In 2018, three entrepreneurs came together with a shared vision born from their diverse experiences. Tobias Engelmeier, a climate and data entrepreneur who had spent years working in India and Africa, grew increasingly impatient with the slow pace of the clean energy transition. He saw infrastructure projects stall for years, roads remained poor, and critical information about potential demand was largely anecdotal. Meanwhile, co-founder Nabin Gaihre carried a deeply personal connection to energy access - having grown up in a Nepalese village transformed when reliable electricity arrived through a hydro-power plant. Philippe Raisin brought expertise in physics and machine learning from Switzerland, having worked on deep-tech startups emerging from university.
The spark that ignited VIDA came from a pivotal discussion with the European Space Agency (ESA) about innovative applications for geospatial data. Recognizing an opportunity to harness satellite data and spatial analytics to solve real-world infrastructure challenges, the trio founded VIDA in 2018. In just a few years, the company has grown to 50 people working across Europe and Africa, with its platform now deployed in more than 40 countries. Major global companies, investors, and banks rely on VIDA's software to understand location risks, fusing over 50 data layers covering climate hazards, environmental risks, political stability, social conditions, accessibility, and demand to support sustainable infrastructure investments worldwide.