Panel heat sensors and renewal-ready fire risk reports for small factories
TL;DR Firesensor clips temperature and current sensors onto the main electrical panels of small factories and warehouses. When a joint or breaker starts running hot the owner gets an alert, and a year of readings and fixes turns into a risk report the owner can hand to an insurer or broker at renewal.
Fires kill a lot of people in India. NCRB data for 2010–2014 recorded 113,961 fire deaths, about 54 a day, and electrical short circuits were linked to 7,743 of them[1]. The figures are old and don't split out factories, but the electrical cause is the one an owner can actually do something about.
Insurance gives a small factory very little reason to try. Fire pricing has been freed from tariffs in stages since 2007, with the last segments freed from April 2024, so each insurer prices on its own underwriting[2]. Safety measures can help how an insurer sees you, but there's no fixed discount, and IRDAI has objected to steep discounts of up to 99% on large risks[2].
So what does a unit with tidy wiring get? Nothing it can easily prove. And a unit with a failing joint usually has no idea.
What it does, in regulatory terms: risk monitoring and reporting only. Firesensor is not an insurer or an insurance intermediary. It doesn't set or promise premiums and earns no commission. If it ever recommends policies then it will need IRDAI registration.
Here's how it works. On day one an engineer does a thermal-camera survey of the main panels and distribution boards and fixes the worst problems with the owner's electrician. A licensed electrical contractor then puts clip-on sensors on busbars, breakers and incoming cables, and a cellular gateway sends readings every few minutes. When a point runs hotter than its load explains, the owner and the maintenance person get a call and a photo of the panel position. Every alert and fix is logged, and at renewal the owner gets a report of hot spots found, fixes made and time to fix.
The seed promised dynamic pricing, which I've dropped. Fire policies are priced once a year at underwriting, and I found no Indian insurer that re-prices them month by month on sensor data. Evidence at renewal is the realistic version.
The factory or warehouse owner pays a set-up fee plus a monthly subscription per site. My rough guess is ₹2,000–5,000 a month, and that needs testing. The owner already pays an electrician for repairs and an insurer for a fire policy whose price they can't easily move[2]. A second buyer is an insurer or broker that wants cheaper, continuous risk data on a book of small commercial policies.
Detariffing is complete, so insurers can price small fire risks on their own evidence[2]. In December 2025 Parliament passed the Sabka Bima Sabki Raksha Bill, which adds managing general agents to the list of intermediaries[3], and that makes specialist programmes pairing cover with risk data easier to picture. Radio approval for de-licensed band devices is a self-declaration at ₹10,000 per model[4], so a gateway can be certified cheaply.
There's no public figure for electrical risk monitoring in Indian small factories. Insurers abroad do sell sensor programmes though - one engineering insurer owned by a global reinsurer runs an IoT unit that installs connected sensors for businesses and property owners to prevent losses[5].
Adjacent, and sobering: all non-life insurance in India was 1% of GDP in FY25[6], so commercial property cover is a small pool to begin with.
That insurer's technology unit builds sensor programmes for commercial and residential properties on top of its insurance and engineering base[5]. In India, electrical safety auditors sell one-off thermography surveys, and insurers run risk inspections for large accounts. I found no Indian service that combines continuous panel monitoring with a report built for small-factory insurance renewal, though my search was limited.
| Difficulty | Hard (52/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹1.2–2.2 Cr |
| Time to launch | 9–12 months |
The sensors are off the shelf, so that bit is easy. The hard parts are a gateway that survives a hot, dusty panel room, alert thresholds that can tell a loose joint from a busy shift, and installation work inside live panels. Hardest of all is getting one insurer to give the report real weight at renewal.
There's no licence to sell risk monitoring itself, but the hardware and the insurance line both carry rules.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI decide that a panel is safe or skip an alert. A missed fire is a liability problem, so keep a human on the edge cases.
Want to work out the AI layer for Firesensor? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
I think this is a good fit for a founder with electrical engineering or industrial safety experience and a few insurance contacts. It is a weak fit for a pure software team. Before you raise money, prove that 30 sites keep paying for six months and that at least one insurer or broker will put in writing what the report changes at renewal.
Plan for roughly ₹1.2–2.2 Cr, most of it on sensors, gateways, installs and the engineers who survey panels. Piloting at a few sites first keeps the early spend down.
Not for monitoring itself. You need WPC approval for radio gateways, licensed contractors for panel work and DPDP compliance, and IRDAI registration only if you start recommending policies.
Yes. Insurers abroad already run sensor programmes, so check your local radio, electrical and insurance intermediary rules before you sell.
The free Firesensor validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the radio, intermediary and data-protection checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for owners and insurers, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Firesensor or something close to it? The make-or-break work is getting an insurer to treat a year of panel data as underwriting evidence, and that's the kind of thing I help founders with. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.