Innovator of the Week: Pratik Ghoshal’s Startup Aims to Provide Access to Affordable, Reliable Electricity

Source: Abby Parker | · AVENUE CALGARY · | June 17, 2024

Ghoshal’s cleantech startup, ConnectX, was recently awarded more than $200,000 of investment to further its mission to modernize aging electrical grids.

Pratik Ghoshal considers himself a serial entrepreneur. Someone who shifts his focus from one venture to another in response to the world around him. Ghoshal is the founder and CEO of the startup ConnectX, a platform that uses existing infrastructure to collect data and perform advanced, AI-powered analytics to provide predictions for energy demand and supply. This is done in an effort to help distribute energy efficiently, while providing sustainable cost savings.

In other words, Ghoshal and ConnectX are urgently focused on modernizing Canada’s aging electrical grid to help keep electricity costs sustainably low using technology, as opposed to replacing hardware (like wires) or building new infrastructure (like power plants).

In April, ConnectX was named the winner of the StartupTNT 2024 Cleantech Investment Summit and awarded more than $200,000 of equity investment from Startup TNT angel investors and its venture capital fund, TNT Capital. Those funds will help Ghoshal expand his team in early 2025.

“It’s very meaningful, and also at a point in time when Alberta, and especially Calgary, is kind of setting out to be the global tech hub,” says Ghoshal. “And it’s happening in the clean tech space so it was extremely meaningful for us.”