Company Profile: Naava Brings Fresh Air to Everyone
Finnish Naava is a true cleantech company. It supplies smart green wall solutions that improve the indoor air quality and bring fresh, neutral fragrance to office spaces. The green walls are also a great way to make offices more colorful and pleasant places to work. The company believes that fresh air is a basic human right and it should be available for everyone.
Naava was founded in Jyväskylä, Finland in 2011 by two students of the University of Jyväskylä. Cofounders Aki Soudunsaari and Niko Järvinen met during an entrepreneur program and decided to tackle poor indoor air quality together. They used NASA research to create their own Naava OS Technology that combines nature’s own intelligence with technology. The green wall has an artificial intelligence element that nurtures both the plants and the microbes in their root system. Thanks to this technology, the green wall purifies air up to 100 times better than regular house plants.
Naava offers several different types and sizes of green walls. Some of them are freestanding furniture so they can be used as a colorful room divider. The company can also build customized pieces to ensure that they are a perfect fit to the space. In addition, the plants can be arranged according to the customer’s wishes. All the plants Naava uses are efficient and hypoallergenic.
The Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation Tekes and Naava partnered in 2014 to launch a new research and development project. The main goal of the project was to expedite the company’s international growth. Naava has a broad client base in Finland that includes the shipping company Silja Line, ice hockey team HIFK, Radisson hotels, as well as many schools and daycare centers.
In 2015, the company began exporting its products to Sweden and Russia. Naava’s goal is to have its smart green walls in all of the world’s major cities, particularly in the United States and Asia. By 2025, Naava aims to provide a billion people the chance to breathe clean air.
In 2016, Naava was among the ten companies that represented Finland in the international cleantech competition the Later Stage Awards. Naava was competing in the category of BioEnergy and BioMaterials. Naava didn’t bring a medal home, but CEO Aki Soudunsaari says that it was a great honor to be nominated. “This nomination is a great recognition of our journey from a developing prototype to our work today. The nomination is hugely encouraging. It’s great to share this honor with nine other innovative companies. Looking at this group, the future of Finland’s cleantech expertise looks bright and promising.”
More information about Naava: https://www.naava.io/en/