Entropy Innovations disrupts two-wheeler service

Millennials are enthusiasts who choose passion over profession. 31-year old Niraj Taksande is no less. An MBA from IIM (Indore) and a graduate in Mechanical Engineering, Mumbai University, Taksande was looking after R&D, Product Development at Mexus Education, before entrepreneurial bug bit him hard. In early 2013, Mumbai-based Taksande co-founded Entropy Innovations, an engineering innovations company. The company has today disrupted the two-wheeler service and the product engineering industry with élan.

In an engaging chat with our correspondent, the tech aficionado elucidates his passion, purpose and eventual eminence as a technocrat.

Working on a corrective action

I co-founded Entropy Innovations in 2013. The idea was to give the two-wheeler service industry in India some innovation, regulation and control. It sprang from my own bad experience at a usual road-side washing center.  I was not satisfied owing to excessive wastage of time as well as water. We believed that some innovation was definitely missing and felt an urge to work on a corrective action.

Raghavendra Bhushan Karn, Jigar Vora, our co-founders and I have designed and manufactured India's first fully automated motorcycle wash machine, Express Bike Works (EBW). It was launched in 2014 to address multitude of problems faced by an individual owner, as well as a service station. The machine is capable of washing even the dirtiest of motocycles within two-five minutes- the fastest in the world. Its capable of washing over 230 bikes in under 10 hours.

We currently have one office of Entropy Innovations in Mumbai and 31 EBW stores in six countries. We are working with 40 full-time resources. In no time, EBW has grown to become a full-scale bike care centre with over 31 stores across six countries. It is poised to reach 70 stores by 2017-end.

The dovetailing

Incidentally, EBW’s venture has led to several other innovations while perfecting its franchise model. These innovations led to setting up of an entirely new line of business, Engineering Research & Development.

Entropy Innovation's business arm plans to transform an idea from a problem statement to manufacture ready prototypes. Entropy aims to push further the technical frontiers, through innovation. Over the past couple of months, the Product Engineering business arm has seen several successes, and designs being patented.

The company’s innovations include - Waste-water ETP, an automatic and compact ETP unit designed for waste-water treatment of a car or motorcycle washing centre, TLD Badge reader. A TLD badge reader machine is an automatic reader used for monitoring radiation dose received by the personnel working in a radiation environment. The other innovations include Berth Management, a comprehensive solution for material handling and management for the Indian Railways' Berth reconditioning workshop, Tail-Gate Lift for loading and unloading from a truck at the flick of a switch. There is also Home Automation, a micro modular device that fits into a standard household's electrical switch panel and transforms that house into a smart-home. The company has been working with The Indian Railways and several other corporates in providing custom solutions.

Raising funds

Niraj Taksande

We started out bootstrapping, but raised an undisclosed round of funding in 2015 from pedigree investors- Mark Mobius- Executive Chairman, Templeton Emerging Markets, Rajesh Sehgal, Founder, Equanimity Investments and Neeraj Garg, ex – VP, Tata Motors.

Given the buzz around prevailing ecommerce businesses back then, it wasn’t an easy task for us to pitch our ‘brick and mortar’ venture. However, our team’s potential, the market size and our growth plans ensured the value for the investment.

Growth chart

In less than two years, since the launch of our first EBW store, we have set up 31 EBW stores across the world. EBW has presence in Nepal, Indonesia, Thailand, Rwanda and Colombia apart from India. We are approved and an authorized vendor of India’s biggest motorcycle OEM and have a clientele of 60 today.

Our revenue for Entropy Innovations comes from B2B & B2C of EBW and other special engineering projects. ‘Machine sales to motorcycle OEM’s’ is B2B and ‘franchise business catering to individual motorcyclists’ is B2C. Apart from EBW, we have an Engineering Research & Development department that executes special projects.

Presently, we are setting up pilot stores across strategic geographies to understand the market, national as well as international. For these pilots, we have selected local partners, based on specific parameters who can scale up accordingly across a wider region/nation depending on the results of the pilot test. We are also banking on a few IOT and mobile application based technologies to drive individual store growth thereby ensuring profitability at each of these stores. Recently we upgraded our IT backbone for better operational and financial control over our franchisees. Our target is an ambitious 100 stores by the close of this FY and 1000 Stores by 2020.

What kind of disruptions do we need the most in bike servicing industry? Do share your views.