Conversation with Chris Jones of Aico

Becky Targett and Matt Haskell caught up with Chris Jones, CEO (HomeLINK) at Aico, to discuss their recent win at the SPARKies awards for the 'Totally Killing It' award.

Matt Haskell: Hi Chris, before we discuss the award it would be great to hear about the business, what you do, and where you have come from.

Chris Jones: HomeLINK started 5 years ago, with the founders having a background in social housing. We found that there is a lot of great smart home tech developed for the consumer market, but that there are some big issues not being dealt with by landlords in social housing, and that there was no enterprise level smart home solution available to the market.

It has been a process of developing the technology initially intended for consumer use in order to work on a large scale. Part of that was speaking to manufacturers, and Aico has 95% of the market share in this particular space, so we began to work with them closely in order to develop our tech to work alongside their products.

This relationship developed and Aico acquired us a couple of years ago, to form Aico HomeLINK.

MH: How have things changed since you have been acquired by Aico?

CJ: We are very much the software and data science part of the business and they allow us to continue to do what we are good at, while they concentrate on what they are best at. But their resources have meant that we have been able to grow at a faster rate with improved outcomes compared to if we did not have them onboard – for example staff – we have been able to employ more software developers and data analysts.

Becky Targett: What sort of developments have you seen?

CJ: Initially we were giving a dashboard where landlords could monitor smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, but with the development of other products we have been able to look at things such as the health and sustainability of homes by using temperature gradients and external weather monitors. This data can be used for example in cost benefit analyses when landlords are considering improvements to properties, and these interventions can be tracked on a dashboard.

Our tech can also be a preventative tool, for example, our algorithms can see where there is a potential for a mould issue in a particular room of a property that can link through to underlying causes such as ventilation or heat, informing the landlord so they can make a decision about how to improve such a situation.

There is an increasing amount of data around the importance of air quality, and the links of poor air quality to conditions such as dementia and asthma, and our tech can help make decisions to improve those properties with such air quality issues.

BT: A big congratulations on being nominated and winning the ‘Totally Killing It’ award

CJ: Thank you – we were delighted to win the award and break the curse! It was a fun evening and we are very proud of what we have achieved and are looking forward to what the future holds.

HomeLINK was featured on BBC Morning Live Watch with Kimberly Walsh and Gethin Jones in November 2021. Click here to watch the clip explaining the device can detect damp, mould and even poor ventilation to keep residents safe.