Australian technology company X2M Connect Limited has signed a Term Sheet with Dicode Technologies LLC to license the ‘Vision by X2M’ platform for the Middle East, starting with operations in the United Arab Emirates.
The ‘Vision by X2M’ technology can monitor and control gas and other utility metres, eliminating expensive manual reading as well as delivering large amounts of data for artificial intelligence and analytic applications.
X2M and Dicode partnered in January 2024 to explore opportunities for X2M’s platform in the Middle East, identifying gas utilities as a prime sector to target, selecting the UAE as the ideal entry point. The UAE has mandated smart gas metering for new piped gas installations.
The Term Sheet represents the culmination of this partnership and Dicode will now use ‘Vision by X2M’ as the only platform used when offering metre-reading services.
The term of the agreement is for ten years and Dicode intends to expand this offering beyond the UAE into the broader Middle East region.
“This Term Sheet forms the backbone of our strategy to launch our world-leading IoT platform in select markets throughout the Middle East,” said X2M CEO Mohan Jesudason.
“With a population of 10 million across 2.5 million dwellings, over four million water and electricity metres and an estimated 500,000 piped gas connections in Dubai alone, the UAE is the logical entry point into the Middle East for X2M.
“The UAE Government has mandated piped gas be fitted to all new buildings to transition away from bottled gas. With only 7% market use of ‘smart’ gas metres and a heavily fragmented gas market with many small gas companies, the market opportunity is considerable.”
“This is a high-margin software licensing agreement and we expect around $2 million EBITDA for every 500k smart devices that are installed on the ‘Vision by X2M’ utility solution.
“Our unique platform will provide the digital infrastructure needed to facilitate the transition to smart cities into the whole region by digitising and integrating seamless two-way communication between property, industry and government organisations on one centralised platform,” said Jesudason.
Dicode CEO Satish Chandran said: “The Middle East market represents a significant opportunity for utility digitisation. Dicode’s bundled Meter as a Service offering is new and unique to the region with X2M’s proprietary platform being a core enabler to our offering. Early market acceptance has been most encouraging with a number of leading utilities progressing early deployments. It is our intention to expand this offering beyond the UAE in the near term.”