AirCare

9 out of 10 people in the world are exposed to air pollution over safe limits, and 7 million die annually from this. From factories, to cars and household heating appliances, we're breathing polluted air without realising it. 

AirCare is a mobile app that uses open air quality data from government, volunteer and satellite measuring stations, to provide hourly real-time pollution data to our users, in a simple and easy to understand format. You can always know what the air quality is around you, get notifications about peaks, and get advice on what actions you can take to contribute to a solution.

More accessible data = more awareness = more willingness to take action. We've already proven this in our home market, where massive protests after the launch of AirCare forced the adoption of new green policies, consistently lowering annual pollution levels, year on year.

Air pollution, as part of the climate crisis, is part of our everyday lives. 9/10 people are exposed to it, 7 million die yearly from it (source: WHO). But why are we not taking this issue more seriously?

• Issue 1 - Low public awareness: If you don't know a problem exists, how will you being to find a solution for it?
• Issue 2 - Low data accessibility - If you do know a problem exists but can't track it, how will you measure the success of your solutions for it?

These are the 2 main areas that AirCare focuses on, when it comes to the world's air pollution problem. For decades we've been burning fossil fuels, polluting our planet like there is no tomorrow, yet citizens and governments alike are unaware about the quality of air that they breathe, the effects it has on their health, and what they can do about it.

AirCare aggregates hourly open air quality data from sensors all over the world, belonging to governments, volunteers, universities and even satellite data from the European Space Agency. It then transforms this raw data into simple, understandable colors and numbers, that any non-academia person will be able to understand.

This data is shared via our free simple mobile / web / watch app to over 500.000 people in over 45 countries (and rising), helping them know if they should take a walk or close the house windows, exercise in the open or at home, breathe deep or lobby for green policies.

The app has loads of functionality, from historical chart data, to notifications of pollution peaks in your area, to lists of local NGOs that you can connect with and their events. This helps move the app from just informative, to educational and a tool to empower citizen action.

Our solution targets people in countries facing air pollution year round (like India or Eastern European countries), or seasonal pollution (like the USA wildfire season). Anyone with a smartphone and access to the internet can be informed about the air quality via AirCare.

This proved vital in our first launch markets (N.Macedonia and Serbia), where once people saw this information so readily available, they spread it via social media like wildfire, raising public awareness of the issue, waking up the media, sparking nationwide protests and finally forcing authorities to adopt a national Clean Air plan.

This brings the benefit to everyone, not just in the countries that face this issue, but to others as well, since pollution knows no borders and we all breathe the same air.

The challenge question is: How can communities sustainably protect, manage, and restore their local ecosystems?

And AirCare is a direct pollution to that, placing important data into the hands of the community, letting them know the levels of pollution in the air, and helping them take action to restore the local ecosystem by changing their habits and putting pressure on authorities to adopt better, greener and cleaner polices for the future. AirCare provide scalable and verifiable monitoring and data collection to track air pollution conditions.

We've run this project since 2014, and made it into a business in 2018. With over 500.000 people using the app world wide in 45 countries. We're already making around $5k MRR from our current B2C business model, and are testing other models to venture into the B2B sector.

AirCare is based on 3 pillars: Inform, Educate and Empower. While other AQI apps do cover the Inform basis to a certain extent, they stop there. So, what should a person do if they know the air quality is bad? How can they act or contribute?

AirCare spends time creating an education section to help both young and old understand what air quality does to human health and environment through simple material and videos.

AirCare also has a community section to empower users to join their local eco organizations, or participate in local workshops, events and protests. This helps people have the "whats next" step right in the app, empowering our community to act.

We want results, not just information.

• We currently have over 500.000 downloads of AirCare, with 100.000 active users
• In a year, we plan to hit 1 million, with 500.000 active users
• In 5 years, we plan to at least hit 10 million downloads of the app, with 3 million active users

With 3 simple ways:

• When we expand to new markets, we cooperate with local NGOs that work with climate issues, and use their network to promote AirCare to their citizens, while giving AirCare to the NGOs as a tool to showcase their work. Those NGOs can track and report back the number of policy changes implemented by local governments and the corporate sector as well.
• The number of active users in each country is a proxy metric for the public awareness on the topic being raised.
• We already have air quality data for these countries, and simply checking progress year over year if there is a drop in pollution.

Full time: 1, Contract: 2, Intern: 1

Me, Dragan (IT guru) and Elena (design guru) have been working together for a number of years, not just on AirCare, but on other projects as well. We have a great team dynamic, taking parts of the workload and splitting it up into Agile sprints to achieve the best results.

Since we all come from Skopje, one of the most polluted cities in Europe, we have a strong connection to the problem, and find it close to our heart.

I have been an eco activist for 7 years, and have launched previous apps. I am well known in the community as well as NGOs, and am the public speaker and face of AirCare. Dragan has been a course leader and senior mentor at the Seavus Education Development Center, teaching over 100 students about various programming languages. Elena is a lead designer at TeamViewer in Germany, and has extensive UX/UI experience.

I used to work as a people manager at Booking.com in Amsterdam for 4 years, managing over 10 different teams in my time there, with a total of over 70 people. My training and experience helps me lead the team in an inclusive way (making sure everyone has a say and can help decide the future of the project), tracking progress and possible delays, resolving possible conflict (we have never had any), and overall team building and happiness.

One of the main values I live is the human approach to people management. Work is not our life, we have lives outside it. That means, anything we do outside will affect our job, and vice versa, so a human approach to managing people is needed and required. 

We're applying with 3 goals in mind:

• The mentorship opportunities that we'll get in furthering our business model development, as well polishing out impact framework 
• The networking, which so far has proven to be extremely valuable in making the right connections, opening the right doors and helping AirCare enter new exciting markets
• The initial cash injection that will boost us with much needed support, and give us a running start into additional fundraising further down the road

• Our business model is predominantly B2C, and we are now exploring which B2B use cases and needs we can meet with all the historical data that we've been saving. Mentorship and guidance in this area is crucial for us, helping our small team focus on the right leads.
• Once we have a set business model and initial B2B clients, we'll need the help to know exactly how to best pitch to potential investors. I am a great story teller from a ecology and save-the-earth perspective, but would need guidance on how to do the same from a more business/money oriented perspective.
• While we have an initial impact framework in place, we can always add or modify it to better be able to track our impact in every country that AirCare expands to.
• From the tech perspective, finding the best ways to analyse and deliver all the big-data that we have stored over the years.

• Any Solve members that work in the field of sustainability, ecology and environment, which can give us crucial feedback on our goals, both short and long term, guidance on where to go next, and build our network which is sure to open more opportunities for AirCare.
• MIT could help us make sure that the technology behind AirCare's data side is strong, future-proof and consult us on what new database and big-data processing tech we could use to strengthen it.
• Both Patrick J. McGovern Foundation and Future Planet Capital are organizations which fit the mission and values of AirCare for building a more sustainable future, and could be a valuable partner, both from a mentoring and investment perspective
• The Vodafone Americas Foundation could be a great fit for using mobile technology for good (as is AirCare)

The only way that we can know if any decarbonisation has worked, is by being able to track data and carbon in real time, and store this information historically. With that kind of data, faster action can be taken and less time can be spent waiting for analysis to come through.

AirCare can add additional carbon sensor data to the app, and help with global tracking on a bigger scale. Not only this, but exposing carbon data to our users will help drive an even bigger movement for decarbonisation with the exact user audience that is concerned about the environment and willing to act!

AirCare has vast amount of historical data that we are now starting to understand how to utilise. We want to invest in building ML models to help predict air pollution based on a multitude of factors, including historical data, weather and satellite current situations.

This will help everyone plan their daily activities, and protect the most vulnerable groups from exposure.

AirCare is a technology product that allows for tracking of air pollution data. By implementing blockchain technology, it will make it impossible to manipulate the data, making sure that it is the way that local ground sensors have reported it.

Preventing data manipulation is key to getting people's trust in a platform, making sure it's transparent, and keeping bad players (such as rogue governments) from trying to manipulate with the data.