Simon Vestner, CEO and Founder, Digital Spine GmbH    

1.  Describe your company in a tweet. 

Aufzughelden is the innovation driver in the field of digital elevator and building management. The brand is part of the company Digital Spine GmbH and was founded in 2020 by Simon Vestner to significantly increase efficiency in building management with sound IoT solutions. 
 

2.  Why are you involved as a Berlin-Partner?

Berlin is a city of innovation. As a Berlin start-up, it is essential for us to contribute to the development of the economy and the sustainable future of the city on the one hand with our creative and technically highly adept solutions. On the other hand, we would like to develop progressive ideas, approaches and solutions together with other strong partners from the network in order to further and rapidly advance the topics of digitalization and efficiency enhancement and thereby ESG compliance and sustainability.
 

3.  What issues drive you in terms of your industry?

We are digitizing elevators - In the DACH region, there are 1.1 million total elevators, of which 800,000 are in Germany. In this oligopolistic market consisting of several major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), elevator owners face a principal-agent problem due to asymmetric and non-transparent access to information: as OEMs show little ambition to share elevator performance data, owners are currently unable to verify or question rising maintenance costs and therefore have to rely on maintenance companies' estimates.

We are improving the function of buildings by reducing their carbon footprint with digital technology, real-time connectivity, and user-centric software applications.
 

4.  What makes Berlin special for you?

Berlin is a vibrant city of millions in the heart of Europe and on the pulse of the times, which means it attracts a lot of young people who are playing a key role in shaping change in almost all areas, partly because they themselves will be greatly affected by it. The city often attracts people with a mindset who also want to get involved, especially young people who combine everything, including and especially their jobs, with their personal convictions. Often, of course, this also goes in the direction of climate protection, sustainability and thus preservation of our earth. Therefore, Berlin is an opinion leader in many areas, which creates a special spirit of wanting to boldly drive change.
 

5.  Why is Berlin attractive for your company?

Simon Vestner founded the company Digital Spine in Berlin because the digitization department of VESTNER Aufzüge was already sitting there as well. VESTNER's digitalization department was founded in Berlin because we are convinced that Berlin is the leading location for digitalization. In other German regions and metropolises in Germany, this was and still is in part not pronounced to this degree.

This means that Berlin offers ideal opportunities for the development and application of the latest technologies, energy services and new business models, especially in the building sector. Many companies are pioneers in the systematic implementation of efficiency measures or their own energy generation.
 

6.  What does Berlin stand for?

For us, Berlin stands for being able to achieve a great deal through progress without having to invest a great deal of money - in other words, living efficiency through innovation. Beyond that, of course, behind the linking of innovation and future with the unique history including many significant changes. Thus, Berlin is actually in a constant transformation that surrounds and drives the city.

7.  How does your company implement the topic of sustainability?

Our concept, the digitization of elevators has immense potential across all sectors. So digitizing buildings in general and elevators in particular not only brings immense cost and effort benefits by requiring fewer resources in maintenance and repair, but also contributes to a more sustainable future for buildings beyond that: Smart elevators can also be used to evaluate how busy individual elevators are. Peak times and underutilization can be identified. This makes the planning of elevators more efficient. However, the greatest and most sustainable benefit is the reduction in faults and thus the extension of the service life of elevators: The less an elevator malfunctions, the fewer resources have to be used to maintain the elevator and the longer it can be kept in operation. This increases the mobility and resource balance.