Iker Casillas and Gerard Piqué have become two great scouts for startups or newly created companies. Their credentials as footballers have become those of great businessmen with a great sense of smell. Both have “signed” for Kamleon, an emerging company from Barcelona. Next year they will put S-Urinal on the market, the smart urinal that has caught the attention of Casillas and Piqué and is capable of measuring the hydration level of users. “We were the ones who contacted Iker and Gerard. The idea of talking to them arose because they already have a series of investments made and seeing their portfolio we thought that our project could interest them. First we contacted Iker through Sportboost [ the startup accelerator of the former goalkeeper]. They confirmed to us that they wanted to enter the investment round. We also took advantage of a contact we have with Gerard’s team and they were also interested,” Jordi Ferré, one of the founders of Kamleon.
Having profiles of this level for the launch of your S-Urinal is key to giving them visibility. “Piqué has the mentality of an American entrepreneur, of creating things. No one wants to live off of income but rather they want to bet on talented people.”
Jordi Ferré is a sports physiologist and launched the idea of smart urinals together with the other founder of the company, Gonzalo Roca. They met through mutual friends and the spark of entrepreneurship arose between them. The company started in 2017 in a research project carried out at the Rovira University
Before all this, Jordi had worked in 2015 with the American Olympic team, where he learned the importance of technology in high-level sports. “Our goal was for American athletes to win more medals with the use of technology. There I had a very strong revelation. I came back here, I started researching and when we had a prototype we set up the company.”
Smart urinals precisely exploit this use of technology to apply it for sports purposes, for example. S-Urinal offers instant information about the level of hydration of the person using the urinal, both on a screen installed in the bathroom and through an app. Black Mirror was this. Jordi and his partner’s idea is to offer more and more data such as urine pH or creatinine. For athletes, knowledge of the hydration level is very important for performance. Casillas and Piqué know about the tedious procedures of urine analysis and the need to automate them.
But sport is not the only use that Kamleon sees for their product. “We already have a pilot project in the Hospital del Mar and in the high performance center of Sant Cugat. They can also be installed in fitness centers and gyms as well as in large companies or for those who want to have it at home. “People now measure the number of steps they take. They may find this just as interesting. One of the things we work on a lot is behavior change. We want to impact people and get them to think about hydration.”
Jordi sees a lot of potential in S-Urinal. Thanks to the association with a company that manufactures toilets, they will be able to put them on the market next year with a price that will be around 2,000 euros. “It will depend on the accessories you put on it. It can go up 1,000 euros more,” he adds.
At the moment there are 17 people who make up the Kamleon team and they plan to continue growing. They will put their S-Urinal on sale through the online channel, with distributors or, for example, in collaboration with the toilet company that is part of the project and that can include it in its catalog.
Jordi and his team think that one of the secrets to the success of S-Urinal is that it is integrated into a product that is already used, that is, it does not change the human habit. “We have developed a standing version and we also have another in a format that we could call feminine. In both you can only urinate. In the drain we incorporate integrated cartridges and then the user urinates and the analysis is done while he urinates. It works in anonymous mode and also with an identification system”.