69. Ome- Turning Up the Heat on Smart Stove Safety

In this episode of Raising Tech, Matt Reiners chats with Akshita Iyer, founder and CEO of Ome, about her inspiring journey to create a smart knob that can turn any stove into a safer, smart appliance. After a personal experience, Akshita developed a device that retrofits gas and electric stoves to automatically shut off or adjust burners. The knob looks just like a regular stove knob but adds smart features like cooking timers, safety locks, and data tracking to help prevent fires and support aging-in-place.

They dive into the challenges of getting people—especially older adults—comfortable with smart home tech. The best part? The knob lets users cook like they always have, with extra safety benefits built in, making it a great fit for senior living communities. They also touch on how integrating smart technology into daily life can boost home safety and provide helpful insights.

Find more about Ome on their website & LinkedIn. 

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Transcript

Matt Reiners: Welcome back. This is Matt Reiners Chief Growth Officer at Parasol Alliance. Excited to bring you another episode of Raising Tech with our special guests, Akshita Iyer. She's the visionary founder and CEO of Ome, a company dedicated to making homes safer through innovative technology.

She's inspired by a personal experience, which I'll let her get into. But this allowed her and really inspired her to invent a groundbreaking device that transforms any stove into a smart appliance within minutes. 

So thanks so much for joining me today. And I'm curious, a great place. We always like to start with new gases. You tell us a little bit about you, about Ome and how this came to be. 

Akshita Iyer: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Matt. It's a pleasure to be here. I took a bit of an unconventional path to entrepreneurship.

So I went to school for neuroscience, thought I was going to go to med school and then I took a few gap years. And in that time, my mom was diagnosed with Parkinson's [00:01:00] and she actually just left the stove on one too many times and started a kitchen fire. I never really talked to my parents about aging.

I just got out of college and I didn't realize the effect that this disease was having on my mom until we actually had an incident that could have caused real harm. We were early adopters of all your smart home technologies, doorbells, door locks, thermostats. And so I figured there had to be something that could solve for the number one cause of house fires, which is exactly what my mom did.

Leaving the stove on by accident. And lo and behold, there wasn't. But also realize that, the appliance industry is tough because you have appliances that last a really long time, right? 15, 20 plus years. Most people don't buy an appliance unless there's breaks or they build a new house.

And so I thought, how hard could it be to build a smart device that can retrofit onto your most used cooking appliance, so that we could actually provide the needed safety features today. It was not as simple as I thought it was, but I'm glad I didn't know that at the time. But what we ended up building is the only smart device on the market that can not only [00:02:00] turn a standard gas or electric stove into a smart appliance, but also proactively adjust the burners or turn them off if it's left on.

And we do that through this very simple device that looks like a normal knob, but it's actually very smart. So it's got a motor inside position sensors and functions like a normal knob. You push your turn. We're not changing how you cook, but then it has all these extra safety features that make sure you're safe in your own home.

Matt Reiners: Yeah, I love that. And to your point about like buying new appliances, we just bought a home, moved in using all the appliances that were already here. No timeline to buy any new ones. Imagine when they break. And I think just being able to adjust what might be in someone's home already.

And making it smart. And this idea of technology and incorporating that is brilliant. And yeah, the journey of entrepreneurship is always harder than I think we all anticipate going into it, but that what makes it so fun. And I know you had mentioned your mom and some of these fires that were starting which, of course, whatever we can do to avoid those what made you go down this path of coming up with the idea of that smart [00:03:00] knob?

And can you just explain how it works? 

Akshita Iyer: Yeah, so the idea of the smart knob really came from, all of these retrofit smart devices in the home, right? We had Nest come out with the 1st retrofit thermostat. And then you had door locks and doorbells and HVAC systems.

And really the power of those devices was that they're intuitive. They're affordable. You don't have to spend a lot of money to get the safety and security you need at home. And I looked at the appliance industry and all we do is sell new appliances, right? And that takes a really long time. And it's expensive.

If you look at a smart appliance today, it can be thousands of dollars. The average consumer can't afford that. So the idea was really, can we do what the rest of the smart home did for your Appliances, starting with your most used cooking appliance that clearly has some safety concerns. And we wanted this knob to look and function like a regular stove knob.

So the beauty of retrofit devices is that you don't have to change how you do what you do every day. And the last thing we wanted to do was change how someone uses their stove. We wanted this to be intuitive. [00:04:00] And we wanted to make sure that it looked and functioned like a regular stove knob, but we also needed to make sure that it had the ability to automatically and proactively adjust.

The way this knob works is we have basically 2 parts to it. The bottom has a motor inside, and then this just goes right on the stove shaft. You tighten down. So you pull your knob off. You put this on and then this has all the electronics and it just snaps on, And every time you turn the burner on we have some LEDs that will show up to let you know what setting you're at.

And what the knob is doing is basically tracking what setting, what burner, how long the burner's burner's been on for, and then, That way it can automatically turn off the burner if it's left on for too long and you as a consumer can adjust what that time looks like based on your cooking habits. We also offer cooking timers.

So if your rice is going to take 22 minutes and you don't want to get distracted or your hard boiled eggs take 11 minutes. You can set that either through our app or through a voice assistant. And then we also have a safety lock which means that when you don't want your stove [00:05:00] used if it's at night or you are out of the house and you have kids at home or pets, recently there was a viral videothat CNN Broadcasted where a dog jumps on to the range and lights a burner and it starts a kitchen fire.

And so with that safety log, when the stove is in that mode, anytime a burner is turned on, it can automatically turn the burner off and then send you notification. Really addressing a lot of the safety concerns that have been there for a really long time, but in a very affordable and intuitive way that consumers can understand.

Matt Reiners: Yeah, I even just think about my own house. I've got a three year old running around and we've got these things on there right now that she can't adjust it, but it makes my life much more difficult to do it. Cause it's childproof, but I feel like I'm a child at times because I can't open some of the stuff.

And I'm curious For this what are some of the challenges and opportunities for the smart home or like smart kitchen space? 

Akshita Iyer: We've learned in the last couple of years after we launched the first generation of this device was, this is a problem that everyone has and they know they have, right?

Who hasn't gotten distracted and [00:06:00] overcooked food, right? Or left the burner on, may have not led to a house fire. But it is something that we're constantly thinking about, especially now that we spend a lot more time at home than we did before. We all have aging family members, so safety is a concern. What we realized was this is a problem everyone knows they have, but they don't know a solution exists, right?

It's just, this is the way that it goes. And that's where I was when we had this incident um, we're going to have to Oh, this just happens all the time. And so we've had to spend a lot of time educating consumers that it's not just your smart home in terms of, your security system, your appliances should also be smart in a meaningful, impactful way.

A lot of smart appliances nowadays. But what is it actually doing for you? What is it solving? And so I think that's a big challenge in making sure that we're able to get that awareness so that people know that there is actually meaningful technology that's going into these smart appliances. think that also leads to the opportunity, right?

Where You know, there are [00:07:00] tens of millions of non smart appliances out there, right? And we shouldn't have to wait for a consumer to need a new appliance, right? What if we can build that line of communication with the retrofit, right? If I can get into your home today. and I can offer you this value, then I'm better understanding how you're using your appliance.

What other pain points do you have? And now I've got a digital line of communication with you where I can continue to build out features. And then, oh, in 10, 15 years, we can actually build a new appliance that has all this functionality built in based on data. And so that's really where we see the opportunity of this retrofit

period where we can actually learn what customers want from an appliance. And then we can give that to your OEMs in the future to make sure they're building appliances for you. 

Matt Reiners: Yeah, it makes so much sense. And I think, you're attacking of retrofitting some of these legacy standing appliances in these houses.

Cause I think of my parents, who knows the next time they're going to buy anything like a new [00:08:00] appliance or anything like that. And I know a lot of these listeners are working in senior living at these communities working with older adults and you've hit on a few of them, but love for you to just highlight any other benefits features that you see for the Ome smart knob specifically for older adults.

Akshita Iyer: Yeah. Again, what we saw this last couple of years is a huge pull towards using our technology for aging in place, right? So our target demographic are your sandwich generation. Middle aged adults who have young kids, you who want to be safe and secure and make sure that their home is safe, but they're also the ones who have family members and parents who are getting older.

And the reality is that, 14 million older adults in the U. S. Live alone and the vast majority of them over 90 percent are going to remain in their own homes, which means that we need to make sure that safety is addressed and cooking is a big concern, right? So if you have any kind of cognitive decline, early stage dementia, Alzheimer's, if you leave a burner on [00:09:00] that could be catastrophic.

And not only is Unattended cooking, the leading cause of house fires, but older adults 65 and up are actually almost two and a half times more likely to die in a kitchen related fire. So there's even more vulnerability and we've seen opportunity is not just, through their caregivers and family members, but also just going directly to these communities, right?

So like you mentioned, senior living communities where risk is a big concern, right? So making sure that the buildings are safe, residents are safe, that residents can continue to retain their independence and continue to cook and do the things that they've been doing for decades without the worry of something bad happening.

But then also what we found is that with smart devices comes data, right? But what we realize is we don't want data for the sake of data, but we can actually pull cooking activity from our device. So how often is someone cooking? What time of day are they cooking? How long are they cooking for? And we can actually map that out and detect anomalies, right?

So if we know my mom [00:10:00] cooks every weekday morning, all of a sudden she doesn't cook for three days, I can alert the relevant party. And so it's not just about the hardware and making sure that we don't have cooking fires. It's actually being able to harness that data in a way that's actionable for caregivers, family members, and property managers.

Matt Reiners: Yeah, it's such a good point. And I think too, right? Like we're all creatures of habit and cooking is one of those things you have to do throughout the day, and tracking that data, tracking the patterns, it seems like you could really pull some actionable insights out of those things, which is super cool.

And I'm wondering too, we've talked about what it is and what it does. And like this idea of data, I'm just wondering if you could share any feedback from some of your original clients is this sandwich generation, which I had to Google before looking into. So people like taking care of their parents and their kids simultaneously, it seems like they're often buying two sets of these knobs.

And I'm just wondering too, if you've seen any hesitation from older adults and adopting this new technology. 

Akshita Iyer: Yeah, so the beauty of this sandwich generation is that [00:11:00] they're the ones installing this for their family members, right? So we're not going directly to older adults, typically where they're buying this and installing this.

But the reason we don't see a lot of hesitation is that this is just like a regular stove knob, right? So you don't ever have to use the app, right? Once it's installed, once we know what the settings are for each burner, The older adult or whomever is using this can just use the knob and use their stove like they have been, forever.

The difference is that we can actually now proactively do something if the burner is left on by accident and the notification ends up going to the child or the caregiver who installed it. And so never is there a point where an older adult has to learn how the technology works. And I think that's really what we prioritize in terms of the design and the interface of this was, yeah, there are a lot of techies that buy this, but it's not a techie device.

There's a lot of technology in it, but it's really meant to just blend in with what you do every day [00:12:00] and the way your kitchen looks. And I think that's really the biggest reason why we haven't seen that kind of pushback. 

Matt Reiners: yeah. Again my comment before we're all creatures of habit.

If they're doing the same thing all over again, and someone in the background was just setting it up to keep track of some of this stuff it makes so much sense, right? It's not technology to them. It's the same old of what they've been doing for 60, 70, 80 plus years, and just figuring that into it So simple yet brilliant.

So cheers on that. You just got to figure out how the knob can make my cooking better. 

Akshita Iyer: We'll get there. 

Matt Reiners: roadmap. I gotcha. And so we talked about like the older adults and I know with like senior living, like you guys have been more of like direct to consumer, but now we're starting to get a lot of interest from senior living communities at this.

And I'm just wondering if you could speak to the importance of this new customer. 

Akshita Iyer: Yeah and, I think senior living the reason we started to look more at these multi unit buildings is that over 65 percent of these multi unit building fires, even more so than residential house fares are caused by unattended cooking.

You've got a ton of units. You've got a ton of people. [00:13:00] And if, someone leaves the gas on, or, starts a kitchen fire, you've got a really big problem. And We saw that initial pull because of our customer base buying this, but then, as we started and I just cold called a bunch of senior living communities, because how else do you get in front of them and, heard that most of them have had some incident where the entire building had to evacuate.

Or you had family members that were asking about, Whether their loved ones can continue to use appliances and continue to remain as independent as possible. The other thing we heard a lot which we were able to address is that oftentimes when, a family member, you know, or needs to move from independent to assisted living or to memory care or nursing.

It's oftentimes a very subjective conversation, right? We think this is happening. And so now we're able to actually give some data points, right? This is what, the automatic shutoff engaged, four times last week, right? Which means that something is not right and the actual [00:14:00] objective data versus just a general conversation that can be very Emotional and challenging.

And we really see the multi unit building space as a prime market for growth. Also, because there are big insurance implications here, right? Insurance companies pay out a billion dollars a year because people leave the stove on. And so what we're working towards is, as we get these larger buildings, a larger customer base, more devices out there, We actually want to be able to prove that we're bringing down the risk of cooking fires and we're saving insurance companies billion dollars a year.

And so that eventually, as a property manager, you can actually get, or even a consumer, you can actually get a discount on your insurance policy like we do with so many other smart devices.

Matt Reiners: Yeah, it feels like there's just so many opportunities for this. I think a lot of people are cooking in some capacity, especially in some of these like independent living, assisted living. And just I know whenever someone can get their insurance down or help on that side. I'm curious, you've been [00:15:00] doing Ome for more than a few years now, which is awesome. Hey, I think every entrepreneurial journey is a rollercoaster ride. Grateful for you. You haven't lost all your hair like I have along my own journey.

Uh, Why do you see this as a good time to introduce the smart knob to senior living communities? 

Akshita Iyer: well, I mean,

As you know, in the last couple of years, aging in place has become a huge priority, right? I think every day, 10, 000 people are turning 65. And I think in the next 10 years, 77 million people in the US are going to be 65 and older.

And everyone's going to stay at home, or at least they want to stay in a place where they feel like they're at home. They're retaining their independence, which means that a technology like ours that is. less expensive, right? It's relatively affordable. If you think about, a smart appliance that may have these features in the future is something that's really critical.

And I think can also be a differentiation for communities that are trying to create this environment for older adults where they don't feel like they're being limited in what they can [00:16:00] do. And so I think now's a great time because of this, trend towards these assistive technologies.

And I think the need for innovative solutions to ensure the safety and the independence of older adults has never been more important. 

Matt Reiners: Love it. And then I know October is a big month. This is national fire prevention month. Any other tips that you have outside of buying Ome smart knob that you could give to our listeners here?

Akshita Iyer: Definitely. Especially if you cook a lot or you have family members that cook a lot. We would love for Ome to be in your home. But I think it's always just being a little bit mindful and aware, right? Nobody ever thinks they will have a fire, just like you don't think that your house will be broken into until it actually happens.

And finding any way to Make sure your family safe. Especially if you have pets and you have young kids and you're not home. I think just being more intentional, more aware, more present, right? We're all doing 10, 000 things at once and running to the next thing is really important and definitely something to keep in mind in October.

Matt Reiners: [00:17:00] love it. Thank you so much for joining us today. I know this is definitely a need and so cool to see how you guys are able to make dumb appliances smart, if I must say, but thank you. 

Akshita Iyer: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, man. 

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