Enterprising startups by IIIT-H students

From mini-bus shuttle service to low-cost camera platform

A substantial number of citizens working in and around Hi-Tec City, Gachibowli, and its environs are already familiar with the public share of transport through mini-buses, ‘Commut’. But, how many are aware that it has been conceived and incubated within the confines of Centre for Innovation and Excellence (CIE) of the International Institute of Information Technology-Hyderabad (IIIT-H) here?

Hemanth Jonnalagadda along with fellow students Sandeep Kachavarapu, Prashanth Garapati, Akshay Chennupati, Charan Thota, and Srujai Varikuti, came up with the “on-demand mini-bus service” app three years ago because daily work commute was “expensive, time consuming and irksome” despite Uber/Ola and their surge pricing.

By creating a ‘community of commuters’, they wanted to make travelling to work safe, easy and fun. The subscription-based shuttle service without surge pricing operates a fleet of 12 to 40-seater buses and these ply from Kukatpally and Uppal to L.B. Nagar, Secunderabad, etc.

Commut claims to have over 60% subscriptions from women and 30% of subscribers used to either drive or book a cab previously. Live-tracking and in-app panic button linked to Hawkeye are other features. “We are constantly iterating our product and working on integrating our technology with a safety index based on population density, a feature that will automatically calibrate the drop-off points,” says Anusha Kovvuri, Commut communications head.

It is among three most promising startups having come out of the decade-old CIE. Another one is ‘DreamVu’, conceived Rajat Aggarwal and Rohan Bhatial, that is “low-cost, consumer-friendly omni-directional camera platform inspired by human binocular vision and perception”. “We expect to see our cameras in a VR director’s hands by this year and in autonomous cars next year,” says Mr. Aggarwal.

The third enterprising startup is BlueSemi R&D by

Sunil Maddikatla, who is building low-cost, low area integrated chips using ultra low power and at extremely wide temperature ranges. The miniature design is said to be an ideal core circuits of IoT devices and other smart wearables.