Leif Erik Havnen steps up as CEO to lead the journey to become a leading European supplier of sensor technology
We’re happy to announce the appointment of Leif Erik Havnen as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Vicotee. Havnen takes over for Satvir Singh Parmar, who has been Vicotee’ s CEO for nearly three years. Going forward, the new CEO will focus on continued commercial growth, international partnerships, and making Vicotee a leading European supplier of sensors for data collection within smart cities, smart buildings, and smart utilities.
– After nearly three years at Vicotee, I am pleased to hand over the reins to Leif Erik. He will bring excellent strategic and leadership skills to Vicotee and help the company into its next phase. I wish Leif Erik and everyone in the team the best and I am looking forward to following Vicotee’ s exciting journey as an advisor and investor, says Satvir Singh Parmar.
Will capture new growth opportunities
Havnen, who joined Vicotee as director for sales and growth in 2021, has extensive experience within the electronics industry and a deep understanding of what it takes to build a successful business. Before he joined Vicotee he served as Country Sales Manager at EBV Electronics for five years. Prior to that Havnen have had several positions within sales, growth, and engineering. Havnen is educated as an electrical engineer from Sør-Trøndelag University College. He also holds a marketing and economics degree from BI Norwegian Business School and a MSc in Telecommunication and Software from the University of Surrey.
– I am thrilled to be appointed as the new CEO of Vicotee and I look forward to contributing to the company’s continued growth journey. Vicotee is a super company and has a technology suite with fantastic potential. During my time at the company, I have been impressed by the quality of our people and the strength of our culture, which provides a strong foundation we will build further on in the years ahead. I believe we have an exciting future in front of us as we capture growth opportunities in existing and new markets, says Leif Erik Havnen.
Taking the world beyond 4.0
Vicotee’ s mission is to deliver cost effective wireless sensor fleets making everyday life easier, more productive, and sustainable. Vicotee’ s sensor solutions helps schools, municipalities, and property owners to fetch data and crucial information, and to identify pain points with performance and cost improvements.
– We see a tremendous interest in wireless sensors from our potential customers in our focus segments, says Leif Erik Havnen.
– The government and private businesses have a great interest in building wireless LoRa infrastructure world-wide. LoRa-Gateways are now available or being planned throughout majority of the municipalities in Norway which will fuel the growth of suppliers providing sensors and the usage of sensors in the private and governmental market.
– As a young company, our plan is to develop our expertise in our focus segments, engage with good national and international partners, and attract financial partners for scaling and growth.
– We want to be part of driving the technology and world beyond 4.0, Havnen says.
The growing markets
Vicotee has a broad and unique portfolio of products with the flexibility of being used either through the wireless LoRa network or through the mobile network as a NBIoT device. Our sensor solutions fit well into the growing IoT needs in the private and governmental markets.
In-door air quality and environmental monitoring
Our focus is to build and provide system solutions in the in-door air quality and environmental monitoring segment, providing an “easy to install” – “easy to use” solution including the Vicotee sensor hardware, Vicotee Cloud, and Vicotee user interface and report generator. This is a system-solution used by the property manager and school principal to understand and monitor the air-quality in classrooms and offices. With strict in-door climate regulation this solution will help you get an easy readable overview and give you insight into what aspects can be changed to optimize energy usage and in-door climate.
Smart drainage sensor
Much of the maintenance work followed up on in a municipality is based on time intervals. Many of the solutions used are not “smart enough” to notify when it needs to be performed. The result of time-based maintenance intervals is that you do maintenance when it is not needed. One of these maintenance tasks is to clean out drainages in a city.
Vicotee is developing a smart drainage sensor solution monitoring the drainage and notifying when the maintenance is needed (Condition Monitoring & Predictive Maintenance). This solution includes a rugged sensor, Vicotee Cloud, and Vicotee user interface and report generator, and will optimize and lower the cost of monitoring and maintaining the city’s water drainage system.
