avanee Sundaramoorthy cofounded Uncanny Vision, an artificial intelligence start-up, which gives machines an ability to see and analyse like humans, from a garage in a residential area in east Bengaluru. He and other cofounders Ranjith Parakkal and Devadas Parakkal then moved to a proper office on M. G. Road.
The founders soon realised that the main hurdle for them is not just workspace, Internet connection or electricity supply, but access to large multinational companies to sell their innovation. Last December, Uncanny Vision moved to ‘Start-up Warehouse’ formed by IT trade body Nasscom along with Government of Karnataka at Old Airport Road. The co-working space and accelerator for early stage technology product firms is surrounded by tech companies like Intel, Microsoft and Dell. Now every week the Uncanny Vision team meet top executives from big companies like IBM and Bosch, who visit the facility to check out hot technology products.
Building relationships“It has been amazing for us. Instead of us going to them, they come to us,” said Mr. Sundaramoorthy, 37, who quit his job at chip maker Xilinx to launch the firm. Besides building relationships with these executives, Uncanny Vision has bagged pilot projects from Qualcomm, the world’s largest maker of chips that go inside smartphones and Target Corp, the second-largest discount retailer in the United States.
Nasscom, which started as lobbyist for the country’s offshoring industry or ‘big boys club’ has transformed into a powerhouse for providing infrastructure and mentoring to young firms and helping them to connect with investors. Ashok Madaravally, Deputy Director at Nasscom, said that in the last two decades the organisation helped the IT services industry grow from $1 billion (Rs.6,645 crore) to $140 billion (Rs.9.3 lakh crore). “But we realised that the next wave of innovation is going to come from these new age product companies,” said Mr. Madaravally, who represents Nasscom’s ambitious ‘10,000 Start-ups’ programme from Bengaluru. The ‘Start-up Warehouse’ is part of this programme — that helps young firms with mentoring, funding and industry connects. It expects to have nine such facilities across the country this year.
Uncanny Vision, which went through various mentoring programmes has also narrowed down its focus towards the area of surveillance. The firm said that customers would not need to manually monitor the behaviour and activities of people, or other changing information continuously. Its software that sits on surveillance devices such as cameras does it all. The applications range from monitoring elderly patients to the security of buildings.
Unlike fancy offices at companies like Google, the ‘Start-up Warehouse’ is not a Disneyland to have massage chairs or a cafeteria filled with chocolates and potato chips. If you take a stroll around the warehouse, which is equal to a supermarket, one can find a juice shop, traditional coffee containers and food cooked by another small firm that aims to provide nutritionally balanced meal.
NetworkingOne of the top guests who visited the warehouse recently was Thuan Pham, Chief Technology Officer at Uber Technologies Inc., the car-sharing service that lets people order transportation via a smartphone. “We pitched our product to him (Mr. Pham) and are in talks to take it forward,” said Soumik Ukil, 37, Chief Executive at LightMetrics.
The firm has developed a technology that helps enterprises to monitor the driving behaviour of their drivers and help prevent accidents and associated losses. Mr. Ukil’s peer Sarita Mishra, founder of Green Cosmos Energy Solutions has been able to connect with potential clients in markets like Japan, Canada and the Karnataka government. Her firm has developed a cloud-based product RealNatics that analyzes real-time data from smart meters to perform energy consumption forecasts and reduce costs for manufacturing plants and commercial buildings. “It would have been difficult to get these contacts on my own,” said Ms. Mishra, a former scientist at India’s premier nuclear research facility Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.
Peer LearningThe warehouse has laboratories for mobile devices and Internet of Things (IoT) — a technology where devices communicate with each other intelligently. Townista, which helps people discover and book interesting things to do in the city such as rock climbing, magic shows and tea tasting, has been using these laboratories to test its app on about 30 different types of devices. This is crucial for Paras Jain, 28, who started the firm along with his IIT-Bombay batch mate Snehal Nimje, from his home in Koramangala. But Mr. Jain said the biggest advantage for his team has been learning from peers working at other firms. “You can learn from the peers who are already ahead of you and share back the knowledge with people who are lagging behind,” he said.
For instance, when Mr. Jain’s peer Parinitha Manohar, founder of Spalontime, that provides an aggregator app for salons and spas, is stuck on a problem, she posts it on common online group. The group includes all the company employees at the warehouse.
“Either they reply or come to meet me to discuss it,” said Ms. Manohar who quit her engineering job at Internet infrastructure company VeriSign to launch the firm.
“We follow an open culture, so that we can learn from each other,” said Roopa Aravindakshan, Community Manager at the warehouse.
Funding and exitsMarquee investors such as Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and IDG Ventures also keep flocking the warehouse several times. About 2,000 young firms have been selected for the Nasscom’s 10,000 Startups programme in the last three years. Sangeeta Devni, Deputy Manager at 10,000 Startups said that about 200 of these firms raised venture capital or got selected by various accelerators in India and abroad.
