If you’re selling online, this AI-based app will click the most ‘sell-able’ pictures using nothing but your mobile phone

Twenty-five-year-old Siddharth Chilukuri and 26-year-olds Neelesh Soni, Gaurav Raj and Ankit Jain were all batch-mates at NITK Surathkal in different streams of engineering, while 28-year-old Akshay Sathaye was studying computer science at Mumbai University.

They started hacking away at their ideas right from the final year of college. Having registered their company, Rhapsody Labs, they were working round the clock, building an augmented reality (AR) product, that is, virtual trial solutions (of outfits on fashion e-commerce sites) in 2012. They turned down their offers during campus placements, and chose to commit to what they had started. “We all knew that the life we were choosing would be challenging and would consume the entirety of our lives, but we realised that to create value, we had to take the plunge and take the world head on,” says Siddharth.

Team Pictor

While, in 2012, e-commerce had taken off in western markets, in India, it was yet to hit the mainstream. In the meetings for their virtual trial, the clients – largely fashion e-commerce portals - repeatedly cited issues in the picture quality of the photographs listed on their platforms. And good photography was a prerequisite for using their product. After speaking to hundreds of retailers, they realised that this was a major problem in the cataloging industry. “At first, we started off with DSLR cameras and built an automated box around it, but as the e-commerce market took a shift to the marketplace model, we had to innovate using the ubiquitous mobile phone. This was the time Pictor was created, in November 2015,” explains Siddharth.

Behind the scenes with Pictor

Pictor heavily relies on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for its products. The Pictor app helps online sellers and manufacturers click online-ready photographs of their products using their mobile phones, without any external equipment. “In the app, we guide the user to click with the right angles, help him get the background right, correct his lighting setup and prompt them for various other photography parameters required to click a good product shot,” Siddharth elaborates.

Once the picture is clicked and uploaded to their servers, the image is subjected to a blast of image processing and Machine Learning algorithms, to make it compliant to online marketplaces. A team of graphic artists also assesses the quality of the images and gives them final touches.

For their clientele, two primary concerns are the increase of sales and the reduction of costs. So, the app is free to download, but the user is charged on an image basis to get them retouched, which, depending on the complexity of the article and the quality of the photograph shot, costs between Rs 8 and Rs 45 per shot. A real-time quote is provided to the user, based on their images.

“The backend work is where the real magic happens; we use a host of Deep Learning and artificial neural networks to get the results. Right from object segmentation to real-time pricing, we have heavily invested in Deep Learning, and have reaped exceptional results,” says Siddharth.

As of now, all the images shot go through the graphic artists compulsorily, but they will be adding a new app that will automatically enhance photos without human intervention. “We have already achieved 40 percent automation; in the next six months, it should be 90 percent automated,” he says. It also helps that they are built to scale, and as they receive and process more images, their machines provide better results.

Trial and error

How it works

One of biggest challenges they faced was the quantifying of the image editing process, which, until now, was aesthetically driven. In the initial stages, they operated like a traditional photography house, to understand the entire process, from photography to image editing. Here, each person working on the images was essentially an artist, thus producing different outputs every time. In fact, their image processing algorithms also failed to deliver as the input images varied considerably.

However, the alternative approach of quantifying the image editing process did the trick. “We reduced the number of decision points of the image editors from 40 to three by employing an assembly line model in image editing. Each part of the assembly line was designed to put different types of Deep Learning models in place to automate it. This ensured scalability and consistency in the output, and maintained the overall quality of the service,” says Siddharth.

And photography is just one part of a big puzzle they are trying to piece together. Stuff like sentiment analysis, catalogue likeability factors, real-time analysis of product pages of a website, and product level comparison to increase saleability are some of newer technologies being explored, and they intend to roll them out soon.

Pictor-perfect

Pictor’s clients predominantly belong to one of two sets - e-commerce companies or online sellers. The huge amount of data they needed to get their algorithms in place was provided by enterprise e-commerce sellers. And like any B2B business, they took the route of direct selling to net prospects.

Enterprises such as Flipkart, GS1 and Amazon Now are using Pictor for their cataloging. Pictor is also at the pilot stage with other big Indian e-commerce companies. “We have processed over two lakh images till now, and the count is going up week-on-week. Our app is being used by individual sellers from Amaravati to London,” says Siddharth. Having started with a four-member team, Pictor now employs thirty.

Every product that goes online has to go through the process of cataloging. Cataloging, globally, is a multi-billion dollar industry and is typically run in the KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) model. There are many traditional players in the industry locally, such as Online Becho and Moksha. Globally, some big names in the industry are Pixc and Pixelz. Apart from them, there are websites that rely on image processing algorithms such as Background Burner and Mr clipping, which offer a self-service portal for editing out the background.

“Our USP has always been the quality of our output, the prices at which we offer our services, and our turnaround time,” Siddharth states.

The young company recently made it to the top ten of our flagship event MobileSparks owing to the robustness of their technology, and impressive strategies to scale. They also received Rs 1 crore as seed funding in May 2016 from Quarizon, a Delhi-based manager of private investment partnerships. They are currently in the process of raising more capital for the new products being developed.

On an e-commerce website, a product’s photograph is its salesman. The better the catalogue score, greater are the chances to sell. And if one were to look at the buying patterns of users in India, better photographs instill a sense of trust with the brand and grant it prestige, inducing the user to choose it over another, relatively poorly presented competitor.

Research has shown that better images in the catalogue increase the sale of the product multifold. In fact, adding an additional image in the catalogue increases the saleability by 10 percent.

For five buddies waiting for their chance to create something valuable for the world, the gap in this space was too wide, and these stats too irresistible, to not be acted upon.

Hyderabad-based husband-wife duo helps you achieve daily health goals

Husband-wife duo Gopi Lingala and Saneesha Rao were struggling to get nutritionally balanced food. Gopi was working 12-14 hours a day and had all his meals at the office, while Saneesha needed a special diet because of her pregnancy.

Gopi Lingala and Saneesha Rao (Co-founders of LeanSpoon)

After meeting with nutritionists and doctors, and trying out various food delivery services, the duo realised that making a balanced meal required a lot of time and effort. With this in mind, they founded LeanSpoon in May 2016 in Hyderabad with their personal savings and by taking a bank loan, and assembled a team of skilled nutritionists and chefs to prepare meal plans based on individual health requirements.

Hyderabad-based LeanSpoon helps people achieve their health goals through personalised nutrition, by integrating nutrition and lifestyle advice considering the user’s medical background, dietary patterns and health goals.

While funding was available easily, we wanted to take our time to getting the service and the product right before going for any external funding. We, however, had other challenges,” says Gopi (36), an MSc in International Business who brings 13 years of work experience in the BPO and consulting sector, with a focus on services supply chain management.

Saneesha (29) is a Computer Science engineer and started her career as a technical artist in game development before she took up painting and sculpting full time when she moved to Latin America.

Preparing the food

LeanSpoon has a team of over 20 people, including a culinary team and a nutritionist team. They select only nutritionists with a degree in nutrition and a good understanding of the science backed by work experience at hospitals.

Their chefs, too, are backed by degrees in hotel management and experience in five-star hotels or flight kitchens. The kitchen has eight staff and one nutritionist, who works closely with them.

“Getting a multi-course meal that is nutritionally balanced across both macro nutrients—fat, protein, carbs—and micro-nutrients—fibre, vitamins and minerals—and that is flexible to portion control for different dietary requirements is an intricate solution. And doing this for a rotating menu that does not repeat for ten weeks is a complex task,” says Gopi.

LeanSpoon offers subscriptions on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis, with five, 22 and 70 meals respectively. The customer has the flexibility to take only nutrition advice or include breakfast and/or lunch packs (presently only in Hyderabad) as part of their subscription.

LeanSpoon Team

Nutrition advice includes a personal nutritionist for each customer to better understand his health goals and medical background and work with the kitchen team and other nutritionists to prepare customised meals.

This nutritionist can be reached over call, email and chat for any queries related to nutrition, health, and exercise for the entire subscription period during working hours. The nutritionist also shares relevant information and articles related to the challenges and health goals of their clients.

A monthly subscription to nutrition advice, breakfast and lunch comes to about Rs 9,000, while a three-month subscription to all three comes at about Rs 25,000. The average meal pack comes to around Rs 175–205, including nutrition advice, portion controlling, delivery and tax.

Making money

Currently, LeanSpoon caters to over 1,000 orders a month. According to Gopi, the startup gains a clear operating margin from every meal it delivers. This year, the startup will open its second production centre in Hyderabad and aims to take the number of meals it delivers to 25,000 per month.

“Over the next 2-3 years, we are looking at leveraging technology, including wearables, to gather the data to further customise our offering for users. We are also looking to working with diagnostic testing and genetic testing to help people personalise and plan their health goals accordingly,” says Gopi.

According to an India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) report, the total size of the healthcare industry is expected to touch $160 billion by 2017 and $280 billion by 2020. Diet plan is the new buzzword in the healthcare industry, with a handful of emerging startups customising diet plans according to customers' health goals.

Gurugram-based First Eat not only serves nutritious meals but also educates people the importance of nutrition through a network of dietitians. The HealthyBox serves organic healthy food in Delhi and Gurugram. Mumbai-based Grubit caters to people on different diet levels - the strict diet followers, conscious foodies who like to try different cuisines, and for the moderately active people.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2017/01/leanspoon/

Square Yards raises $10M in convertible notes from multiple investors

Gurgaon-based Square Yards, a real estate investment advisory player, has raised $10 million in the form of convertible notes from multiple individual investors.

Square Yards team

According to Tanuj Shori, Founder and CEO, Square Yards, he wanted to maintain a healthy mix in their balance sheet without diluting too much of equity at this stage of growth. The notes are issued for a fixed term at a pre-determined coupon rate and with an option to convert into equity (at a discount) on reaching the next funding milestone.

“A part of the investment will go into strengthening all the three verticals — NRI market, global real estate, and mortgage broking. The funding will go into it to grow the market share. Another part of the investment will be utilised to launch some new initiatives such as broker aggregation and property management. The new financing will help us accelerate our expansion into newer international geographies and at the same time strengthen our existing distribution network in over 10 countries,” says Tanuj.

This is Square Yards’ second round of investment in three months, the previous one being the $12 million equity funding raised from the Reliance Group’s private equity arm last November. During May last year, Square Yards had raised an amount of $11 million in pre-Series A funding from a clutch of investors in Singapore and Hong Kong, who hold senior-level positions with leading asset management and private equity houses. The new investment takes the total amount of funds raised by the company to approximately $33 million since its inception in 2013.

Square Yards claims to have acquired a leadership position in the transactions space. It currently boasts of a net revenue run rate of around $1.5 million and also claims to have crossed $1 billion in gross transactional value (GTV) in terms of total value of properties sold on its platform.

Market analysis

According to IBEF, the Indian real estate market is expected to touch $180 billion by 2020. The housing sector alone contributes between five and six percent of the country's GDP.

There is a horde of players who offer solutions to the realty market — both offline and online.

In the online category, Magicbricks, 99acres, PropTiger, DoorKeys, and many other players provide selling, buying, and renting facilities.

In the past two years, the real estate startup market has observed many new developments.

The PropTiger-Housing merger was the most recent development in this category. In April 2015, PropTiger had announced the acquisition of Makaan.com for an undisclosed amount.

During early 2016, online classified major Quikr acquired realty portal CommonFloor for an undisclosed amount. During November last year, QuikrHomes, the real estate arm of e-commerce marketplace Quikr, acquired Bengaluru-based home rental marketplace Grabhouse.

Experts say that the consolidation hasn’t impacted the market much, rather helping it maintain its sanity.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2017/01/square-yards-funding-2/

5 things every entrepreneur building a marketplace should know

Marketplaces like Flipkart, Fiverr, and HomeHero seem very profitable at first glance — all you have to do is build a portal and bring merchants on board to sell products or professionals to offer their service. But this is not as easy as it seems. Building marketplace-driven brands is complicated. Very complicated.

I have been building the same for the last two years and thought it would make perfect sense to share the lessons learnt with aspiring entrepreneurs. So, here’s what you need to know if you are thinking about building a product or service-driven marketplace:

Merchants/providers will take time to join

There is no chicken-or-egg question here. You have to get the merchants/service providers on board first and let me tell you it is not going to be easy. Locating merchants and convincing them to join will require a lot of effort, online as well as offline. Let’s say if you approach 100, only 20 will agree to hear you out. Out of those, only eight will say that they will join, and only two will actually join.

One more thing — the above example applies only if you are approaching highly relevant people. Don’t even think about buying a generic email list and shooting with a mail blaster. (Check out this HubSpot post for reference)

In the first month of operations, Amazon received orders from 45 countries, but remember, this was back in 1994. Now there are established brands out there in major marketplace models, so don’t even think of launching a marketplace if you don’t have the patience and grit to keep going.

Pick the technology carefully 

Marketplaces are not online stores where a small catalogue of products will go on sale or a few people will offer their services. It will host thousands of merchants/service providers and cater to tens of thousands of customers. Hence, a website built on an ill-suited technology won’t cut it.

You need a technology that can guarantee stability, security, and performance to your mega online store. Most entrepreneurs coming from non-technical backgrounds don’t know much about technology selection, and that’s why you first have to speak with a technology consultant.

I have the perfect example for this. In its early days, Paypal almost made the mistake of switching to Windows from Unix but was saved by the CEO switch. This might have killed the current giant of online transactions. Paul Graham (Co-founder of Y Combinator) shared the same in this interesting blog post written back in 2006.

Marketplace cloning software aren’t any good

If you have been scrutinising ways to build your online superstore or services marketplace, you must have come across marketplace builders. They are readymade software that are marketed as quick solutions to launch clones of Amazon, Freelancer, and similar platforms. But the truth, like always, is a bit twisted.

95 percent of the turnkey marketplace solutions are not even worth looking at. The remaining will come at a decent price but will require major customisations and plugins to deliver your envisioned marketplace.

Personally, I won’t recommend building your e-commerce/people marketplace with a turnkey software. If you have no other option due to budget constraints, be very careful while selecting your multivendor store builder and clone software.

Marketing spend will be huge

Building a marketplace is an expensive affair but that’s certainly not the end of spending. Marketing is going to demand a big investment as well. From online banner ads to SEO, PPC, media coverage, and social media, everything will demand money, and I’m not even counting the offline spend yet.

Most startups are so focused on building a website and launching it that they never take the time to plan and save for marketing. This puts the future of their marketplace startup in jeopardy.

Also, please don’t begin with the assumption that someone will fund your venture to take care of the marketing spend because that’s not going to happen until you have something unique. Need some numbers?

Angels and seed deals stood at 845 back in 2015. 2016’s number (from January to September) stood at 540. Check out this VC Circle post for more stats.

Great development teams are hard to find

There are probably millions of IT companies in the world but the ones that have the expertise to build powerful marketplaces are very few. A great development team will:

Guide you about technology (but I still recommend speaking to a consultant)

Think about UX and search performance while planning architecture

Share feature recommendations and follow transparent development processes

Finding such a team will be a tiring process. This is the reason startups choose to build an in-house team to handle the development work. One more thing — don’t fall in the costly-is-better trap. There are lots of IT firms out there that charge a premium price but don’t deliver quality.

The bottom line

Nothing about launching and scaling a marketplace-based venture is easy. So many things need work that it is almost a risky proposition. Rob Kramer is probably the perfect example for aspiring entrepreneurs — the serial

entrepreneur and founder of HipSwap (a US-based marketplace for used goods) has vast experience in building online businesses but still failed with many ventures (the most notable among which was PopRule).

In short, building the next Amazon or Fiverr will take everything you have, so start only if you are ready to give the same and have the right knowhow.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2017/01/entrepreneur-building-marketplace/

The Tail.re storyline — highlighting entrepreneurial lessons of 2016

Tail.re, a 2015-founded startup, is, as its name suggests, trying to disrupt the consumable retail space. It seeks to do this with an intelligent auto-replenishment platform that enables you to automate the purchase of products you use regularly, such as coffee, printer ink, and detergent. And the ones piloting this never-on-autopilot startup flight are co-founders CEO Pranjal Y. Kumar and COO Arjun Rungta.

Learnings from 2016

Arjun told YourStory, ”2016 saw this bubble burst, taking down some of the well-funded names in the ecosystem. Tail.re feels itself lucky not to have followed the same synthetic growth approach, and 2016 just proved to be a great testimony for us.”

Arjun added, “Another pivotal thing for Tail.re during 2016 was the growth of our team, and by growth, we don't mean size. The individualised focus and responsibilities have helped our team members mature. Even during these times of high attrition, we have retained top talent within the company and look forward to attracting new members in the next few months.”

Key milestones achieved in 2016

Pranjal explained, “In a modest attempt to help people during adverse times post demonetisation, Tail.re enabled platform tailmill.com with a service where the company actually home-delivered hard cash to its users. Tail.re re-calibrated it's demand prediction algorithms in order to suit Tailmill's requirement to predict available cash-in-hand on any given day. This enabled Tailmill to pioneer the redistribution of cash, collecting it from deliveries and delivering that cash to other users.”

Tail.re storyline

*Click here to view complete Tail.re Storyline*

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2017/01/tail-re-storyline/

Meet the man who is the talk of the e-town: Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Flipkart’s brand new CEO

It is two days before Kalyan Krishnamurthy’s 45th birthday – but the only “bash” that he could be bothered to put together is that of Flipkart’s competitors. He is tasked with staging the Indian e-commerce giant’s victory in a race where formidable internet players are closing in, faster than ever.

In a major management reshuffle – something that is becoming a bit of a habit at the giant – Kalyan, who was roped in just seven months ago to head sales de facto- marketplace, retail and advertising businesses, has now been asked to assume the top spot of CEO. Binny Bansal, his predecessor, graduates to heading Flipkart Group – the alliance of Jabong, Myntra, Flipkart, PhonePe, and Ekart.

Kalyan holds an MBA degree from Asian Institute of Management, the Philippines, and another MBA in Finance from UIUC College of Business, Illinois (US). They say he is Lee Fixel’s trump card, his right-hand man. As the former MD and Director of Finance and Portfolio Companies at Tiger Global Management LLC, this is not the first time he was sought out by Flipkart to run the show. For a year and a half starting May 2013, he served as the Interim CFO at Flipkart Online Services Pvt. Ltd.

He brought with him his sharp acumen in the dynamics of e-commerce, having served as the Director of Financial Planning and Analysis at eBay Asia-Pacific and Country Finance Director (South-East Asia, Hong Kong) at eBay prior to joining Tiger. He has also clocked stints at Procter & Gamble, in a supply chain finance position, and Sunshine Teahouse Pvt. Ltd.

Kalyan is known to play the longest games of hide-and-seek with the media and is hard to track down – in keeping with the ways of most of his colleagues back at Tiger.

An entrepreneur who knows Kalyan and the Bansals, however, says, "That had better change. As CEO, he will have to talk to the media and be more open."

Yet, anybody who has worked with him, at any level, be it a subordinate or a senior, vouches for his people skills. During his first stint at Flipkart, the workforce was taken by his sense of interest, involvement, and accountability with even the lowest level of workings.

However, he was never too cautious with the whip, and took some tough calls to make at least four tricky executive-level firings. These risks, however, instilled a deeper sense of accountability in the 30,000-strong internal taskforce at India’s highest valued internet player, which was said to have gotten complacent.

He was also tasked with undoing the blemishes that the first Big Billion Days (BBD) left on the company, again under his own regime in 2014, by churning out a more foolproof third edition in 2016. He did succeed, if surpassing the sales of arch-rival Amazon in sale-season is an indicator. Forced by his commitment to the annual flagship event, Kalyan had joined Twitter in November 2016, only to make all of 11 tweets, each surrounding the workings of Flipkart's Big Billion Days.

"Kalyan is a fantastic numbers person. He is also extremely perceptive. He can see a person and know instinctively whether that person will be good for the job," says a source not wanting to be named. They were part of a portfolio company of Tiger, and have worked closely with Kalyan.

This time around, he is tasked with strengthening the mother ship, which has encountered tempests, even if one doesn’t benchmark its performance against the competition. After all, it was devalued from $15 billion to $5.5 billion in multiple markdowns last year.

Media and social media conjecture suggests that he was brought onboard to take on Amazon head on – even though Flipkart still commands more market share, albeit marginally, in India’s $15 billion e-commerce industry, the gap is ever decreasing. People also haven’t missed the fact that he is but an outsider, and that for the first time, an Indian unicorn will be run by someone who is not a founder. Whether it was a case of strategic headhunting and placing the right man in the right job, or an instance of investors losing confidence in the founders and stepping in to right the wrongs is anybody’s guess at this stage.

"When I came in in 2013, it was agreed that I would go back. There was no big reason behind it. This is a different chapter. I'm here to stay and put my head down and work," he had told TOI in a December interview, before he was appointed CEO.

Flipkart decided to combine a number of verticals under Kalyan; within a few months of him coming onboard in June, private label, marketplace, marketing, and customer experience product were all asked to report to Kalyan. So, even as Kalyan is to report to Binny on paper, inside sources revealed, as reported by this article in Mint, that he is his own boss and answers directly to the board.

As of now, Flipkart continues to lose tens of millions of dollars every month. Popular consumer feedback suggests that there are gaps when it comes to their customer service, after-sales service and returns and refund policies. Hence, one can infer that their priorities are skewed and that their customer acquisition strategy, at a time when India is still appeasing its billions to adopt digital, is hardly up to the mark.

This, however, happens to be an area that Amazon is rather overtly gunning at and might prove to be the reason for the turn of tables in this gripping great Indian startup story.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2017/01/kalyan-krishnamurthy-flipkart/

Backed by Narayana Murthy, students of RV College of Engineering build solar-powered car

It was a self-study seminar on solar-powered systems that inspired a few like minded students of Bengaluru’s R V College of Engineering to initiate the building of what they hoped would be an advanced solar car. In September 2013, the RVCE Solar Car Team was started with this express goal.

RVCE Solar Car Team

The team today consists of 30 students from across four different departments of RVCE – Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical and Computer Science engineering. The team also comprises of four divisions, namely Mechanical, Electrical and Electronics, Logistics, and Sponsorship and Marketing.

“The main objective of our team is to promote the use of solar energy in transportation sector and drive research and innovation into solar technology. We design, build and race highly efficient solar cars in Solar Challenges held across the globe. We also conduct various events that apprise the cause to school students and local communities. We were the only team from India to take part in the World Solar Challenge 2015,” says Akhil Mukundan, one of the members of the team.

The team has created over 25 industry-academia collaborations to build its solar car, which include names like Mahindra Reva, Schneider Electric, Keysight Technologies, IFM, Vicor, Hindalco, 3M, HHV Solar, SanE and Altair.

In May 2015, the team began manufacturing its car, Soleblaze, starting with work on the aluminum chassis, carbon fiber body and silicon solar panels, and completed the process in September 2015 with the integration of electrical components and circuitry. The car was even showcased at the campus of IT giant Infosys, and received funding and personal guidance from company Co-founder Narayana Murthy.

What’s there in the solar car?

The solar car comprises features like Ackermann steering geometry, lithium ion batteries, a solar collector, a motor and telemetry. A Battery Management System is also incorporated so that cells aren't operated outside the nominal ranges.

The Solar Collector collects the solar irradiation and converts it into electrical energy through the use of photovoltaic (PV) cells.

Soleblaze built by RVCE Solar Car Team

The motor converts electrical energy into the rotational energy used to run the car. Telemetry collects data from multiple sensors in the car, processes the required information onboard, and transmits the required data to or the internet.

The sponsors of RVCE Solar Car Team include the likes of Infosys, TCS, SunEdison, Wipro, SunPower, HHV Solar, National Instruments, IFM, Mahindra Reva, Altair, Molex and Schneider Electric.

“Racing car Soleblaze is the first prototype built by the RVCE Solar Car Team. It was built by our founding team from scratch. The vehicle coverts solar energy into electrical energy through the use of the cells, which helps run the motor. The energy can also be stored in a lithium ion battery that is connected to the motor (an in hub Mitsuba brushless DC motor). We have also incorporated a telemetry system that helps transmit data via the cloud,” says Akhil.

He further added that the team is also working on incorporating data analytics into the solar car in the near future.

Building the base

The team initially started out by pitching the idea to sponsors, without any financial assistance. “A press release with a miniature model helped us reach out to likeminded people and thus provided the initial push. Raising funds of such a large magnitude without a strong foundation and managing other subdivisions such as logistics, fabrication and design was a tedious task,” says Akhil.

The solar cells of Soleblaze are procured from SunPower, and the vehicle is made up of carbon fiber. The motor and batteries are procured from Mitsuba Corp.

The team is mentored by Chetan Maini, founder of Mahindra Reva, and Narayana Murthy. The project’s guides are Dr M S Krupashankara, Dr Mahendra Kumar and the Principal of R V College of Engineering, Dr K N Subramanya. Akhil emphasised that the college helped the team considerably, from the basics of each sub-system to procuring materials.

Cost involved in the car

According to Akhil, the projected cost of the car is Rs 1,07,00,000. They have four different categories of sponsorship - Title Sponsorship costs Rs 30 lakh, Platinum Sponsorhip Rs 10 lakh, Gold Sponsorship Rs 5 lakh, and Silver Sponsorship Rs 2.5 lakh. Akhil says that the advisory board consists of top experts from college who established strong industry-academia support to facilitate the manufacturing and marketing of the car and the project.

This solar car by RVCE Solar Car Team is not the only project that unleashed the power of youth community in India. ISRO (Indian Space Research Prganization) last year has launched a nanosatellite developed by 250 students of PES University in Bengaluru. The name of the satellite is PISAT which can take picture of the earth from space.

When asked about the date of completion of the project, Akhil says that the timeline depends on various constraints, such as the logistics of the components that are usually procured from countries like China, Japan and the US. Moreover, the customs clearance is a very tedious and time consuming process. The price of the car once commercialised depends on various factors, such as the material used, the efficiency of the solar cells and method of encapsulation, to name a few.

RVCE Solar Car Team

IOT Meetup: Are you a startup or a professional implementing IoT across different industries? Here's your chance to network with experts in the IoT domain. Are you a pro-developer/maker and have an idea in the IoT space? Get guidance on how to explore opportunities to develop solutions for IoT use cases. Be there on January 11 for the Bengaluru MediaTek-YourStory meetup on consumer IoT. Register now!

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/rvce-solar-car/

She was born in America, but felt like she had to give back to the women of Gujarat

While it is now rare to see people house a sense of community with their family’s hometowns, what’s even more uncommon is seeing people who harbour gratitude towards them. But for New York-based social and serial entrepreneur Megha Desai, when the time came to give thanks to the elements, communities, and institutions that made them, the path was strikingly lucid.

Megha Desai

The road not taken

Growing up in suburban Massachusetts, 37-year-old Megha was training in Indian Classical Hindustani singing one day, and taking ski lessons the next. She then went to university in NYC. Her first-ever job was in politics, which also sparked her interest in communications, leading to a switch in fields — from politics to advertising. Her father, who was an entrepreneur and one of the founding charter members of TiE ( TIE-Atlantic at the time) dragged her along to act as the secretary at some of their first few meetings, planting the entrepreneurial streak in her.

However, about 12 years into her career, she realised she was meant to do more with her life, and that her volunteer work with her family at the Desai Foundation, which they had crafted together, was the missing piece.

It was actually on a family vacation in Peru that the idea for the Desai Foundation really started to come to life. The whole family had climbed Machu Picchu and ended up in a discussion on family, legacy, evolution, and how all of those things collide. “So we started a foundation composed of all of those things: community, culture, health, and education. That was 10 years ago. We started by just writing a few cheques to causes we cared about, and three years ago, we decided to become a public foundation. That's what we're continuing to build,” she says.

Teaching a man how to fish

From a community perspective, they knew they wanted to operate within the communities that have moulded their journeys — Gujarat, where her parents are from; Boston, where they grew up, and New York, the place Megha ultimately chose to call home. “We chose to focus on women and children because women are the backbone of society. When you empower women, you're empowering an entire community. And children are the future,” she explains.

They believe strongly that development comes from within communities, so they simply provide the tools and training for people to improve their own lives and the community at large. “If you go to our operating villages in Gujarat, you'll find that most people we're serving have no idea who we are, nor do they recognise the Desai Foundation name. We're proud of that. We tap the resources closest to the people we're serving, and that's really the only way to have a lasting impact,” she states.

A deeper dive into a couple of their programmes:

Since 66 percent of girls in India skip school when they're on their periods, they instated a sanitary napkin programme that not only employs women but also provides their communities access to sanitary pads. The Desai Foundation will be able to provide jobs for 30–35 women across three regions in Gujarat, ultimately reaching 2,50,000 women and girls. The project provides women and girls with valuable health resources while empowering women with entrepreneurial skills.

Columbia University and IIT Gandhinagar’s Community Impact: At Columbia in NYC, there is a student-run programme which uses the students as volunteers to serve the community in which the university resides, namely, the underprivileged sections of Morningside Heights, Harlem, and Washington Heights. There are 900 students a year that serve up to 9,000 people. Inspired by this model at Columbia, they helped forge a similar model, NYASA, with the team of students at IIT Gandhinagar in Gujarat, creating a social initiative benefiting local communities through health camps, workshops, and computer classes that teach technical skills to the youth. “As it is a newer programme, our numbers are modest, but growing rapidly, and the possibilities are endless. We are working not only to continue serving the population around IITGN but also to bring these students beyond local communities to inspire our other regions like Balsar, Valsad, Navsari, Talangpur, and beyond,” says Megha.

Their sewing programmes are also hugely impactful. A three-month vocational sewing class for 40 women that costs around Rs. 60,000, can secure them employment at local textile companies, where they stitch garments such as salwar suits, churidars, blouses, and dresses. These jobs pay them nearly Rs. 3000 a month in salaries collectively. Over the course of a year, that results in a million rupees in salaries for the women who take the jobs, of which 90 percent is reinvested in communities. “So, we can literally turn Rs. 60,000 into a million” says Megha, adding, “But what’s amazing is the camaraderie and dignity it gives these women, many of whom didn’t finish school. Beyond the money, we think this is the true value of the programme.”

Their Bal Mela health camps serve up to 2,000 young children at each of their four current project sites in Untdi, Talangpur, Kharel, and Palaj. These life-saving camps provide basic services such as checkups for general, eye, and dental health as well as for diabetes; distribute medicine, spectacles, and other resources; promote awareness through health education; and particularly address the health concerns of women and children. These camps have created four lakh beneficiaries so far.

They have also opened ’science schools’ named ‘Lok Vidhyalay School of Math and Science’, serving 13 villages in rural Gujarat. Besides that, the organisation also works in the area of prenatal care to protect young mothers and children

A new dharma

MSD was a bit of an accident. Megha had quit a traditional advertising job and was plotting her next move but the 2008 recession made it a terrible time to be job-hunting in the United States. “While I was looking for a job, a few of my entrepreneurial and creative friends asked me to help them with projects they were launching. These small projects turned into a bit of a revenue stream. I eventually went back to a full-time advertising job but left in 2010, knowing that I needed to revisit this ‘side project’ from two years prior,” she recalls.

That is what led to MSD, which is, ‘Marketing. Strategy. Dharma.,’ her marketing company established in 2011 to help startups and impact brands connect better with their brand, their audience, and with other companies through strategic partnerships. “We are an affordable company that knows what it is like to start your own venture and to work in the social good sector,” she says of their ideology. Over the years, they have associated with NPR, HP, the TV show Project Runway, Universal Pictures, General Assembly, ONE.org, Starwood Capital, and more.

And when her work with MSD and the Desai Foundation collides, she feels most alive.

As of three years ago, they have shifted from a family foundation to a public one, meaning their funding now needs to come from external sources. “Fundraising is always a challenge, and an art that we will continue to learn,” she says. Their achievements of the last three years, however, are validation that they’re doing something right. They claim to have impacted over 3,00,000 lives in the US and India.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/megha-desai/

10 times when less is more

“You might do serious damage to your brain,” my 14 year old told me. She is my nutritionist.

I tried a three day fast. I drank only water and had no food or anything else.

On the first day I was hungry but I watched TV at night to distract me and then I fell asleep early.

Falling asleep is a great way to fast. By the time I had woken up I hadn’t eaten in 36 hours. Then I tried to go through the rest of the day. This was yesterday.

Around noon I had trouble standing. When I stood I would see yellow lights everywhere. Yellow lights, in a traffic situation, mean things are about to change. Means you might have to STOP soon.

Sometimes the yellow was so bright I’d fall into a wall and hold on. Then I’d slide down.

I had read that going on a three day fast is perfect. That maybe you could get mental clarity from cleaning out all the toxins.

Maybe this is true. But at 46 hours the worst thing of all happened.

I logged onto the computer, specifically onto the place where I play chess online.

I lost about 20 games in a row for the first time in my life. I decided I needed to eat.

I had salmon. I had avocado. I had some nuts. Fast over.

I tried it. It was an experiment. Did it work? Did it not work? I don’t know. It was something I just tried. If you don’t try things, you don’t have experiences.

Thinking about things is not experience. Doing things is experience.

About ten months ago I threw out all my belongings. I gave up the apartments I was renting. I had someone go there and throw everything out.

I gave up my diploma, my books, my dishes, my beds, my sheets, my desks. My 40 year old comic book collection, my computers, my collected animated cels from the 70s TV show “I Dream of Jeannie.”

I gave up my original drawing of the seven dwarfs from the animator of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” I threw out my diploma.

“But you worked so hard for it,” my friend told me.

“I’ve worked a lot harder for other things,” I said. Ditch it.

I gave up everything that the prior James could say, “This is mine.” I was left with two outfits. A computer. A phone. I turned off all email from my phone and deleted all apps except Kindle.

I wasn’t being minimalist. I just didn’t want those things anymore. I wanted to be like a newborn baby again.

There’s a bestselling book about “tidying up” that says, “hold up each object close to your heart and keep the things you love and throw out the things you no longer love.”

This is a stupid idea. Why are there objects you love and other objects you don’t love? They are just objects.

I got rid of everything.

But then I found that I had many more things to give up.

Someone insulted me. I got angry at him. Now I had to give up anger.

Another person I had bad memories about that would come up almost every morning.

I had to give up those bad memories. Another time I was thinking about money. How much money will I make in my lifetime? I wonder this in the shower.

I had to give up thinking about money. I might die tomorrow. And then what? And worrying about money never made me any money.

The most common question people asked me after I threw everything away was, “Do you feel more free now,”

I want to say “Yes.” Yes, the burdens of objects no longer chain me to the Earth.

But it isn’t true. I didn’t feel more free. I just had no belongings or place to live.

I no longer had my Dr. McCoy doll sitting next to my computer. I no longer had my hand-carved Go board. Or the original sketch used to pitch the 60s cartoon, “Underdog.”

I no longer had an address.

But none of these things were freeing. But it was a starting point. And since then, every day I try to be more free. to find the spots where less is more.

10 things where LESS IS MORE:

A) Arguing.

When someone wants to argue with me, I take a pass. I remind myself of this:

My dad had a stroke while arguing and he never woke up again even though he was in bed with his eyes open for almost two more years.
B) Investing.

Warren Buffett says, “The first rule of investing is don’t lose money.” Then he says, “The second rule of investing is…don’t forget rule #1”.

The best way to avoid losing money is to realize you don’t have to invest. You and I work hard for money. Don’t give it to the people who try to scam us every day.

I pick my spots carefully. I used to invest in and out of the markets all day long. I’d feel every heart beat. Now I don’t. Now I take a walk and my heart does what it will. I don’t need to feel it.
C) People you love.

“Love everybody” is good advice. Fine. But this is a bit abstract. It’s not really practical.

I actually love very few people. I gave up on loving everyone. That’s a lot of people to care for.

My first priority is to my kids. And my friends who are closest to me. These are people I love and will do anything for.

After that, I am very curious about everyone else. Is this someone I can love? I prefer that question to the statement, “I love you” about people I don’t know,

Starting with curiosity is, for me, better than starting with love.
D) Work.

When you rest, you rejuvenate. You get more creative. You have more ideas. You read more and learn more and observe more and more time to get curious about people you might love.

These are all good things.

I work a couple of hours a day on writing, reading, and podcasting. But I can’t even call those things “work” because I love doing them.

It took me 40 years to realize this.

One thing I always remember: Anataly Karpov, who was World Chess Champion from 1975 – 1984 was asked how long he studied chess each day.

He said, “At MOST, three hours a day.” The rest of the time he spends with family, or playing tennis, or studying languages.

And that’s the best player in the world.

Why is everyone working more than three hours. For those of us not the best in the world, maybe one or two hours a day is enough.

The lion doesn’t hunt for food all day. He stretches out in the sun. He closes his eyes. Maybe she dreams of planets and lovers and blackness.
E) Education.

I went to college. I went to graduate school. I took 100s of tests to prove everything I was learning. I failed the last three of those 100s. And was thrown out of “learning.”

I use zero of it now. Zero.

Here’s what you need to know in each subject.

The MAXIMUM you need to learn to be good at 99% of things in life:

Math: basic probability and statistics that you can do in your head. For instance, know that 1/3 of 10,000 is 3,333 (roughly).

English: Learn how to read. Because later you might like reading and reading will make you a better writer.

Note that whenever you read a book, you might remember 1-2% of it. If you read lots of books that will add up. But no pressure to remember more.

History: A two page outline of the history of the planet. Because all the books are biased.

And then later they get rewritten.

Much later in life you might want to, for fun, explore those biases and read books about it.

Three good history books I think are worth reading:
“Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari
“The Evolution of Everything” by Matt Ridley
“Wonderland” by Steve Johnson

Science: Nothing. You don’t even really need to know that the Earth is flat. If you want to be a scientist then learn more science.

Sometimes science is fun. I like reading science fiction.

Art: I don’t know. I never learned art. I’m only starting to appreciate it and read about it now. I’m 48.

In the past few weeks I went to The Broad museum in LA and The Whitney in NYC. Fascinating!

So now I am reading books to learn more. But I’ve never learned about art before because I had no interest.

If you try to teach people with no interest, they won’t learn.

To this day, at every conference I speak at, nobody can tell me the birthdate of Charlemagne within 500 years.

Go ahead, guess right now!
G) Food.

If you eat a lot, your cells get inflamed and this is the cause of every disease known to man.

This doesn’t mean fast (see above). Our ancestors ate at random times. They didn’t stuff their faces with processed sugars 21 three -course meals a week.
H) Fears.

I’m afraid my kids will get hurt. I’m afraid to go broke. I’m afraid whatever woman I am dating will cheat on me. I’m afraid people I work with hate me.

Or…not.

When has a fear solved a problem for me?

Some would say, “fear is motivating”. Don’t be stupid.

Being smart should motivate me. Not trying to avoid some insecurity or fear.
I) Yes.

A “Yes” takes time.

If I lose $1000 I can always make it back (hopefully). But if I lose five minutes, I can NEVER make it back.

This doesn’t mean never say “yes”. But figure out how many more “Yesses” you have in life.

By the time you are 30, maybe you’ll only have time to make 10-20 new good friends in your life.

Make sure you say “Yes” very carefully to new friends. You only have 10 Yesses left.

Same for books, loves, meetings, coffees, everything. Same thing for the messages you send on a phone. To the people you are curious about.
J) Lists.

You can listen to this list. Or not. I might eventually start owning things again. Or I might change my mind about anything above.

It doesn’t matter.THE ONLY THING I WANT MORE OF:

True joy is infectious. It’s contagious. It’s a virus.

If you always do the things you enjoy then other people will become excited about them, excited about you, excited about the ideas you have

If you want to have impact on the future, bring as much joy as possible to the present.

I wasn’t enjoying fasting. So I ate a dead fish and some plants pulled out of the ground.

And then I won some chess games and watched some TV, went to the bathroom, slept eight hours.

And the next day I wrote this article. I said “Yes” to this. To you.What are other things where “less is more?”

Maybe: medicine, talking, the middle aisles in a supermarket, drug laws, romantic intrigue, gossip, etc.

Maybe even words in article I write.

Love, James.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/10-times-when-less-is-more/

Maybe a pilgrimage can save your life…

Kamal was totally lost. His father had died. His job over. His relationship gone. He felt adrift, depressed, broken.

He was so lost he wandered the world trying to find his way back.

Twenty years later he wrote the novel about what happened “Rebirth.”

The novel is about how he discovered for himself the ancient art of the pilgrimage. How to be a wanderer.

How to be lost in a world with too much GPS raining down.

Would a pilgrimage, a wandering, solve his problems?

I read Kamal’s book. The book comes out today. I had him on my podcast (also out today). I wanted to find out how even in our daily lives we can go on a pilgrimage.

Even if I’m in a cubicle, can I break free, can I become a wanderer.

Sometimes I also feel stuck. But I don’t want to go away for months at a time. I want a pilgrimage in my life right now!

From what I can gather from reading the book, “Rebirth,” and talking with Kamal, a pilgrimage has several parts:

Listen to the FULL interview with Kamal Ravikant here

A) Seeking an answer

Something happened. Something confusing. Something that wasn’t in the plan.

You have to get off the regular path. Try a new one. Try one that takes a bit of courage and discipline. To meet stranger along the way

B) It takes time

I’m not a believer that you have to go to a far location.

But take time for yourself each day to do something you’ve never done before. Think about things you never thought about before.

Find the places in your life that you never looked before. They are there every day. The pilgrimage awaits.

Do a dare you never would have dared to before.

C) Struggle

Maybe some people find life easy. I don’t.

Life is filled with worries about money, about relationships, about (for me) kids, about decisions, about the people who hate you, who annoy you, who scare you. Anxieties, regrets.

Every pilgrimage begins with the struggle. And every journey is a struggle.

The struggle doesn’t stop. It just changes. It changes into one where you are lost to one where you have vision.

Where the struggle is not being trapped in the vision of others but for the unique impact that you want to create.

D) Benefits of a pilgrimage:

You see more clearly: Everything you see on a pilgrimage is different from “normal life”. Enjoy them. Learn from it. Even a single day, a single meeting, can be a pilgrimage. What is your takeaway from it.

You meet people. I like to pretend everyone has a fortune cookie to give me. A little bit stale, a little bit crunchy, with a folded message inside. Read it.

There’s an end. We’ve made pilgrimages too easy. We can go to a museum and see 2000 works of art.

It used to be that people would travel a 1000 miles to see one painting hanging up in a chapel. Then you can really appreciate what you see.

The more you appreciate the people, the things, the emotions around you, the more you are a pilgrim.

Come back changed. A pilgrim doesn’t just fly a plane from LA to NY. A pilgrim changes because of the journey. You do that by using your senses: listen more, see more, taste more, observe more.

The convenience of modern society comes at a price. It’s too difficult now to be a pilgrim because everything is two taps away on our phone.

There is an “otherness” to being disconnected for a bit. To search. To wander.

And finally, to give up looking. To surrender to the results.

It’s freeing to give up, even for a few minutes, everything you ever knew. To become a Wanderer.

To look around and see everything as if it were new.

“Rebirth,” by Kamal Ravikant, got me thinking about these things. He went on his pilgrimage. He met people. He went on an adventure, a journey, and reading his book showed me how.

I need to leave. To struggle. To find an answer.

And then to completely give up all hope of ever finding one. To find again the beauty of being completely lost.

If I get lost enough, maybe I can find something worth looking for.

Listen to my full conversation with Kamal here:

Timestamps:

Years ago, I learned from Kamal you can self-publish your own book and it doesn’t have to be 200 pages. It can be 10 pages, it can be 40 pages. You can write a short book, right now and have it published in a week. It’s possible. I’ve seen it. Hear how Kamal did it [6:20]

Kamal says, “If you want to learn life lessons, but want to do it really quickly go…” do this (listen at [15:42]

“Everyone’s interesting,” Kamal says. He explains how to make the most interesting parts of you come alive [23:00]

“What should someone do when it feels like everything’s falling apart?” Kamal’s told me how to deal with fear and how to move forward [24:30]

Kamal talked to a monk. He asked him, “How do you find peace?” The monk said, “Easy question, huh?” “If I’m going to ask a question, that’s the question,” Kamal said. The monk gave him three answers. And I didn’t understand. I kept asking, “What do you mean? What does that mean?” He kept explaining, and I learned the number one philosophy for a peaceful life. Kamal lives by this rule. I struggle with it. You can try it. Hear it [48:40]

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/pilgrimage-can-save-your-life/