From robots to pivots to ideas on clean technology, this Startup Saturday in Pune and Mumbai had it all. Read on what entrepreneurs from these two cities had to offer.
Startup Saturday, Pune: This Startup Saturday turned out to be very interesting because the theme was clean technology.
So prior
to this meet, my notion of clean tech was constrained to something like cleaning up gobar and converting it into clean, odorless and colorless biogas, or harnessing some electricity for street lamps from the scorching heat that we are suffering from today. With this presentation my idea for clean tech has completely changed.
Anil Paranjape started with a simple definition of clean tech— anything done in a cleaner way or in a less dirty fashion (may be cleaning your bedroom for starters!).
One thing Anil was able to thoroughly convince was his motto, ‘Sustainability has to come from the heart'. The presentation started with a series of Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) regarding the state of our whole ecosystem and the mess surrounding it. There were lots of disturbing questions which made one think for a moment, about the sorry state of the world we are living in. One question that caught my attention was “What’s the unhealthiest food for babies?” Quite surprisingly, the answer turned out to be, breast milk (smartly excluded from the answer options). Now with all the campaigning that has been going around to promote breast milk, this was a total surprise. The reason being that women living in poor conditions don’t have access to clean source of water and hence consume a lot of unnatural chemicals, which in turn is consumed by the baby in the form of breast milk.
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Another good example of clean tech was about a group of a MIT, LBNL scientists and fellow colleagues who joined hands to build a stove which would consume less than half the firewood a normal stove would consume. The stove is cylindrical, made of sheet metal, two feet high and 14 inches in diameter and sells for $2.49. So what’s the big deal, you would ask?
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There are about 2.2 million refugees huddled in makeshift camps in the Darfur region of western Sudan. In the camps, they are safe but the womenfolk have to venture out in search of firewood. Once they are out of the camps they are susceptible to physical abuse by Arab militia. According to Ashok Gadgil, key researcher of this project, this stove reduces the probability of women getting physically abused.
They have won the “Popular Mechanics Award”.
Here we don’t see a path-breaking technology, but it really addresses a very serious issue. “Sustainability has to come from the heart”—The statement made by Anil from the very beginning of the presentation sounds very apt.
The second presentation was from Padmakar Kelkar of Bright Star Electronics.
According to Padmakar, their product is a first of its kind solar powered pivot in the world, although there are pivots that are powered by external electric supply.
Their pivot is controlled by microcontroller and is smart enough to calculate the spread and distribution of the field. One unique feature they talked about was their end gun, which sprinkled into the corners of the field.
The advantages of pivot irrigation over flood irrigations mentioned included:
1. Less water wastage
2. Even distribution of water
3. Improves cultivation upto 20 percent
One of the major advantages they spoke about was that the pivot involves no human involvement. So this way a farmer is not dependant on the field laborers who usually are very inconsistent with their schedule. He/she can put the pivot for charging during the day and the pivot would irrigate the farm in the night.
Currently the pivot is used to irrigate onion farms. They are running a pilot project on the farms of Rawat brothers. Bright Star expects the market size of close to 500 units in the next three years in India. However, they feel the greater potential for this lies in the American and European markets, where the farms are huge in size and farmers are sound financially to purchase their pivot. According to their calculations, Return of Investment (ROI) for a farmer purchasing their pivot is close to five years for a farm of twenty five acres. Currently there has been no subsidy offered by the government; the reason being the equipment is meant for bigger farmers and government doesn’t offer subsidy for those well-off.
They also presented a video which had Bharat Banka, MD and CEO of Aditya Birla Private Equity analyzing the business potential of their product. He stated that the product has addressed the pain point effectively for two reasons. The product meant to be used for agriculture and water conservation, which is the need of the hour, would be valuable to the farmers. It is using solar power, which is a clean source of energy. Also it cuts off the dependability on the unreliable source of power from the electricity board.
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As for challenges, the pivot was built for farms in the range of twenty five acres and above whereas the farms in India are very fragmented. Even if a farmer owns fifty acres of land, the typical size of each farm would be three to five acres. So they are trying to target community-oriented farming where a group of farmers plan to farm a single homogeneous plot of land.
Also they are trying to respond to the market needs with a smaller version of their pivot which is cheaper and can work out well for a small plot of land. Since they have developed expertise in designing the controllers for the pivot, they are planning to sell the controllers to European countries where these can be used in externally-powered pivots.
Startup Saturday, Mumbai: HeadStart presented a new format specially designed for April Startup Saturday. It had pitches in front of the panelists, live TV show recorded and it had real power-packed interactions.
The Special Lightening Pitches HeadStart had a Panelist Lightening Pitch section for this month. Here selected startups got an opportunity to present in front of the panelists who have been there and done that.
We had the first lightening pitch from an ex-service man. Mr Shivaram who has served the Indian Navy in his heydays has now taken the baton forward with his own venture IDACS. IDACS manufactures energy-saving products for corporate houses and residents at very affordable costs. Having served clients like NICE, and Microsoft; IDACS presented its special panelist LP to take some solid advice and seek some funding for the company.
Next to present in front of the Panel was Saptarshi from Robosoft Systems. A regular head starter, Saptarshi with his group of friends has a challenging task. To create more awareness for Robotics and sell products that help corporate clients ease their life. A product called Duct Cleaner Robot was briefed which has already won clients like Blue Star and Voltas. It was quite interesting to find out how Robosoft is trying hard to make people understand the concept of Robotics and how they have derived a business model for sustenance by enlightening many minds across engineering campuses in India.
The Panelists advice: The panelists were clear that a startup which can sustain and doesn’t have an immediate increase in size on cards should ideally not look forward to venture capital. As one of them said that if you have a positive cashflow and do not have a vision to multiply the size of your venture as of now, seeking venture capital would simply mean discounting yourself to the maximum and losing the game in the long run.
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Regular Lightening Pitches:
Apart from the Special LPs which got a chance to present in front of the Panelists, the attendees also had a chance to experience two other technology ventures that were presented by Ankesh of SuccessNexus and Spandan from MobStreet.Success Nexus, a startup by Ankesh Kothari takes a completely new look at the affiliate model which, Ankesh claims, hasn’t evolved since 1998. The business model relies on a win-win-win deal where the seller gets new buyers, the affiliates who put the word out get some commission on sales and Success Nexus which hosts the complete platform takes small percentage fee. Currently under beta phase, Ankesh invited the audience to sign-up with an invite code (123456) and experience the fun themselves.
Next was a very apt and well-thought presentation from MobStreet. While Spandan was starting the presentation, the stage was getting reworked for the special ET Now episode on Mobile VAS. Ideally it becomes a challenge to present in a chaotic situation but Spandan had a better idea. He started the discussion talking about how superstitious he is, rolled on discussing the struggle that people in metros have to go through and ended up with an offer no one could reject. MobStreet.in, his startup offers best deals on various services like spas, restaurants, movies, sports, etc and other best stuff in your city. And what deal he threw to the crowd? A straight 50 percent off on any bill at Pizzorama by paying one rupee in advance to MobStreet.
ET Now Panel discussion on Mobile VAS:
A segment of the very popular ET Now show—Starting Up was shot among HeadStart audience. The team included Virendra Gupta, Founder of Verse, Samir Bangara, COO Indiagames, Sailesh Varudkar, AVP VAS, Vodafone, Zubin Dibash, Head AVP Innovations, TATA Docomo, Siddharth Agarwal, Founder Mobicule and our very own host Sudhir Syal.
Before winding up there was a special segment which was hosted by ET Now. The panelists threw good insights on how we are experiencing the Indianized version of trends like the Apple App Store and VAS applications which were once only talked about in the US and Japan. The team even shed some light on how business models can sprout considering the demographics, the likes and dislikes and the purchasing power of an ordinary Indian consumer. Many intriguing questions from the audience were handled by the panelists.
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