Meet Pyri: Helping Improve Wildfire Detection

Tell us about Pyri

 

At Pyri, we’re tackling increasingly frequent and devastating wildfires by offering an innovative, scalable, and affordable early wildfire detection system. Our co-founding team consists of Richard Alexandre, Blake Goodwyn, and Karina Gunadi. We all met in the Innovation Design Engineering graduate programme between the Royal College of Art and Imperial College but bring 20+ years of combined experience in strategy, design, product development, and engineering.

 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 

When the group first formed, our goal was to help the world adapt to the extreme weather events that are increasingly worsened by climate change. We discovered that wildfire detection, while an incredibly powerful tool in how we respond to fire, wasn’t available in many of the most vulnerable places threatened by wildfire. We explored many different ideas inspired by both nature and low-tech solutions in other fields, eventually combining several into Pyri.

Our patent-pending invention and our name are inspired by pyriscence, a plant’s adaptation to fire-prone environments where fire triggers the release of seeds. Similarly, our devices are triggered by the heat of a fire to send an alert. Unlike traditional solutions, Pyri is unique in that it is made with organic electronics, using abundant, non-toxic, and nature-based materials. Pyri is also drastically cheaper than the nearest competitors, easy to deploy, and requires zero maintenance.

 

 

What is your advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?

 

Talk to anyone, because you never know where those conversations can lead. The world is smaller than you think and the people who will be your biggest champions could be anywhere. There is the flipside of also knowing when to stop talking to people, as it can freeze you into indecision, and instead trusting yourself and getting things done. It’s always a balance, like everything in entrepreneurship.

 

What most excites you about Pyri?

 

We’re most excited about bringing wildfire detection to regions where existing solutions are currently out of reach, whether because of costs, infrastructure requirements, or difficulty to install. We’ve talked to people worried about wildfires from 12 countries, such as Brazil, Greece, South Africa, and Thailand. This is where we can really make a meaningful difference.

 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 

Pyri began in Autumn 2023 as a group project in the MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering graduate programme run jointly between the Royal College of Art (RCA) and Imperial College London. At first, we were just building something we were passionate about, but then it became clear we had a great idea on our hands that addressed a real problem. We began to build out the business side of Pyri in 2024 and were fortunate enough to win some incredible awards along the way, including the James Dyson UK Award and the Sustainable Markets Initiative’s Terra Carta Design Lab. We are so grateful that we have been able to communicate Pyri’s mission and have it resonate with so many people. These awards have shone a global spotlight on the work we are doing and have led to so many amazing opportunities.

Since we graduated in summer of 2024, we’ve joined the incubator programme at InnovationRCA – the RCA’s centre for entrepreneurship and business support – and have been working on Pyri full-time, talking to stakeholders and potential customers, developing our technology, and fundraising. It’s been an incredible journey so far and we have so many amazing people and organisations that have supported us along the way.

 

What can we hope to see from Pyri in the future?

 

We are field testing and piloting soon! We are actively connecting with and developing relationships with fire agencies and forestry managers to demonstrate Pyri’s immense capabilities in the real world. If anyone is interested – please get in touch!