Investment firm Peakbridge is opening up the funding tap for Swiss hydration company BE WTR. In a LinkedIn post this week, Peakbridge Founder and Managing Director, Nadav Berger, announced that his firm “has committed to invest up to $3M in BE WTR.”
BE WTR makes a variety of hygienic water taps for offices and other businesses. The various high-tech taps can pour still or sparkling water, or heat or chill water. BE WTR taps also come with BRITA filtration built into the unit.
The B2B hydration space has been relatively quiet this year, which is understandable, given COVID shutting many business locations down. But there’s still been some activity. At the start of the year, Rocean’s sparkling water machine was getting installed in every room at the Conrad Hotel in New York earlier this year as a perk. In the midst of the pandemic, Bevi added contactless ordering features to its office smart water coolers. The pandemic also didn’t stop Pepsi from launching its SodaStream Professional water dispensers for offices this past July.
But with a vaccine on the horizon, we could see activity in office-related hydration products pick back up. Some companies are re-opening traditional offices, while others are creating smaller regional hubs that employees occasionally come into. Regardless of what shape an office takes post-COVID, a large swath of office worker employees will probably spend less time in actual buildings. As such, companies will seek to maximize that in-person time together. Part of that will be adding small touches like easy-to-use high-end water taps that not only reduce in-office waste (fewer bottles of water), but also give employees a little added comfort.
