Czech heating startup Woltair collapses, founder has no regrets

The founder of the Czech heating-tech startup Woltair, Daniel Helcl, admits it plainly: the company he once dreamed of taking to the markets of Europe and the US ultimately went bankrupt, yet he feels no regret. The entrepreneur — for whom business has been a family affair since before the war — is now launching a new project, once again in real estate.

Helcl has been involved in real estate since the age of twenty — flipping properties, construction, and trading in cooperative and municipal housing. Later, together with experienced heating engineers Karel Náprstek and Jiří Švejda, he founded the portal Topíte.cz, which was later renamed Woltair. The idea was ambitious: to digitize the traditional craft of installing heating systems, simplify the ordering process, and connect households directly with technicians.

The project grew rapidly: venture funds poured hundreds of millions of crowns into it, while external circumstances — rising energy prices after the start of the war in Ukraine and generous state subsidies for heat pumps and solar panels — worked in the company's favor. At the peak of its growth in 2022, Helcl handed management over to Jan Hanuš, who had previously worked with the Kellner family's PPF group and at Mall Group, tasking him with conquering Germany, Italy and Poland, and eventually the US.

Helcl himself explained his departure by saying the company needed, for its new stage, a leader experienced in running a large international organization. But the market soon turned: whereas Czechia sold around 60,000 heat pumps in 2022, two years later that figure was just 20,000, and in Germany — where Woltair had just expanded — the drop, caused by a shift in subsidy policy, was even sharper.

The startup began cutting staff and changed its top management three times, but the costly expansion kept “burning” through cash, and the company posted losses year after year. In an attempt to save itself, Woltair first transferred its unfinished obligations to customers to a competitor, then told investors it could not meet its financial obligations even after restructuring. The company ultimately filed for its own bankruptcy, requesting insolvency proceedings, owing the state and insurance funds tens of millions of crowns.

“We should have reacted faster,” Helcl admits now. He stresses that at the height of the crisis no one could know whether the drop in demand would be temporary or would drag on for years: “The collapse was so rapid that all our steps were too late. We were constantly just chasing the speed of the fall.” According to the last published financial statements, for 2023, Woltair's loss amounted to almost 375 million crowns.

Despite the collapse of his previous venture, the fifty-year-old entrepreneur has no intention of leaving business — as he puts it, he now plans to act “with greater prudence,” once again betting on real estate and launching a new project in the field.