optimise energy distribution, reduce losses and improve efficiency, all of which can contribute to lower costs and better service quality for consumers.

7. Many finance and investment folks will ask: how will you ensure steady cash flow and profit if you’re offering a “pay-only-if-it-works” model? Are there new financing or partnership strategies you’ve adopted?

Our approach is capital-disciplined. We structure rollouts around verified milestones, so cash flow aligns with performance outcomes. The new model enables a much faster time to market due to a common verified platform with pre-integration by Wirepas. This lets us scale rapidly while staying financially resilient.

Wirepas is a global connectivity solution provider. We believe that we invest more than any other company to the decentralised mesh core. All individual markets are benefiting from this shared investment, which guarantees a future-proof roadmap too.

8. India has both high-rise cities and remote rural areas. From a business viewpoint, how have you adapted to this diversity so that you can deliver reliably everywhere?

Our self-healing RF mesh adapts automatically to dense urban environments, high-rise basements and remote rural areas. The network is decentralised, eliminating single points of failure and mixes RF-only and dual-communication meters for complete coverage. This ensures consistent performance, minimal installation complexity and reliable connectivity across India’s diverse terrain.

9. Who are the main competitors in India or Asia doing similar IoT connectivity or smart-metering solutions, and what gives Wirepas the edge in winning business?

Competitors exist, but Wirepas’ edge comes from performance guarantees, NR+ standard and proven scalability. Unlike traditional cellular or vendor-locked solutions, our platform is open, self-healing and standards-based – without network sunsets. This gives utilities predictable deployment outcomes and cost control, making Wirepas the trusted choice for large-scale AMI projects.

10. Finally, what’s next for Wirepas in India beyond this launch? Will you focus on new services, expanding into other sectors, or a full rollout across states? And what should investors or industry watchers keep an eye on?

The immediate focus is on full-scale adoption of Wirepas Certified across India. Investors should watch our market share growth, partner integrations and adoption of performance-guaranteed connectivity as these will define India’s next phase of energy and IoT transformation.