Etrix Technologies plans to launch ‘Indifix’

The new age is all about Mixed Realities.

Harshwardhan Kumar, Nitin Kumar, Satish Kumar Singh & Dhiraj Choudhary, started their entrepreneurial journey while they were still in college. Prior to setting up a company, all four of them did their B.Tech from Bhubaneshwar and worked with two startups. Their brainchild- Etrix Technologies, a software consultancy in the space of Virtual/Mixed Reality and human computer interaction is now over two years old.

Read on to understand how Indian youth from small towns are emerging as valuable players in the startup ecosystem of the country:

The journey started off back in our college days when we realised that there was a huge skill gap between the batch of engineers being produced and the skills required by the industry. One day we were approached by one of the major players in educational workshop industry to conduct workshop in IIT Roorkee – that made us realize about the potential we have and what we could use to bridge the gap of skill & demand - and that’s what eventually paved our path towards entrepreneurship.

While conducting workshops, one day we received calls from students from all across the country seeking guidance and support for building or troubleshooting their bots/models. And it really became quite challenging for us to provide step- by- step guidance over the phone.

We started to search for tools or mediums through which we could actually address this problem and provide help to those people in best and most effective way possible. But to our disappointment there was no actual solution to this problem.

We also came to a realization that with the rise of technologies like IoT and smart devices there would be a huge increase in the number of connected devices around the world. According to Cisco report- the number is nearly six billion by 2018. But the truth is that we really don’t have smart customer support system to handle such a large number of devices and hardware. We started thinking about the problem and what would be the best way to solve it – and then ‘Indifix’ was born.

IndiFix is a remote support tool which uses Mobile and Augmented Reality to empower technical support teams to execute interactive remote diagnostics and support tasks.

The genesis

At Etrix we strongly believe in value addition and for that we have few of the brightest minds and mentors working as a team.

We are still growing and have a lot of ground to cover but our growth has been really rapid over the last one year. We were lucky to have some really strong mentors with us without whose support and guidance it would not have been possible to reach where we are today.

Investment

The initial investment that we put into our venture was our college semester fee. Today, we are still self-funded and don’t have any private investors. However, a few of the funds that we have acquired have been facilitated by KIIT TBI. So far those have been recognized and funded by organizations such as DST, MSME, NSTEDB, Odisha Startup. We have also been awarded and funded by DST under NIDHI PRAYAS.

Growth

‘Indifix’ was selected at NASSCOM Startup competition as well as more recently organised by Startup Odisha Conclave.

We have also been recognized as the 55th startup in Odisha and as an emerging startup. Initially we started with a few projects which with time and patience have not only increased in number of clients but also in count of countries to which we are providing our services presently.

In the past one-year of operation, we were able to create products and solutions for a few of the big enterprises, IOCL would be a good example of that, to some of the very early stage startups like Limbot. The products and solutions that we have provided have helped many of the startups to acquire multi million funding from VCs across the globe.

Financial Freedom

We have been growing both in team size and in revenue.
What started off as a journey with Rs 1500 has now become a business with an annual turnover of Rs 1.5 crore. We went from being a two-person team to a 18-member company in the last one year of our operation and this team is constantly growing.

Challenges

We believe hiring and retaining effective people has always been one of the most influential pain point in the startup space. We find ourselves heavily invested in this particular area of operation. What we realize is that exceptional people are found by exceptional effort and in order to acquire these people. We tend to use alternate talent discovery methods and platforms such as LinkedIn and Hackathons have been a huge supporter for this space.

Future plans

We see AR, Mixed Reality and human computer interaction backed by machine learning as the next frontier in computing. Moving aggressively in the same direction, with our first step being the introduction of Indifix, which is an Augmented Reality based support system, we are taking a bold step.

We have plans to start beta testing of our VR glasses specially made for Indifix as an added feature in the coming months.

The Journey

Every journey is unique and every startup has their own set of challenges.

For us every day is interesting. We see every day as an opportunity to accomplish something new. We face new challenges every day and we do our best to solve them and doing so we become a better version of our self every single day.

Etrix envision them bringing revolution in the field of traditional help and support system with the help of ‘Indifix.’

Do you think that India has enough bandwidth to support all experimentation related with Augmented Realities? Please share your views with us.