Meet “Hivericks Technologies Pvt Ltd” from Chennai, a company built by a group of hardworking, passionate engineers with a mission to create simple but world-class products and solutions for a Greener Future. Their Patented product XOptimus is in itself unique. Using new-age technologies “Xoptimus” range of SMART chargers for your SMART devices (mobiles, laptops etc.) are designed to maintain charge levels of your battery at optimal levels at all times even if connected to a power source for longer durations.

Unlike market available chargers today, these chargers eliminate “trickle charge”, and with other features like Smart Calling, Battery Temperature monitoring etc., Xoptimus chargers are all set to change the way you play games on your device, work from home. Xoptimus GREEN chargers ensure safe charging and longevity of your batteries while saving energy and reducing Ewaste by almost 40% just by charging differently.

Hivericks Technologies Pvt Ltd is part of the HexGn Startup Ready Program. A six-month online Startup Acceleration program by HexGn in partnership with Invest India (AGNIi, and Startup India) to boost technology-based entrepreneurs from India. Incorporated in 2018 August, they are based out of Chennai and have been Incubated by CITIC (TREKSTEP a government initiative) in 2019 before joining the HexGn Startup Ready Program in 2020. As a testament to their strong potential, they were in the top 5 in CITIC (A NITI Aayog Initiative) startup challenge 2019 among 150 + applicants from Tamil Nadu.

Globally, technologies that can charge batteries faster and safely, without overheating or reducing the life of batteries is in very high demand. The new generation chargers are in very high demand by mobile phone and electric vehicle manufacturers. Hivericks has taken the first step to tapping into this multi-billion, high-tech industry.

The Hivericks Technologies team of co-founders Arun, Govind and technical embedded engineers have been friends since college, and along with co-founder Hemalatha with 15 plus years of experience in Industry, they make a great team with the right attitude, a mix of skills and determination to succeed in this competitive business.

Sustenance, managing Op-ex and retention of their employees during this COVID has been their most significant challenge with multiple roadblocks to their business plan for Pilot and Market launch, including logistics, procurement and fundraising.

As for advice to future entrepreneurs, the Hivericks founders recommend, market testing your idea or conducting a survey to see different perspectives of your idea/concept before venturing into development of the product itself is very important. Building a hardware prototype is in itself expensive, and you may be addressing a problem that is redundant or not a real pain point for customers. Hence Defining, studying your target market and knowing what they need is critical to designing the Minimum viable product first few iterations. According to them, It’s not enough to be an excellent technical entrepreneur. You need to manage your cash flow and know your numbers. For keeping the team together during Covid, they have multiple team meetings to discuss issues and find solutions for day to day operational issues as well as short/long term strategy and roadmap. They have adopted the Agile methodology, and this automatically breaks down problems to smaller solvable problem statements reducing stress.

On what they would do differently, if they could go back in time, “If we go back now, we would have applied a different funding strategy to fuel our prototype development. We took up many client projects to get additional revenue for our own development without researching enough on seed funding or grants etc. We also spent little time effort getting market feedback on our product idea. This resulted in multiple iterations of our prototype before we could reach an MVP variant that we could sell,” Says Hemalatha, co-founder of Hivericks.

Founded by Shubham Gupta and Ravin Kumar from India, VUERON is an AI-driven deep-tech startup that is working on Human-Computer interaction (HCI) systems. They are explicitly making use of HCI in delivering touchless solutions in the fields of healthcare & public utilities. It includes touchless operability of elevators, medical equipment’s, interactive displays (ticketing, vending kiosks, and social distance monitoring).

VUERON was selected after tough competition to be a part of the HexGn Startup Ready Program in 2020. It six-month online Startup Acceleration program by HexGn in partnership with Invest India (AGNIi, and Startup India) to boost technology-based entrepreneurs from India.

They are mainly working on AI-powered gesture-based touchless systems which aid in the accomplishment of a specific task intended by a user in a contact-free manner. They enable available regular buttons and display screens to become touchless/contact-free in terms of their interaction with the user. The solution is a gesture-based pad which can be used for data input. Their AI system can accurately perceive the input from a user by tracking the user’s hand, and the task can be executed based on a definite hand gesture. They intend to first integrate their solutions into Elevators/Lifts for their touchless operation.

VUERON started with a promising yet intricate field in vision-based AI. The responses through customer validation were encouraging. They managed to get par because of the zeal, persistence and devotion to our work. But when they completed prototype version-2, were looking to raise funds, corona happened. Funding’s got seized.

That is when they tried to apply themselves into something that creates value in these times. So, they took a tough decision of pivoting into touchless technologies while rubbing off all the hard work done for the previous venture idea. Building anything in the cutting-edge technology of HCI is highly complex. With covid-19, the procurement of high-end devices got affected. Running a real-time AI without requiring GPUs is a severe challenge, and now they had to build an AI running on minimal hardware (only available option).

The uniqueness of VUERON lies in the highly optimized AI solution, running inside minimalistic hardware (smartphones/tablets). It is an immensely accurate & customizable system, that can be operated from even distances like 10 feet. The ability to provide innovative add-on features like Social distancing check, Face mask compliance, Voice Assistance, Awareness on safety norms, User recognition and personalization, etc. make it one of a kind in the market.

On advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, VUERON founders say, “First focus on creating a T-shape personality, i.e. having expertise in one area and basic knowledge of others. Find people who share the same passion and excitement to work on the idea. It is always good to have people with complementary skillsets because it magnifies the overall synergy of the startup. Any startup is as good as their team members, the coordination among them and their alignment towards a common goal. Entrepreneurship is a path full of multi-dimensional struggles, so patience, consistency and persistence are the keys to stand tall and deliver.”

On managing stress, the founders say” By analyzing the source of stress in a neutral, transparent & more profound sense and then working on what needs to be to done to relieve that stress. Trying to resolve situations via dialogue has proved to be one of the best ways to handle conflicts. Apart from that, it is always good to talk to people and discuss rather than keeping things to yourself and mismanaging the stress.”

On the questions, If the founders Ravin and Shubham, could roll back time, what would they do differently? They say, they would have built a rough contingency plan on the side-lines. This would have certainly helped for managing stress which we think almost everyone has gone through during the pandemic phase. Another thing one would like to do is getting an experienced mentor early on, getting associated and groomed from accelerators like HexGn as early as possible.

Across the world hospitals are suffering from a shortage of medical equipment and supplies, COVID19 has led to a massive surge in demand and increased delivery times. In such times, platforms like ZEPNURhealth are helping many hospitals in India save lives and remain functional. It’s proprietary procurement system and integrated approach helps healthcare facilities reduce capital and operating expenses by up to 30%. The ZEPNURhealth platform acts as a bridge between vendors and facilities by leveraging the power of group purchasing.

ZEPNURhealth is part of the HexGn Startup Ready Program. A six-month online Startup Acceleration program by HexGn in partnership with Invest India (AGNIi, and Startup India) to boost technology-based entrepreneurs from India.

“ZEPNURhealth” has recently assisted three hospitals in setting up their COVID ICU’s during the pandemic despite all the logistical constraints. Dr Nidun Jacob, CEO of ZEPNURhealth says this has been a very satisfying part of his startup journey, ever since he moved back from Australia to do a startup in India. He believes that to startup an entrepreneur needs to “action” the most achievable part of his/her big dream.

ZEPNURhealth is a tech platform that assists healthcare facilities to efficiently procure and manage their equipment and consumables while providing healthcare vendors with a solution to improve visibility and sales. Dr Nidun and his team have built the tech platform as an enabler, with a focus on online brand and product discovery. The platform provides medical equipment planning expertise, brand-independent assessment of vendors and their products while retaining a sharp focus on customer pain points across all phases of procurement. ZEPNURhealth is run by a doctor-led team of biomedical engineers with a strong support team of technology, marketing and operations professionals.

During COVID19 times, most hospitals and healthcare facilities are suffering from reduced earnings, and any savings in procurement and supply chain is a divine blessing for them. ZEPNURhealth’s proprietary platform and app have assisted government and private healthcare facilities procure and manage their supplies and equipment efficiently. Some of the facilities serviced include Kidwai Institute of Oncology (Bangalore), ST healthcare (Bangalore), Acharya Institute of Cancer (Cuttack), GC’s hospital (Mysore), Vijay Ortho and Trauma Centre (Belgaum), Nakshatra Diagnostics Centre (Hyderabad) among many others.

Ashish Kumar Kushwaha is the Founder and CEO of Farming For All, an Agritech startup from Greater. Noida, India. It is helping farmers use cutting edge technologies to increase their crop yield. Farming For All is promoting a smart way to cultivate, and it helps farmers in monitoring soil moisture levels, PH, temperature, humidity, light etc. in real-time by using an IOT smart data collector.

Farming For All is part of the HexGn Startup Ready Program. A six-month online Startup Acceleration program by HexGn in partnership with Invest India (AGNIi, and Startup India) to boost technology-based entrepreneurs from India.

Farming For All applies a machine-learning algorithm to process each farming field data and give suggestions and forecasts to the farmer. Smart Irrigation Controller allows them to start/stop the water motor on demand via mobile app and act as a network gateway for data collectors and send data to cloud applications via Wifi network or GSM SIM.  The mobile application will be a one-stop solution for the farmer to access the marketplace, sell or purchase agriculture input items, and connect with an on-demand agriculture specialist to discuss and solve farming issues.

The platform developed by Ashish Kumar Kushwaha captures soil moisture, PH and other data for every field and maintains historical data for analysis and improvement using smart AI algorithms. The farmers in India are isolated and lack access to expertise; however, the smartphone and internet connectivity has brought them on the global grid.

Farming For All members, can access the broader community of farmers across India, and resolve their queries or find a functional expert for their problem at hand. This will vastly, Improve the productivity of farmers and save time. Integrating various available technologies into one solution makes Farming For All very unique. They are using cloud computing, Internet of things, smart sensors, embedded software, smart devices, machine learning technology to process data and produce scientific fact about the farming field. Using Farming experts and researcher for agriculture knowledge and converting it into digital format, to be used as input for machine learning algorithms (AI).

For Farming For All, Integration of all technologies and launching the product for testing has been a significant milestone, as due to COVID19, sensors were not available online, and markets were closed.

Ashish’s advice to fresh entrepreneurs is that continuous learning and consistency towards the goal is essential for growth. They should develop MVP fast and move into the market and start iterating it based on customer feedback and research. The entrepreneurs should stay focused on the goal and do not stop until they accomplish the goal. When Ashish gets stressed, he takes a break and lends support to underprivileged children and people at Amarpushp Educational and Welfare Society, an NGO working towards children education and women empowerment. He says the smile on the children’s face gives him new energy

ArtyOwl.com is a unique marketplace with a vision to surface beautiful handmade hidden treasures of the world on this exclusive platform for buying and selling handmade, handcrafted & hand-curated products. Rajiv Hari Ramnani, Co-Founder and CEO, tells us about his journey.

ArtyOwl.com is part of the HexGn Startup Ready Program for 2020. it is a six-month online Startup Acceleration program by HexGn in partnership with Invest India (AGNIi, and Startup India) to boost technology-based entrepreneurs from India.

ArtyOwl.com started its journey on 8th March 2016 with a vision to revolutionize the handmade and handicrafts online business. By being on ArtyOwl.com, the artisans/creators can surface their work, Display & Sell online. The artisans/creators can connect with customers from around the world who are the real connoisseurs of such niche products in Home Décor, Personal Care, Food, Fashion, etc.

A customer who shops online on Artyowl.com gets a plethora of handmade items created by some highly passionate artisans. These artisans work with various materials like Ceramic/Clay, Wood, Paper, Wrought Iron, Glass, Cork, Leather, Metals, upcycled art (Recycled) etc. These Artisans give special attention to materials used which are created with extreme creativity, passion and ecological sense which gives the customer/owner a piece of the authentic handmade experience.

Currently, ArtyOwl houses 300 artisans who are selling 9000 odd products across categories like Food, Home Decor, Personal Care & Fashion. ArtyOwl.com promotes and sells products of Artisans who make Handmade products of genuine materials and natural products. 100% pure, zero chemicals and organic are the keywords. Plus it’s a unique platform for Women Entrepreneurs, NGO’s, SHG (Self Help Groups ), SME (Small & Medium Entreprises), Tribals and more. Listing is absolutely free, and most importantly it’s providing a business process to all these Entrepreneurs who get more time to focus on creativity and leave the rest processes like Online Payments, Online Marketing and Logistics to ArytOwl. Currently operating in INDIA & USA, the company clearly has a global vision where artisans can be Hyperlocal & global at the same time.

According to Rajiv Ramnani, the most difficult challenge so far was finding, surfacing and winning the trust of all these artisans. They had typical ways of selling their products and with little knowledge of their global appeal. Our vision is GLOBAL, and we will achieve the same by taking their reach and treasures Global. Simplified process of onboarding to selling it’s what makes it challenging, and we have to keep evolving all the time. Post COVID we see a surge in demand and supply.

On his advice for entrepreneurs, Rajiv says that most of the entrepreneurs devise businesses or models with a more considerable part of the mind on Investors and not consumers and sellers. My model is purely on achieving excellence in my field, and so far, it’s self-funded. Entrepreneurs should be more focused on problem-solving than just funding, though Money is essential, a clear vision and a road map is a must.

Commenting on the journey of ArtyOwl, Rajiv says “We have achieved great trust over the past four years of 300 odd artisans and growing. We have achieved trust and growth gradually along with the fraternity. The biggest achievement is yet to come.” “Stress management is not very easy, but ideally the best way to manage it is by feeling happy of what I have done so far rather than stress on what’s not come,” says Ramnani.

Arpita Divyesh Doshi, the founder of NDF is a 1st generation woman innovator turned entrepreneur from Ahmedabad. She is bringing science to the nutritional food that you consume. Arpita Doshi is proving a 2000 years old proverb “Your Food is Your Medicine”.

Arpita’s startup NDF is part of the HexGn Startup Ready Program. Its a six-month online Startup Acceleration program by HexGn in partnership with Invest India (AGNIi, and Startup India) to boost technology-based entrepreneurs from India.

The Association of Food Scientists and Technologists (INDIA), CFTRI – Mysore recognized her innovative and authentic approach and bestowed her with Young Entrepreneur award for her innovation. She holds 10 Indian Patents under her belt and has formulated another six more to give a plethora of choices when it comes to choosing healthy products.  Three of them have been commercialized and made available on e-commerce platforms and traditional platforms since 2019. Ms Doshi started NDF, from her kitchen and now has its own 100kg/production unit with health and hygiene certificates that ensures quality and purity. NDF’s vision is to Feed 100% Plant-based Natural, Innovative Functional Foods as medicine to curb all Inflammatory Non-Communicable Diseases across the global population.

Before COVID, the burden of Inflammatory Non-Communicable Diseases on Indian GDP was 5-10% and US$7 trillion globally. Covid19 has changed the world, and everyone is suffering from stress in one way or another, and it is the primary cause of Inflammatory diseases in our bodies. Arpita believes stress that can be prevented or managed by lifestyle and dietary modifications. She wants to eliminate the guilt factor from our beloved foods.

The Japanese population is well known for its healthy longevity because of their diet rich in secondary nutrients “Antioxidants” along with other macro and micronutrients. The supplement industry suffers from a significant, setback when it comes to consumer acceptance especially in their widely available forms(Tablets, Capsules, Tinctures), leaving the users with psychological stress and stigma after consumption. Functional Foods from NDF overcome this burden by blending nutrients in easily consumable food items.

NDF is based on the concept of fusing traditional and modern foods. Hence they have consumers from both these sectors. Removing Guilt factor from food and blending with feel-good factor from food is what makes NDF different.

Before starting NDF, Arpita was working in London, the United Kingdom and had a highly successful career; however, she always wanted to remain close to her roots and her motherland and do something in the field of food and agriculture. Her husband, Mr Divyesh Doshi, looks after all the production and regulatory aspect, and Ms Vidhi Doshi looks after her commercial brand marketing on digital platforms.

Arpita’s message to the budding entrepreneur is a DREAM. It all starts with a dream once you identify what problems are stopping you from making your dream a reality, work towards the elimination of those problems with full dedication, determination and persistence till your dream becomes a reality.