Enterprise startups use cutting-edge technology to solve diverse problems

Emotix is a robotics company focused on solving consumer problems by creating emotionally intelligent solutions. Founded by three IIT Bombay post graduates in January 2015, Emotix’s products leverage proprietary artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and internet of things (IoT) solutions.

Their first product line, the Miko series of robots, targets the need of parents who seek a positive and trusted gateway of technology that caters to the learning and development needs of their children.

Emotix co-founder and CEO Sneh Vaswani says the firm’s latest product, Miko 2, is India’s “first advanced personal robot created... for global audiences that makes learning fun". It can help revise educational concepts and coupled with conversational learning, ensures quick academic development of the child. With more sensors in the device, Miko allows video interactions, and parents can log into the robot, drive it around the house and keep a check on their child.

With a positive response from the Indian market, Emotix wants to bring its platform solutions to every household globally, with a vision of reaching 20 million homes across verticals such as childcare and elderly care by 2023.

Nopo Nanotechnologies: Mission to Space

Founded by Gadhadar Reddy, Benguluru-based NoPo Nanotechnologies is driven by a vision to enable every human being to access space, but this required the basic building blocks or material that could be easily accessible.

A detailed analysis of existing materials revealed that the single-walled carbon nanotube was the perfect material for this as it is capable of withstanding high and low temperatures, high pressure and radiation while being extremely strong and light.

Reddy, also chief executive officer of Nopo, found that the initial work on carbon nanotubes was done by Nobel laureate Richard Smalley and contacted his student Robert Kelley Bradley to join him in his venture. Reddy discovered that while this was the perfect material for building spacecraft of the present and future, it was difficult to manufacture it consistently on a large scale.

“We made it our mission to develop a technology to manufacture it consistently in copious quantities, and this led to the development of the NoPo HiPCO (high pressure carbon monoxide) technology. It took 6.5 years to fine tune the technology and reach this point where we are ready to scale,’’ adds Reddy.

NoPo has focused efforts on continuously increasing nanotube production while realizing various applications with partners. This allows the startup to build a large ecosystem of products around them.

NoPo is working with the Isro for a Mars mission, and major aerospace and rocket firms globally.

Senseforth: Improving Chat Experiences

Enterprises have millions of customers, hundreds of employees, partners, and all of them have millions of interactions in a single day. The only way enterprises can scale up and deliver a personalized and customized experience to all of them is by having conversational experiences, points out Ritesh Radhakrishnan, CTO and co-founder of Bengaluru and Palo Alto-based AI startup SenseForth which offers a bevy of AI driven business bots to enterprises. This is where their suite of multi-lingual bots comes in. The suite includes the bot builder, trainer platform and pre-built industry AI models.

Enterprises can opt for a pre-built bot with some customization or build and deploy a bot on any platform of their choosing. “Business users don’t have to force their customers to come to their app to use the bot. They can integrate them on WhatsApp, Messenger and Twitter even on voice devices like Google Home and Alexa," adds Radhakrishnan. Once a bot has been trained for conversational experiences, enterprises can monitor it using Senseforth’s analytics solution. These experiences can help enterprises with customer acquisition, knowledge management and employee engagement. With over 60 enterprise deployments under their belt, Senseforth claims a measured accuracy of 90% and has HDFC bank, Club Mahindra and Manipal Hospitals among its clients.

Mirrorsize: Ai-Based Body Scanning App

Mirrorsize is a US-based startup that has launched an AI-enabled device-agnostic body scanning app that aims to solve the issues of fitting and size in fashion.

It delivers an instant 3D body scan with precise body measurements on your smartphone or tablet screen in just a few seconds. “We use computer vision and 3D tech, that will seamlessly integrate the demand and supply side for all the disparate systems globally," said Arup Chakraborty, founder and CEO, Mirrorsize.

Irov Tech: Underwater Drones to the Rescue

In February 2018, Southern Railways’ officials were testing the structural integrity of a railway bridge built across a river in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. The challenge was to inspect the underwater portion of the piers supporting the bridge. Instead of going with the time-intensive manual inspection, the officials decided to use underwater drone by Ernakulam based startup IROV Technologies. The inspection started at 9am and was completed in an hour.

“Critical underwater infrastructure are not being inspected on time because of the harsh and dangerous environment in which the divers have to go and do inspections," says Rohith Surendran, marketing manager, IROV Technologies.

Lack of data analytics is another challenge. Most of the current inspection companies go underwater, inspect the sites and generate long reports that people don’t understand, points out Surendran. IROV’s data analytics and visualization tools provide a user-friendly report. They also offer predictive analysis for certain clients who want to know what will be the state of deterioration in one month or a year. Founded by IIT Madras alumni—Johns T Mathai and Kanappa Palaniappan P—the firm has the DRDO and Bharat Petroleum as clients.

Tonetag: Enabling Data Over Sound for Payments

Bengaluru-based software startup ToneTag has developed a payment solution which uses sound waves to carry out contactless proximity payments. The solution is hardware-agnostic and can be integrated with any third-party mobile app, EDC (electronic data capture), POS (point of sale) and ATM devices with a software update.

Once a merchant transmits a bill amount and transaction details, customers can initiate contactless payment through their smartphone.

“Sound wave is like a radio wave. Our software can understand the sounds around you, and can write data on top of it, allowing communication between two devices. So, instead of going to a machine to swipe a card or scanning a QR code, you just have to be at the restaurant and enjoy your meal and the payment will be made," says Kumar Abhishek, founder and CEO of ToneTag.