Imagine being able to control the lighting of your room, your TV, washing machines, and fridge, and locking and unlocking doors too with the help of your smartphone. Technology is moving at a very fast rate and the internet of things also known as IoT is connecting more and more devices than ever before.
Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple’s Siri are already a part of IoT. Tech startups and established enterprises are linking devices to operate together making it user-friendly.
Connecting every machine to the internet is what IoT stands for. Predictions show IoT revenue in India will reach $1,527.00 million by 2027 with an annual growth rate of 10.14% (CAGR 2022-2027). In global comparison, in 2022 US will generate most of the revenue, i.e., $4,761.00 million. According to a Zinnov report, India’s IoT investments are projected to reach $436 billion by 2026. Intel, Texas Instruments, Telit, Gemalto, Infosys, IBM, and Wipro are the major contributors in this field. “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed”.
Projected Revenue of IoTs in India from 2016 to 2027
Most of the revenue is from Smart Home Technologies, and the rest is from Finance Technologies. With more than 100 smart cities and digitization campaigns by the Government of India, there is a gargantuan requirement for ubiquitous connectivity to enable seamless communication between machine-to-machine (M2M) and machines to humans.
It will be a dream come true for Indians when your home knows you’re not there, locks your doors, and sends you a message to let you know. We are very close to a world where a smartphone is ready to make our life easier. In this article, we are going to talk about the top IoT startups in India.
With a revolutionary idea of offering end-to-end dairy technology solutions, this Bengaluru-based Stellapps was founded by two IITians – Ranjith Mukundan and Venkatesh Seshasayee in 2011 and incubated by IIT Madras. The startup develops and acquires comprehensive farm optimization and monitoring support solutions to assist dairy farmers and cooperatives to maximize revenues with the least amount of work. Stellapps had even managed to raise funding from Blume Ventures, Flipkart, and Venture Highway. They have successfully set up the world’s largest community milking parlor.
Zenatix
Founder
Amarjeet Singh, Rahul Bhalla, and Vishal Bansal
Founded in
2013
Headquarters
Delhi
Zenatrix Homepage
Machine Learning course becomes very handy if one wants to enter the field of AI and IoT. Using advanced ML models, Zenatix provides awesome energy savings for huge commercial consumers of electricity. This Delhi-based startup was founded by Amarjeet Singh, Rahul Bhalla, and Vishal Bansal in 2013. The startup’s offerings include Wattman and Wattman Lite which helps to reduce 30% of electricity consumption. Zenatix had raised about $1Mn Pre-Series A funding led by Pi Ventures.
Smartron
Founder
Mahesh Lingareddy, Narsi Reddy Posham, and Rohit Rathi
Founded in
2014
Headquarters
Hyderabad
Smartron Homepage
Smartron was founded by Mahesh Lingareddy, ex-Intel and co-founder of Silicon Valley startup Soft Machines, along with Narsi Reddy and Rohit Rathi in 2014. The startup provides an intelligent connected platform TronX that offers high-level customized experiences, services, and care through internet-connected smart devices. TronX allows you to converse and control the normal gadgets at home like TV, AC, fridge, and even doors and windows get controlled with gestures, touch, and voice. Sachin Tendulkar is the brand ambassador of the startup.
CarShop
Founder
Rohan Vadgaonkar, Pushkar Limaye, Urmil Shah, and Prathamesh Joshi
Founded in
2015
Headquarters
Mumbai
CarShop Homepage
CarShop (previously Carsense) is on the list of the top IoT-based startups in India with the idea to offer car diagnostic solutions. It is a Mumbai-based startup earlier known as Carnot, founded by 4 IITians Rohan Vadgaonkar, Pushkar Limaye, Urmil Shah, and Prathamesh Joshi in 2015. The startup is deciding to enter into the space of car security by working on GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, and Bluetooth. It plugs into the OBD Port, while its easy-to-use software app ensures that the electronic systems inside a user’s car (in modern cars, everything comes under electronic systems) are in working order. Once integrated into the system, it can be used to monitor the car to ensure its safety, send alert signals in case repairs are required, give insights into the car’s fuel economy, and more.
AerX Labs
Founder
Sumit Rishi, Kartavya Mohan Gupta and Priyank Sharma
Founded in
2015
Headquarters
Bengaluru
AerX Labs Homepage
With a concept to modernize the avionics sector, this Bengaluru-based startup makes professional-grade certifiable simulators for airlines, flight schools, universities, and corporates. Backed by Intel India and Bosch India, the founders of this company – Sumit, Kartavya, and Priyank are now working on assessing the risk behaviors for pilot training.
TerraBlue XT
Founder
Rajlakshmi Borthakur
Founded in
2015
Headquarters
Bengaluru
TerraBlue XT Homepage
The only sector that needs to be fully integrated with modern technology is the medical/health sector. All the dangerous diseases like Cancer are curable just because of the modern solutions. Rajlakshmi Borthakur founded TerraBlue XT which connects patients, caregivers, doctors, and hospitals with a common thread. Backed by the Government of India’s Department of BioTech, the Karnataka government’s Dept. of ITBT, neDFI, birac, and the IIM Ahmedabad Entrepreneurship Cell, the startup is all set to disrupt the Indian IoT sector.
CavyIoT
Founder
Vilas Khade
Founded in
2019
Headquarters
Aloka, Maharashtra
CavyIoT Homepage
CavyIoT is a company that provides IoT services that helps you in connecting your device to the cloud. With the help of the company’s services, one can manage their IoT devices from anywhere. CavyIoT was founded in the year 2019 by Vilas Khade and the headquarters is situated in Akola, Maharashtra, India.
Facilio
Founder
Krishnamoorthi Rangasamy, Prabhu Ramachandran, Rajavel Subramanian and Yogendra Babu
Founded in
2017
Headquarters
Greater Atlanta Area, United States
Facilio Homepage
Facilio is a management software that takes the help of IoT to manage any kind of building maintenance and operations. This company helps real estate owners and operators to control and manage building operations from one place with the help of this system. The startup was founded in the year 2017 and since then has been serving as one of the most popular systems that manage real estate operations.
Flutura
Founder
Derick Jose, Krishnan Raman and Srikanth Muralidhara
Founded in
2012
Headquarters
Houston, United States
Flutura Homepage
This AI-focused company whose main aim is to improve two objectives of a business and that is Asset Uptime and Operational efficiency. The company has chosen the service of IoT to manage machinery manufacturing in the heavy engineering industry. The company was founded in the year 2012. With the help of the IoT system, Flutura is on its way to becoming the No. 1 IoT platform for industrial companies that are powering new business models.
Detect Technologies
Founder
Daniel Raj David, Harikrishnan Arangali Shaji, Karthik Rajasekaran and Tarun Mishra
Founded in
2016
Headquarters
Chennai
Detect Technologies Homepage
Detect Technologies is a popular and leading AI-based SaaS company that provides IoT technology to increase industrial productivity. The company was founded in the year 2016. The company also includes the services of asset monitoring, predictive maintenance, and other AI solutions. It deals with the sectors of construction, steel, metals, and chemicals. It serves different fortune 500 companies.
Conclusion
IoT is taking over the world and India is no different. Companies and organizations from different sectors are transforming with the help of IoT. With time, the potential of IoT will be limitless, and it will help connect globally. In the future, we will be surrounded by smart cities where IoT will play an important role.
FAQs
What is IoT technology?
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the concept of connecting any device to the Internet and other connected devices. The IoT is a giant network of connected things and people all of which collect and share data about the way they are used and about the environment around them.
How is the Internet of things used?
The Internet of Things (IoT), also sometimes referred to as the Internet of Everything (IoE), consists of all the web-enabled devices that collect, send and act on data they acquire from their surrounding environments using embedded sensors, processors, and communication hardware.
Where is IoT used?
IoT devices can be used to monitor and control the mechanical, electrical, and electronic systems used in various types of buildings (e.g., public and private, industrial, institutional, or residential) in home automation and building automation systems.
What is the future of IoT in India?
As per a joint report by FICCI and Ernst & Young, the APAC region is forecasted to become the largest global IoT region in terms of both connections and revenue by 2025 with India expected to have 5 billion connected devices by 2022.
MapmyIndia is known to be one of India’s most comprehensive GPS navigation and tracking solutions providers, which engages the users on multiple platforms. The New Delhi-based company first started its venture online as C.E Infosystems back in 1995 and eventually migrated into consumer navigation devices, fleet-tracking solutions for taxi and trucking companies, and mobile apps. Today, the company offers an entire API stack, IOT devices, and a map app and is also a strong competitor to the global giant Google’s mapping app.
The company has so far mapped over 10.54 million unique destinations, expanded its coverage to over 6.29 million kilometers of the road network, 7068+ cities at street level along with address level for 80+ cities. It also covers 600K+ villages and 3D and 2D landmarks in 86+ different cities. It has so far recorded 18+ million places. Not only that the company has also divulged into offering a variety of different services. It offers services like navigation functionality, tracking and telematics, and location-based analytics.
MapmyIndia has its own API stack through which the company aids developers who are looking to build interesting and unique apps powered by a geo-locational element such as OLX, Flipkart, and smart parking systems. The company now has 5,000 enterprise customers. It also claims to have captured an 80% market share in revenue in the location intelligence space.
It has more than 2,000 customers on its SaaS platforms, which are used for fleet management, location analytics, etc. among other things, made possible because of the successful business model that MaymyIndia brandishes. Other smaller players that compete with MaymyIndia in the IoT-powered GPS devices segment include Asset Tracker, TrakNTell, and CaRPM.
Rakesh Verma and Rashmi Verma, The founders of MapmyIndia
MapmyIndia is an Indian technology company that builds digital map data, telematics services, location-based SAAS, and GIS AI services. The company has its headquarters in New Delhi, regional offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru, and an international office in the San Francisco Bay Area. MapmyIndia was founded in the year 1992 by Rakesh Verma and Rashmi Verma. The company had its humble beginning when the couple launched a startup called C E Info Systems Pvt. Ltd. in New Delhi.
The company initially started working upon developing a web mapping technology and providing products and services required for enhancing marketing and logistics efficiency in the existing organizations in the country. MapmyIndia launched the first Indian interactive digital mapping portal in 2004, which provided free, customized, location-based services.
In 2010, MapmyIndia launched a GPS navigation service called Road Pilot, preloaded with Indian cities, villages and destinations and destinations. As of 2018, it has 5000 plus enterprises customers and over 250 million consumers benefit directly and indirectly from its services. MapmyIndia has also expanded to countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal and soon plans to release maps for the different parts of the world.
During the trying times of the pandemic, the company launched a Covid19 dashboard that mapped containment zones and Covid19 testing and treatment centers across India in real-time and made it available for millions of users free of cost. This immediate move benefitted many users needing this information, whereas Google was slow to respond and released it many months later. It also won the Government of India’s Atmanirbhar App Challenge for its consumer app.
In December 2021, MapmyIndia parent company, the valuation or the market capitalization of the company currently stood at over $1.03 Bn.
MapmyIndia – Products and Services the Company Offers
MapmyIndia is well known for its services like Navigation, Tracking, IoT, Analytics, and web mapping service for desktop and mobile devices.The company also offers advanced GPS tracking devices, car in-dash infotainment, and plug and play on-board diagnostics, car trackers. The navigation service features street-view, public transit information, and turn-by-turn navigation with spoken instructions for vehicles. The main services that the company offers are:
Professionally curated and continuously updated detailed maps that offer unmatched coverage – These maps enable web and mobile applications, with the most granular house-level building data, live traffic, location-based demographics, and socio-economic data.
Real-time data visualization and big data analytics to make more informed decisions – Maps provide a visual context that helps customers to increase productivity, involving location like site selection & resource allocation that helps with efficient business growth.
Smart mobility platform for sale, convenient and efficient mobility – The company is focused on building technology platforms for connected vehicles and travelers paving the road for autonomous multi-modal and safe mobility.
Connected Vehicle IoT ensures the safety and security of vehicles, people, and assets – The company also believes in providing a secure, intelligent, and modular location-based IoT platform, providing accurate and reliable maps with live traffic, road conditions, safety alerts, driving patterns, and other travel services.
MapmyIndia Launched Panoramic Street View Experience
MapmyIndia announced the launch of a panoramic, street view feature, which will be similar to the panoramic, three-dimensional experience of Google Street View. This technology, which is refered to as Mappls RealView, will help the users explore the cities of India almost as Google offers. Currently, Mappls RealView covers metropolitan areas and cities including Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, Greater Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, and Jaipur. Besides, it also covers nearly 100,000 kms of highways, which links these cities and towns. The repository of Mappls RealView currently consists of 40+ Cr geo-tagged panoramas, videos, and panoramas, as of July 28, 2022.
A metaverse-like experience has also been launched by MapmyIndia, via Mappls. This now features numerous tourists, commercial and residential landmarks and more, across India. In order to create a 3D experience, the listed startup has revealed that it uses satellite imagery data from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
MapmyIndia – eLoc: Electronic location as a key to Digital Address
MapmyIndia has presented eLoc (electronic Location) as the country’s key to digital addresses. eLoc by MapmyIndia helps in finding the electronic location of any place, be it a building, flat, office, business, city, village, locality, road, and so on, is a short, 6 character code (for e.g. 8GDTYX, or MMI000). This is easy to remember, share, type, and provide. eLoc claims to provide a comprehensive, accurate, and precise door-step level, 3D digital map database, and turn by turn navigation solution.
eLoc is essential when a person, business, or official searches for a place by entering the code. They can see the precise map location of the place beside its location, such as reviews, photos other information provided by the place’s owner, businesses, and government. MapmyIndia updates its digital database every quarter and takes into account the feedback of the enterprise’s customers, individual users, on-ground staff, and its own surveyors as well.
When Rakesh and Rashmi Verma first started out to build their own startup they were determined to do something for the country and thus, decided to make it their life’s goal to build the country’s first digital map based on a database of India. This was a difficult task in the beginning because India is known to be vast and with varied geographical and topographical diversities. This is why they decided to make their own database, “Top Down and Bottoms Up”.
The Top Down system included that the company digitally traced whatever paper maps were available using tablets and other IT and electronics devices. On the other hand, the Bottom Up was meant to survey different parts of the country. The team of MapmyIndia played an important role in surveys as they had to practically walk down the streets and by-lanes of the country and also conduct field surveys.
The company has a customer-funded business model and has had popular companies like Coca-Cola, Marico, Hindustan Unilever, and the Indian defense service as their enterprise customers. All of these were possible due to its team of more than 400 surveyors, post-physical and satellite surveys, and most importantly, its 25 years of research. The company now has a repository of more than 2 Cr data points, including 3D data visualizations, telematics, and navigation systems under its belt.
Map Data collection work
The company not only sends more than 400 surveys in the field but also collects hundreds of attributes like footprints, doorsteps, floor numbers, flat numbers, and photographs of every location. It is because of this information that the company has created a digital map of the country of inter-connected information with all those geographical markers and coordinates. MapmyIndia has also entered into more than 100 strategic partnerships with tech and marketing companies, to facilitate the process of data collation faster.
Four Key Markets of MapmyIndia
In terms of the verticals, MapmyIndia addresses four key markets:
Direct consumers (through free and paid app/maps)
Automotive (40% of revenue)
Mobile Internet (20%) and
Enterprises and government (40% of revenue).
MapmyIndia – Revenue and Financials
MapmyIndia QoQ Financials
The operating revenue in Q1 FY23 of MapmyIndia, grew by 50.2% to stand at Rs 65 crore when compared to the revenue it received in the corresponding quarter in FY22.
The expenses of the company also increased by 37.5% in Q1 FY23, when compared with the Rs 27.4 crore expenses it registered in Q1 FY22. The expenses of MapmyIndia in Q1 FY23 are registered at Rs 37.7 crore.
The PAT of MapmyIndia rose 17.5% YoY in the first quarter of FY23, to become Rs 24.2 crore.
MapmyIndia YoY Financials
MapmyIndia’s revenue from operations was close to Rs 200 crore in FY22. The company earlier registered Rs 153 crore in operational revenue, which grew by 31%. The revenue from operations of MapmyIndia was previously noted to be Rs 135.2 crore and Rs 149 crore in FY19 and FY20 respectively.
The expenses of MapmyIndia rose only slightly, by 11%, up from Rs 113 crore in FY21 to become Rs 125 crore in FY22. MapmyIndia expenses were earlier registered at Rs 120.16 crore in FY19 and Rs 131.78 crore in FY20.
MapmyIndia profits after tax (PAT) stood at Rs 87 crore in FY22, which witnessed a 45% rise from Rs 59.4 crore worth in profits in FY21. The profits were earlier Rs 33.6 crore in FY19 and Rs 23.2 crore in FY20.
MapmyIndia – Market Share and Funding of MapmyIndia
MapmyIndia cloud mapping services are used by many well-known tech companies such as Paytm, PhonePe, Amazon, Alexa voice, Flipkart, Uber, Ola, Grofers (now Blinkit), for various things like planning, operations, and customer experience. The company also offers advanced navigation and location services to the vehicle manufacturer and has a 95% market share in GPS navigation in India. It also claims to have 5,000+ enterprise customers with an 80% market share in the location intelligent space.
MapmyIndia Funding
MapmyIndia has so far raised $34 million in venture capital financing in the three rounds since 2007 from Lightbox Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, and Zenrin. In 2015, Flipkart announced that it has acquired 34% stake in the company for Rs 1,600 crore and provided a successful exit to MapmyIndia’s early investors.Over the years, the firm’s value has more than tripled due to the increase in the adoption of its technologies.
Date
Name of the Funding Round
Deal Value
Lead Investors
May 1, 2014
Venture Round
–
Lightbox
February 15, 2009
Series C
$9 mn
Qualcomm Ventures
August 10, 2007
Series B
$25 mn
–
April 19, 2007
Series A
–
–
MapmyIndia IPO
The company filed its draft offer documents with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on August 31, 2021. In its IPO, MapmyIndia was initially expected to go with an offer-for-sale of up to 7,547,959 equity shares by shareholders at a face value of Rs 2 each. This amounted to around 19% of post-offer paid-up equity share capital.
C.E Info Systems, MapmyIndia’s parent company, has increased its total IPO offering to 9,589,478 equity shares, as per the reports dated October 20, 2021. MapmyIndia parent has received SEBI’s approval for its IPO that will consist only of an offer for sale (OFS) from the promoters and the existing shareholders and would offload up to 9,589,478 equity shares, as per the reports dated October 30, 2021. C.E Info Systems had gone live with its IPO on December 9, 2021, where it has seen a strong response from retail investors. The IPO was subscribed around 0.53 times or 53%, as per the reports on 11 am on the same day.
The IPO of MapmyIndia parent witnessed a subscription of over 154 times, as reported on December 13, 2021. The upper limit of the IPO price band was at Rs 1,033, where the offer attracted bids close to Rs 1.12 lakh crore, as disclosed on the same date. The MapmyIndia shares were listed at Rs 1581, which is a 54% premium to its IPO price of Rs 1033 per share.
Every entrepreneur dreams of making their business a success, showcasing their innovation to the entire world and turning their passion into their profession. Once you get the taste of success, you want more of it, so it is very natural for companies to acquire other companies. The reason for acquiring other companies can be numerous. It can be because they want to explore different markets, try to make a different company their own because they find it promising, to increase their market share or something else. So, it is quite normal to see some pretty big companies acquiring startups.
Tata is one of the most popular Indian multinational companies, there is hardly anyone who lives in India and doesn’t know about the company. People in India are literally surrounded by the products of Tata, so it’s kind of impossible to not know about the existence of the company. It is serving the people for over 150 years. Tata was founded in the year 1868 by Jamsetji Tata, and it is the oldest and largest industrial group in India. Being one of the largest industries, it is not something unnatural to acquire different companies, so it keeps on doing that.
In this article, we will talk about some new tech companies that are acquired by Tata, so without any further ado, let’s get started.
The key to making acquisitions is being ready because you really never know when the right big one is going to come along. -James McNerney
Tejas Networks is an optical broadband company that also provides data networking products and solutions to telecom networks and internet service providers in India and in 75 other countries. The company was founded in the year 2000 by Arnob Roy, Kumar N. Sivarajan and Sanjay Nayak. It is one of the most popular exporters of IPs in developing countries like Africa and in South East Asia. The headquarters of Tejas Networks is situated in Bangalore, India. In 2021, Tata Sons acquired majority stakes of Tejas Network which is 26% for INR 1038 Crores.
Saankhya Labs
Saankhya Labs
Saankhya Labs is a wireless communication solutions company, it is a semiconductor firm founded in the year 2007 by Parag Naik and Vishwakumara Kayargadde. The company focuses on providing semiconductor products for radios, satellite communication and other wireless tech, not only in India but in the International market as well.
As per reports, one of Tata Group’s subsidiaries Tejas Network has acquired the majority stake of Saankhya Lab, almost 64.40% for INR 286.94 Crores and made the company one of their own. This acquisition is mainly done to expand the market of wireless products, and customers will get the advantage of a larger product portfolio to choose from.
Cambric Corporation
Cambric Logo
Cambric Corporation is a company that provides engineering services, at the end of 2012 the company had revenue of $25 million. The company was founded in the year 1998 and the headquarters of the company is situated in The United States of America with that it also has a strong presence in Eastern Europe.
Tata technologies acquired Cambric Corporation; the US-based company for $32.5 million in 2013 and since then it has focused on the company and has helped in making Tata Technologies’ presence in the global frontier.
URJA
Urja Logo
Urja was founded in the year 2017 by Anant Jhawar and Saurabh Jhamb. It is an Industrial IoT startup that provides smart energy with the help of smart sensors and analytics platforms. In 2021 Tata Power invested in Urja, the main motive of this is to establish Tata motors as the main energy-as-a-service (EaaS) service provider and to offer smart energy to its customers. Urja mainly works on developing IoT devices for industrial manufacturing applications, air conditioning systems, hydropower plants and thermal plants.
AccessBell
AccessBell is a video conferencing platform that is mainly provided to enterprises for proper workflow in the company. The company was founded by Josh Payne, Kamil Ali and Martin Aguinis in the year 2020. The headquarters of the company is situated in Sans Francisco, The United States of America.
The video conferencing platform provides features like taking personal and collaborative notes; scheduling meetings on the platform and video recording the whole meeting. Even in low connection, one can connect with clients easily, through it and the call drop doesn’t happen that much. Tata Group has acquired AccessBall in 2021. This acquisition will focus on virtual care provided to its people.
Conclusion
Tata being one of the biggest industrial groups in India has been a regular part of our lives, we are surrounded by its products. With an intention of expanding its name in different markets, Tata is acquiring a number of companies every year. Nowadays Tata is especially eyeing different and promising tech startups, to make them its own. It has already acquired a number of tech startups from across the globe to make its presence strong.
FAQs
Who was the founder of Tata?
Jamsetji Tata founded the Tata group in the year 1868.
Who is the CEO of Tata Group?
Natarajan Chandrasekaran is the current CEO of Tata Group.
How many companies are there in the Tata group?
As of there are around 30 companies in the Tata group.
Most of us have grown up listening to stories where doors would open automatically on saying ‘Khulja sim sim’ or tales where lights would go on and off on uttering some magic verses or on just a clap of the hands. But all these unbelievable things have now become a reality, and there is not magic in it. IoT and AI has made many things possible and has simplified our lives in many ways. From ensuring that the geyser is on and you get hot water for a bath, to automatically switching on your favorite music when you reach home after a tiring day at office, IoT is making lives comfortable and saving a lots of time by helping you complete many mundane tasks. This is the reason why customers these days prefer IoT enabled appliances.
Delhi based startup IoTfy is helping consumer durable companies meet this growing demand for IoT enabled goods by offering them ready to use IoT designs for various consumer durables, thus making IoT integration simple and fast. We interviewed Arpit Chhabra, Co founder and CEO IoTfy, to get more details about the startup.
IoTfy is a #MakeinIndia IoT & AI cloud suite that is making it simple for consumer durable brands to add IoT capabilities to their device categories. Through its Chip to Cloud IoT ecosystem, IoTfy works with India’s top consumer durable and appliance brands and enables them to create smart appliances that are responsive to Apps and Voice Commands.
Guided by the mission of “RoI with IoT”, IoTfy’s product suites are helping brands establish scalable business cases for their respective categories. The brand is working with the vision is to enable Consumer Electronics Brands, Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs) and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), to introduce Smart Home Products in their respective categories. Apart from enabling brands to furnish Smart, WiFi enabled products, across 28 categories including air-conditioners, fans, switches, lights, Chimneys, Inverters, Washing Machines, plugs, and air-purifiers, among the others, IoTfy also integrates the products with Voice Assistants like Google Home and Alexa.
IoTfy offerings primarily comprise of:
iACE IoT Platform
iota Device OS
White labelled Mobile Apps
Voice integrations
Apart from the above core products, the company also has other product modules for:
Service Management suite
AI & ML suite
Business Analytics suite
Sales & Dealer suite
Marketing suite
IoTfy recently launched GoCo (inspired by the caption ‘ Go Corona’) UV disinfectant bags, which disinfect the items put inside it. In the current times this product is truly of great help and customers can buy them directly from the website gocobags.com
IoTfy’s GoCo bags
“We are working towards creating an ecosystem for IoT in India. One thing for which we take a lot of inspiration from China is the ecosystem that they have developed around IoT products. We have started taking baby steps towards empowering ODMs in India to be a part of the larger IoT ecosystem, so that we together can fulfil local and global demands. We are providing them access to our Chip-to-Cloud IoT ecosystem, so that they can make their appliance categories smart .” IoTfy founder Arpit Chhabra says
IoTfy – USPs
Some of the USPs that makes IoTfy stand apart from its competitors are–
● Providing IoT Cloud cost as a one time SaaS fee based on the average lifespan of the product category.This stands out because brands/OEMs/ODMs traditionally work on a Bill of Material (BOM) cost for each product and with IoT coming into the picture, cloud becomes a variable cost. This is clearly out of their comfort zone, accounting for something variable to come up with their cost build-up.
IoTfy’s strategy of offering a fixed cloud cost makes decision making very simple for the brands and in turn results in quick decision making to adopt IoT in their categories.
● IoTfy decoupled WiFi Hardware from the IoT Cloud Platform, giving brand partners the option to source hardware from vendors of their choice. This also is a game changer because it gives an opportunity to the customers to source hardware as per their requirements and quality specifications.
● IoTfy’s iACE IoT Cloud Platform addresses all possible concerns w.r.t Data Security, Long term sustained usage and Data localization. This makes IoTfy a long term partner for brands/ODMs/OEMs customers alike
● IoTfy is focused on various India specific requirements such as adding vernacular support on Mobile Applications, adding WiFi Direct functionality (using this end consumers can control devices without having need of a WiFi router, which is a must for market like India)
● Focusing on “RoI from IoT” from day 1 by providing 360 degree coverage of business requirements w.r.t after sales service, sales, and marketing through its product suites.
● Engaging with OEMs and ODMs alongside brands has helped IoTfy build an ecosystem of manufacturers to scale IoT products adoption in India.
● Onboarding Electronic Component Distributors (ECDs) as channel partners to upsell IoTfy’s iota – Device Operating System.
“One of the key USPs of IoTfy is that we promise recurring business to our brand partners in the form of post-sale service. In addition to creating IoT capabilities for the brands’ various product categories, we offer them white-labelled Apps, that have been designed for the Indian end users. These Apps have a smart built-in feature, that gives the users prompters every time the service of a certain appliance is due and also allows them to book the service with the brand at the click of a button, leading to recurring business for them. Such intelligent features ensure guaranteed RoI and sustainable value to its brand partners.” Arpit quotes emphasizing IoTfy’s USPs
IoTfy founders Arpit Chhabra, Sushant Taneja, Shashank Saxena, Shivam Dikshit were Part of the Startup Leadership Program in New Delhi in 2012. Shashank was Shivam’s co-founder in an IoT consultancy that they previously co-founded. During 2012-14, Arpit assisted a few brands such as Godfrey Phillips India and Barista, develop IoT solutions to meet some of their business requirements and during the same time frame, Shashank and Shivam had also helped a few of their clients with IoT solutions.
It all started when Arpit and Shashank were sharing notes w.r.t the solutions they had developed in the past and realized both of them faced the same problems while developing custom cloud platform for their IoT solutions, and they realized there is a need of an IoT Cloud Platform that is easy to set up, use-case agnostic, and vertical agnostic. Moved by this common idea, all the four founder started to work on the concept of IoTfy, leading to the launch of the startup in 2017.
Presently, Arpit Chhabra (36) is the CEO of IoTfy. He has been a serial entrepreneur having built four start-ups & successfully exiting two of them. His last exit was an IoT product start-up, Ad-Box.
Arpit has worked with start-ups since the last 14 years with the last 7 years in IoT products. He has worn multiple hats both as the hacker and the hustler.
Arpit graduated from Delhi University (NSIT) with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in 2005
Arpit Chhabra, Co-founder & CEO IoTfy
Sushant Taneja (33) is Vice President, Technology at IoTfy. He heads the cloud and mobile apps technology development. He has an exhaustive hands-on experience of over a decade in IT technologies. He has the technical know-how of things working at scale and was working with Snapdeal before co-founding IoTfy. Previously, Sushant had co-founded Ekayan Software Labs and has been a founding member in StoreMonk.
Shashank Saxena(31) is the Vice President, Embedded Systems at IoTfy. He takes care of all things hardware. Shashank has 10 years of experience in designing and developing hardware products. Prior to IoTfy, Shashank has been running an IoT consulting firm where he catered more than 200 customers. He was awarded two monetary grants from MSME, Govt. of India for two innovative IoT products in 2010 and 2011.
Shivam Dikshit (30) is Vice President, Marketing at IoTfy. He has been previously heading business development and marketing for an IoT consulting firm and was able to establish a diverse customer base ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. He is a community builder and has been a founding member of PeerHack, Bootstrap Weekend & Hack4India.
Smriti Talwar (36) is the Vice President, Pre-Sales at IoTfy. She has an industry experience of 15 years. Smriti is ex-Maruti Suzuki R&D and founder of two start-ups. She completed her Mechanical Engineering from Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women in 2005. She was part of the Start-up Leadership Program and also was the PL for the SLP New Delhi chapter. Smriti joined IoTfy later in January 2019.
IoTfy Core Team
IoTfy has a team of engineers with various expertise ranging from software developers to hardware engineers. The team has Front end developers with expertise in Javascript, HTML; Native Android and iOS developers; Cloud application developers with Python and Java skills. Firmware developers with expertise in embedded C/C++ and RTOS. The startup is in its growing stage and is currently hiring. Speaking about the hiring funda of IoTfy, founder Arpit Chhabra said,
“We look for people who are passionate about solving problems with practical aptitude. We believe that skills can be acquired, passion and problem solving attitude is something that we look for while we are hiring. Because of our previous experience in the field of IoT, we have been able to get onboard good technical talent.”
Why and How IoTfy was Started
IoTfy was started as a weekend project back in Dec of 2014, where Arpit, Sushant, Shashank and Shivam used to meet and do development hackathons. The idea at that point was to build a WordPress-like platform for IoT that can be used across the sectors for various IoT use cases. The team realized the need for an IoT platform that is easy to set up, use-case agnostic and vertical agnostic while developing custom IoT solutions for various clients in their previous organisations.
Based on inputs from the market, the team realized that sticking to a vertical will bring focus and long term future. With that understanding, Appliance and Consumer Electronics (ACE) space was chosen owing to its huge volume and IoT use cases.
IoTfy started with Water Purifier as a first appliance and now has moved to supporting 28 appliance categories such as Air Conditioners, Air Coolers, Water Purifiers, Water Heaters, Smart lights, Chimneys, Inverters, Fans, Smart plugs, and washing machines with its offerings.
“Water Purifier has its own reasons to be our first offering for it being a very beautiful use case of IoT specially in the after sales market. Preventive maintenance, eliminating warranty frauds and maximizing after sales revenues we sought using IoT. We worked with the premium water purifier brand of India for this project. The response from the market was overwhelmingly positive.” says Arpit about the initial offering of the company
The IoT Industry
The Internet of Things (IoT) in India now is not a thing of the future, it is growing and thriving right in front of our eyes. From Smart appliances to Smart Energy metering, from Industry 4.0 to Smart vehicles, IoT powered products are touching our lives on a daily basis.
As reported, Internet of Things Market (IoT Market) Size was valued at USD 212.1 Billion in 2018 and is expected to witness a growth of 25.68% from 2019-2026 and reach USD 1,319.08 Billion by 2026.
Again another report published by MarketsandMarkets says that the global IoT in Smart Cities Market size is expected to grow from USD 113.1 billion in 2020 to USD 260.0 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 18.1% during the forecast period.
“Looking at this growing market alongside Prime Minister Modi’s call to make India “Self Reliant” or “AtmaNirbhar” unearths some very interesting aspects. Particularly because building blocks of any IoT product or solution require seamless amalgamation of hardware, cloud stacks, mobile applications, data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI), it is a huge opportunity for the Industry to make India “AtmaNirbhar”. Arpit adds
IoTfy – Name & Logo
IoTfy means IoTfying the device categories to make them smart. IoTfy also means IoTfor you. Making IoT implementation simple and easy for consumer durable brands. The founder’s idea behind the name is to keep it relevant, short, catchy and easy to recall.
IoTfy Logo
IoTfy – Funding
IoTfy is looking forward to raise a Series A funding. The IoTfy team intends to use the funds raised for
Tech team expansion for building new product features and adding support for new categories.
Expanding the client base in India (focus on hiring augmenting Pre-sales, Sales and Marketing teams)
Expansion in geographies outside India
IoTfy – Revenue Model
IoTfy levies a one time SaaS feefor the IoT cloud based on the average lifespan of the product category. IoTfy’s clients i.e brands/OEMs/ODMs are comfortable to work on a fixed cost system and the startup’s revenue model is designed considering this very comfort level.
IoTfy – Marketing Strategies
Acquiring clients is always challenging, however, the good part for IoTfy was that they were dealing with big brands who mostly had IoT in their roadmap. It was more about educating, consulting the customers and prospects w.r.t business cases and features IoT can open up, and finally helping them with technology implementation. As Arpit says,
“Our problem is half solved if there is a positive intent for IoT adoption, the remaining half is to help them develop trust in the IoT products and solutions that we offer. We counter that through quick Proof Of Concepts (POCs) on their existing appliances. This also helps us reduce our sales lead time and establishes our customer’s trust in our capabilities.”
Besides, quality and support has been two main features on which IoTfy banks for attracting and retaining customers.
The other ways of customer acquisition includes holding Product Conclaves to educate the industry at large w.r.t IoT. Every 3-5 weeks, IoTfy team picked up a category such as Air Conditioners, Smart fans, water purifiers etc and invited industry colleagues from various departments such as Product Planning, Marketing, R&D, and Product management to talk about nuances of IoT implementation for these categories. This helped the startup in creating a stronger demand in general.
In 2020, IoTfy also conducted various Virtual Round Tables inviting industry experts to talk about IoT at large and what opportunities Covid has brought for Smart products. These conclaves and VRTs were accepted and appreciated across the industry and also brought inbound inquiries.
IoTfy also has a strong network of channel partners who upsell our Device Licences (iota) to various brands and OEMs/ODMs. These licenses include the lifetime cost for the cloud usage and the firmware for the WiFi module.
IoTfy founders believe that one of the biggest challenge for the startup was about being an early adopter in the segment, as the startup had to put in lots of efforts on educating the consumer durable brands on the benefits of adopting IoT.
“At that time, there was not enough acceptance of the IoT use cases because almost every brand felt IoT and these use cases are rather early for the market. Good part was they validated our hypothesis of the use cases and their potential impact on their businesses and end users.” says Arpit.
As they say “Seeing is Believing”, IoTfy developed its first IoT product for Water Purifier use case and started handing out product samples to major brands for evaluation. During the evaluation, brands were able to get a sense on how IoT water purifiers will work from the end user’s perspective. What will be visible to the end user on the mobile app, how the end user will control the water purifier, how alerts for AI-based service reminders and part replacement alerts will be notified to the end user and CRM systems used by the service team of these brands.
These exercises although were long and time consuming, but they helped the startup understand their potential customers better. The team was able to absorb a lot of information from them with respect to how various stakeholders such as R&D, Product Planning, New Product Development, Service, and Sales work at appliances and consumer durables companies. As the founders says, this experience has helped the IoTfy team a lot now both in terms of developing products and closing deals.
Long Sales Cycles is another challenge for the IoTfy team. Working with appliances and consumer durables on any product is a long cycle as they have to work with various stakeholders. During the initial days, the sales cycles were between 6-8 months typically. Now, as the startup has ready designs for over 28 categories, so they are able to demonstrate IoT capabilities on any appliance in a matter of hours and this has reduced our sales cycle to less than 3 weeks.
IoTfy – Growth & Future Plans
The list of IoTfy’s achievements is long indeed. The tech startup supports several multinational brands based in Japan, Korea and Germany, along with home grown Indian brands. It currently works with 2 of top 5 Air Conditioner brands, 3 of top 4 fan brands, 2 of top 5 LED light brands, and 3 of top 5 Water purifier brands in India. Working closely with top brands and OEMs, they been credited to quickly create innovative and meaningful use-cases and facilitate launch of IoT products in as less as two weeks.
IoTfy’s IoT platform currently powers over 450,000 devices and plans to onboard 1 million new devices on its platform within 2020 itself. The number of devices that it supports on its platform has grown by over 600% YoY in the last two Financial years. IoTfy started with a focus on large appliances such as Air Conditioners and currently, it is powering over 200,000 IoT Air Conditioners in the India market, virtually holding over 90% of the market share in the Smart Air Conditioning space in India.
In terms of revenue, the self-funded startup has grown by over 600% YoY in the last two Financial years and closed FY 2019-20 with revenues of around INR 4 crore and has projects over INR 12 crores of revenue for the upcoming FY 2020-21. With respect to the pipeline, IoTfy is currently also in the process of undertaking customer trials with 10 major brands, while products powered by the brand’s proprietary technologies will be launching in the Indian market all through the year. The brand’s strategy of working with ODMs/OEMs has provided rich dividends and 3 categories where it has already started to gain dominance include Lighting, Smart Plugs and Switches and Fans.
“We believe our biggest achievements are closing deals with leading Indian appliance manufacturers alongside marquee Japanese and Korean appliance manufacturers. Not only have we learnt a lot during the process, we also kept improving ourselves at every step. The kind of confidence we got by exceeding their benchmarks is something that we proudly wear as a feather in our hat. We also have managed to reduce the sales cycle from a typical of 6-8 months to 2-3 months.” Arpit says commenting on the startup’s achievements.
IoTfy – Special Offers
StartupTalky readers can avail discount of 10% on GoCo bags using the code “Talk IoTfy” on the IoTfy website.
IoTfy – FAQs
What is IoTfy?
IoTfy is a leading IoT solutions provider for smart home automation, smart home lighting.
Who are the founders of IoTfy?
Arpit Chhabra, Sushant Taneja, Shashank Saxena and Shivam Dikshit are the founders of IoTfy.
The content in this post has been approved by the organization it is based on.
A modern and efficient smartphone-based access control solution to manage your accesses. Spintly Smart Access Solutions enables indoor as well as outdoor management of your access points like doors and gates. Its contactless attendance management system helps you monitor the attendance of your employees in real-time or download comprehensive reports from anywhere in the world through Spintly’s cloud-based access control system.
Spintly offers its contactless technology solutions for workplaces, residential and hotels. Meet Goa-based Spintly, an IoT startup that develops wireless cloud-based access control systems for homes and businesses.
Spintly is the world’s first truly wireless, BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) smart access control system. The company provide contactless, touchless, and smartphone-based access control and attendance management solutions for enterprise, hospitality and residential applications.
Spintly is built upon firm values that foster innovation and continuous improvement. The founders took a special interest in developing local talent from surrounding universities into world-class engineers. Their team consists of young passionate minds that do not consider what they do as just a job. It is a community where the thirst for knowledge and logical thinking is highly valued.
As both the founders have experience working in world class companies like Nokia, Broadcom and TCS, they have adopted the best practices from these companies. A lot of focus is given to self-improvement and knowledge acquisition. The employees are given freedom to choose their own style of working and no formal titles are used. They believe in compensating their employees fairly and motivating them by sharing with them the company’s successes. They have always encouraged the spirit of questioning set rules and continuous learning and improvement.
Spintly is founded by Rohin Parkar and Malcolm Dsouza — engineers with nearly two decades of experience in Bluetooth and wireless technology.
Spintly Founders | Malcolm Dsouza and Rohin Parkar
Being childhood friends, the two founders; Rohin and Malcolm, often talked about their experiences and future plans. They were based in America and always talked of starting something of their own, back in their hometown in Goa, India. They found that their combined expertise and experience favourably complemented each other and they decided to join hands to make this dream come true.
Rohin Parkar has completed his BE (ETC) in 2001 from Goa college of Engineering, Goa; and management studies from MBA School – UTD Dallas TX. He has 17 Years of experience in wireless product development, manufacturing and leadership, Rich Silicon Valley startup experience. Rohin handles the business, Sales, funding and marketing aspects of the company.
Malcolm Dsouza has also completed his BE (ETC) in 2001 from Goa college of Engineering. With 17+ years of experience Firmware development, signal processing and wireless Technology, he handles the technology and operational aspects. Mr. Dsouza has even worked at Nokia in Chicago, IL.
Their hiring funda keeps them alleviating at each step of their business. One of their USP is passionate and talented team of engineers. They have invested considerable time and efforts in searching for the right candidates. Their main focus has been the involvement with local colleges and establishing ties with the professors. By attracting the most talented young minds with the right attitude to do industry relevant project/internship with Spintly, and they were able to evaluate and select a right team.
Spintly team
How Spintly Started?
The 2 co-founders agreed that they needed to build a product company that would solve real-life problems. So, it all started with a quest to find the right problem; one that was concrete enough to warrant a solution and one that they could leverage their skills and knowledge to solve. They also felt that they should do something to build a technology and a knowledge-based ecosystem in India, which can make use of the immense talent of young engineers in India.
They started with a simple 3-D printed version of the product and deployed it in known organizations. Continuous feedback collected from these initial customers helped Spintly to steer-up their product in the right direction and to get a validation to their idea.
Early in the journey they were working on generic BLE-mesh based IoT platform for Smart buildings. They started interacting with customers with their platform and came across a pain point the buildings were facing in the access control space, which was the access control systems they had were very bulky. These bulky access control systems needed a lot of labour and wiring for deployment and in addition these systems were dumb. They quickly ideated a fully wireless, cloud-based access control solution which eliminated more than 90% of the cabling. They built their own initial boards in house and 3D-printed the products.
Spintly Product Image
Their first 50 units delivered to the customers were 3D-printed. Once they got a stable product and good customer feedback. They already knew that they were on to something which can turn out golden and it started to scale-up.
CIBA, FIIRE, P&G, MyGate – were some of Spintly’s early customers. They spoke to and received a very positive feedback on their products and technology. They also spoke to their network in Silicon-valley and got their product-platform vetted and validated as a globally disruptive solution for access control.
Spintly- Name, Tagline and Logo
Spintly- Logo
The founders were searching for something catchy and fresh. Rohin one day suddenly inspired by Swiggy came up with it. It doesn’t mean anything, but we find it apt as we are here to spin and revolutionize the access control industry. “Simplify” was the key word and “Spintly” sounded pretty close.
Their tagline goes with “Amplify The Simplicity”– They asked suggestions from our team, and this one got the most votes and was closest to what Spintly is up for– Simplifying access control.
Rohin came up with the initial hand drawn logo with a wireless symbol on the letter “I” in Spintly. Then they got it designed by a professional designer. The logo has been trademarked by Spintly.
Spintly- Vision and Mission
Spintly aims to simplify access control by contact-less control due to COVID-19, and providing solutions at ease to its customers. The company keeps up with the vision to be the leader in the wireless access control space. The long-term goal that they are constantly working upon is to become the 1st truly wireless access control solution provider, we want to revolutionize the way the world does access control.
Markets and Markets forecast the physical security market to grow from USD 84.1 billion in 2018 to USD 119.4 billion by 2023, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.3% during the forecast period. Their target market- Global TAM = $119B, SAM = $1B (Over next 4 Years in India and USA). Currently, Spintly is in its 2nd year of Revenue and Spintly intends to grow rapidly to an Annual Revenue of $50M in 2024. They calculated it with the help of this source.
The major factors driving the physical security market are rising incidents of terror attacks, technological advancements and deployment of wireless technology in security systems, increasing use of Internet Protocol (IP)-based cameras for video surveillance, and rising adoption of Internet of Things (IoT)-based security systems with cloud computing platforms.
Spintly- Hardware Products
Spintly hardware products
3 In One Access Control System
Seamless access control experience with Smartphone, key cards, and fingerprints.
SMACC-OUT
Designed to work with outdoor access barriers.
SMACC-UNO
Mobile based indoor access control system.
Spintly- Smart Access Features
Mobile-Based Access
Smartphone has replaced many devices like cameras, watches, etc. Replacing the access card as well to mark attendance and gain access. Mobile is the safest means of identification as it has its own authentication known only to you. It is also the most accessible and handy device always in your hand.
Spintly Mobile based access
Eliminates Wirings
Wireless Bluetooth Low Energy Mesh technology needs no wiring except for a power connection. No more messy and cluttered server rooms. No more ugly cables running from access points with Spintly.
Works without Internet
Their technology works on Bluetooth Low Energy Mesh, so all swipes will be recorded even with no internet. Once the internet comes back on, the swipe data will be automatically uploaded on the cloud through the Spintly gateway.
Cloud-based access
Accessing entry/exit data from anywhere in the world at any time. Their cloud-based system can be accessed by the Spintly Android/IOS app or the Spintly website on your laptop.
Third-Party Integrations
Spintly is integrated with the top Payroll and HR management software like GreytHR, Extenta, Tally, etc. More integrations are currently under process.
Multiple Access Methods
Spintly want more options to grant access to your employees, they have a wide range of access options. From conventional NFC card-based access to fingerprint/biometric access. They even provide with a manual button for those access points where identity capture is not necessary.
Spintly IoT | Spintly contactless access and attendance management system
Spintly- Products/ Services
Spintly’s access control readers get installed on each of the doors which require access control. These readers communicate with each other over a wireless mesh network powered by Bluetooth Mesh. Users are granted access to the doors by passing a digital key from the cloud to their smartphones. Now, users can unlock doors with their smartphones and the access logs and history is captured in Real-time. Some of its exceptional features are:
The system solves the problem of excessive wiring and need for skilled and expensive labor to deploy access control systems.
It also solves the problem of managing access cards for employees.
Finally, it eliminates the need of maintaining expensive hardware equipment for access control.
Fully wireless access control system which is easy to set-up and is smartphone friendly.
Spitnly has pivoted twice, before. First, from being a Smart Home platform to a Smart-building Platform to finally a Smart access control platform. The Pivots were required to get more focused into a narrow-problem area. However, the technology developed can be used for other use cases in future.
Spintly- Business Model and Revenue Model
Spintly generates one-time sales revenue through product sale and then generated recurring revenue through software subscription. Spintly sells its products and services directly to end customers and also through channel partner network spread across the country.
The company was initially launched as a technology development company and slowly evolved into a product focused company with access control as the main offering. This was achieved by establishing a feedback loop with the customers by constantly interacting with early Pilot customers. Constant customer interaction and feedback is what worked to build a product which customers wanted and that is how Spintly reached their first 100 users.
Developing a culture of extreme customer obsession is something which Spintly strives for and that is what has worked for them to retain their customers. They have built key partnerships with other software companies like GreytHR and Mygate which allows them to acquire more and more customers.
Spintly- Challenges
One of the major challenges, Spintly faced was- the recent ongoing global pandemic “The COVID-19.” It not only struck the Indian economy but their business also got adversely affected. They quickly were able to change their messaging to a contact-less system and were able to attract customer attention. But for 2-3 months, going without revenues was a very difficult phase in the business.
Spintly- Competitors
Spintly’s top competitors include Openpath, GHA Technologies, Axis Security and Netsync. Openpath (also known as Openpath Security) is a company developing smart security solutions for offices.
Spintly currently operates out of 4 locations, Bangalore being the main office which runs the Sales and marketing operations of the company. Goa is the R&D center, Mumbai Office is focused on the Sales for the West region and they have an Office in Los Angeles, USA which takes care of the Sales for North America.
Spintly has reached 3000 users within a Month and an on-month growth rate of 15% prior to COVID-19. Spintly, currently has an order pipeline of about 1.5Cr and a user on-boarding visibility of over 20,000 users in the next 4-5 months. Spintly has acquired notable clients like Mygate, Smartworks, FF21, L&T realty etc.
Spintly plans to grow its sales and distribution network across the country in 2020-21 and also plans to acquire a sizable customer base in the USA. Spintly is also in discussions with Global industry leaders for key technology partnerships.
Spintly- Coupon Code/ Offers
Spintly gives away the below Coupon Code to avail 10% discount and 2 Months Free Software Subscription.
Over the past few years, there has been an increasing number of Bollywood stars trying to do different things to give their career a whole new direction. Some celebrities are investing in startups that align with their interests in order to enter the technological space that is booming in India.
In 2020, many celebrities like Alia Bhatt, Suniel Shetty, Shilpa Shetty Kundra, Madhuri Dixit Nene, Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif, Deepika Padukone and Sonu Sood have become angel investors to upcoming startups that have potential especially during the hard times of global pandemic.
While some celebrities have become entrepreneurs themselves and are leaving no stone unturned to get into the competitive business world. The latest inclusion in the list of actors turned investors is a world renowned actress, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is an Indian actress, who was also crowned Miss World in the year of 1994. The former Miss World is one of the most influential celebrities in India and is a recipient of Padma Shri by The Government of India and The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of France.
She is also regarded as the most beautiful woman in the world, often times by the media. The actress is known for work in movies like Devdas, Hum Dill De Chuke Sanam, Jodhaa Akbar, Mohabbatein, Enthiran, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, among others. But besides that she is also known for her humanitarian work as she is also the Goodwill ambassador for UNAIDS.
Aishwarya is now an angel investor to a company known as Ambee, which is an environment intelligence startup. The actress has also recently funded in a nutrition based healthcare startup called Possible. This is however, not her first investment as she had also funded in a wind power project in Maharashtra over ten years back.
Lets look at the Startups Funded By Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
Possible
Possible is a nutrition based startup earlier known as Truweight Wellness which was founded by Vishnu Saraf and Megha More in 2015. The company offers research driven nutrition service and healthy food products through its website. It also helps in leading a sustainable health, wealth loss and management of lifestyle diseases.
The startup claims to help over 40 thousand people in losing weight and managing diseases and aims to transform lives of more than 10 million people by helping them fight Lifestyle Disease.
Founders of Possible, Vishnu Saraf and Megha More
The website has over 50,000 success stories with more than 100 nutritionists and doctors and sells more than 50 super foods. The company excels in providing services and products to Combat Obesity, Thyroid, PCOS, Diabetes’s and others.
The company offers a wide variety of services like video tutorials, personal nutritionists, online consultations with doctors, customized meal plans, super foods including a tech based scientist’s analysis with constant mentoring. The strategy of the company is to provide physician supervision by an ayurvedic doctor, a personal health coach that will guide you in dietary habits.
The healthcare startup also offers a Pocket clinic to get on spot advice from doctors and a wide range of nutrient rich food products that are designed by food scientists.
Possible aims to helps people live a long life by converting their own kitchen into a pharmacy and using food as their medicine. Which is why the startup managed to raise Rs. 5 Crore from Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as a part of a larger funding round which raised over Rs. 15 Crore in total.
Possible is also backed by Blacksoil and Kalaari Capital and has also offered letters to raise Rs. 6.69 Crore from six investors. There are over 90 million health conscious people in Indian by 2018, which is expected to reach 130 million by 2022, according to the Redseer report.
With Covid 19 Pandemic, the customers in the country are becoming health conscious and are preferring to eat healthy food to build their immunity.
Ambee is a well-known Bengaluru based, environmental intelligence startup that makes a mobile box which measures particulate matter and high density to better analyze and predict immediate timely emergency warnings.
The company provides data on hyper local air quality for developers, consumers, health researchers and media companies. The company aims to measure the quality of air around the world, the ration sources of emissions, create emission inventory not just for urban but even in rural places around the world.
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan funding Ambee
The company was founded by Akshay Joshi, Jaideep Singh and Madhusudhan Anand in 2017. Ambee provides solutions for indoor air quality of different places like offices and commercial spaces like malls, hotels and cinemas, etc.
The platform helps its users make informed decisions or take preventive measures by providing data and analytics in the times environment distress. The data that the company provides includes sensor data, weather patterns, traffic data, ratio of diesel to petrol vehicles and even contextual data such as road repair, garbage burning and density of diesel generators.
The company monitors air quality with data through 100 sensors that has already been installed across Bengaluru. India has over 14 out of 20 of the most polluted cities in the world. According to World Health Organization (WHO), more than 10% to 50% of the indoor environments in countries like North America, Europe, Australia, Japan and India are polluted.
India has also witnessed a sudden growth in the number of cleantech/air purifier startups like Nanoclean, Clairco, Phoenix Robotix, Chakr Innovation, etc that are trying to solve India’s energy and pollution issues.
They have a variety of air quality monitors that can track a wide variety of pollutants and real time analytics in order to ensure that spaces know what people are breathing at that time and take corrective actions where necessary.
Which is why Aishwarya Rai Bachchan along with her mother Vrinda KR invested over Rs 50 lakh each at Ambee. The IoT startup has so far raised over Rs. 3.22 Crore from multiple investors Techstarts Bangalore, Touchstone Venture LLP, Motivated Minds Wealth LLP and Shekhar Kamal Lodha HUF.
