Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, with geography that makes it vulnerable to typhoons, floods, volcanos, earthquakes and droughts. The Manila and Singapore-based startup announced it has raised $1 million in seed funding, led by Wavemaker Partners with participation from ADB Ventures, the Asian Development Bank’s venture arm, to expand in Asia and add features to its platform, including a self-serve version that is slated for release in January 2022. Founded in 2019, Komunidad has clients in the Philippines, India, Cambodia and Vietnam, and serves multiple sectors, including utilities, agriculture, mining, education, local governments and business outsourcing centers. Before launching the startup, Ayque worked as an IT developer at several weather agencies, including the state-owned New Zealand MetService. He began creating cyclone reports on his own as a consultant after Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, also known as Super Typhoon Yolanda, which killed at least 6,300 people in the Philippines.
Demand for his reports grew as companies, including energy providers, needed to respond to climate change. Komunidad began earning enough revenue to expand and for Ayque to hire employees, including meteorologists, data scientists, software developers and business development teams based in India and Southeast Asia. Its new investment will be used to build a scalable platform. Komunidad’s data sources include major players like The Weather Company, acquired by IBM in 2015, weather intelligence platform Tomorrow.io, and several smaller environmental and weather data providers.