As the country celebrates National Technology Day on May 11, women entrepreneurs are seen setting new landmarks by deploying technology in their niche offerings of products and services.
Rashi Agarwal, for example, thought of venturing into the highly competitive space of electric mobility (EV) with the help of tools such as internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI).
In 2017, Agarwal cofounded Zypp Electric with Akash Gupta as a direct-to-consumer (D2C) EV brand to help last-mile delivery become emission-free and sustainable in the rapidly growing e-commerce space.
Zypp Electric provides fully-automated IoT and AI-enabled electric scooters to delivery executives to reduce fuel cost and pollution while keeping the delivery model asset-light for e-commerce merchants.
“Currently, the company provides groceries, medicines, food, and e-commerce packages through these scooters that are low on maintenance and high on performance and provide affordable rentals for commuters and delivery executives to save on petrol expenses,” said Agarwal.
The AI-enebled system tracks battery usage and prompts for replacement at Zypp swapping stations installed at critical touchpoints. In about four years, it has turned EBITDA positive with 5x revenue growth this fiscal against previous fiscal, Agarwal said.
“As a growing start-up, we believe that this is a clear sign of future potential of our business model,” she said, adding that the Google for Startups Accelerator (GFSA) programme in India provided her the technical depth and mentoring on AI, Machine Learning roadmap, user interface and user experience development, besides addressing other technology challenges during the development phase.
Agarwal looks to now address other challenges, such as fast charging technology for EV, if a rider has no swapping options nearby.
Making a difference in healthcare
Meanwhile, in a bid to address the gaps in healthcare services at hospitals, IIT Roorkee graduate Nidhi Jain has developed end-end digitisation of hospitals by providing 50+ pre-integrated modules as plug and play, using cloud-native, mobile-ready, AI-ready multi-facility platform for the hospitals from a single cloud.
Jain, a computer engineer, first identified the fundamental digitisation gaps in the healthcare industry and started offering managed services to hospitals as it was the need in post-pandemic times to adopt digital technologies and innovative ways to bring more efficiency in healthcare delivery and perform back-end tasks.
She says that her team, “figured out that systems from different vendors worked in silos. They also figured out that patient journeys were broken as vendors use other methods, while hospital’s IT staff try to manage it inside the hospital. This is not their core area of operation, i.e. providing care to the patients.”
Jain set up KareXpert in 2018, which has received support from Reliance Jio, and created a NoCoding platform. The software has its own ecosystem to create more valueto the stakeholders by integrating IoT devices, Lab machines, AI/Ml marketplace to make healthcare more accessible, along with quality. It uses cloud to provide managed services rather than on-premise deployment at individual units.
Jain says, “We are seeing the emergence of a new class of truly ‘smart hospitals’ that have undergone a complete digital overhaul or makeover. From scheduling appointments to capturing patient data to last-mile delivery of care, these hospitals are leveraging cutting-edge, tech-driven solutions to automate their end-to-end operations. Besides cost optimisation and enhanced business productivity, this enables them to deliver 24×7 anytime and anywhere healthcare services.”
KareXpert, another startup from the GFSA kitty, has found deployment at hospitals in tier 1 to tier 3 cities of India,
Published on
May 11, 2022
