Unicorn India Ventures (UIV) a Mumbai-based early-stage VC (venture capital) Fund house has announced its fourth investment from Rs 400 crore Fund II in IoT (Internet of Things) enabled Smart grid automation startup Probus Smart Things.

The company has raised an undisclosed seed round from UIV which will be used for scaling up the platform and entering new geographies. Probus develops integrated hardware and software solutions for utility providers.

Probus digitizes the distribution grid and functions as an IoT platform based service. They are winners of the “Best Startup in India” for their sustainable solution at the 2019 Seedstars Delhi. The company and the underlying technology have been awarded by Indian Smart Grid Forum twice for the solution in 2018 and most recently in 2020.

The startup is an IoT solution for electricity distribution utilities that helps them achieve distribution grid analytics and automation, which subsequently enables a much more efficient distribution of electricity along with the quicker restoration of electricity after power disturbances. Probus further enables reduced operations and management costs for utilities and ultimately lower power costs for consumers.

“India is a power surplus country, but the distortions in the power sector have cost the Indian economy $86 billion in 2016 alone. Current technologies like SCADA are expensive and not scalable in terms of the size & complexity of India’s electricity distribution grid. Using our IoT enabled wireless, modular hardware & data analytics platform, we cut through these issues and are enabling electric utilities to make last-mile connectivity reliable by helping India achieve an efficient electricity grid within a fraction of their current costs.”Anand Singh, Co-founder, and CEO, Probus Smart Things, said.

Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, said, “The electricity distribution infrastructure is ripe with opportunities for innovation and the ability to embrace the elements of smart grid infrastructure. Probus enables electricity distribution companies to rapidly digitize their infrastructure and processes by bringing cost reduction and operational efficiency. This is a service that isn’t just pertinent in India but will fare well in the rest of the South East Asian market and Europe as well.”

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for a digitized distribution grid was strengthened for efficient and timely billing and loss reduction. Probus says it is strongly placed to be the natural partner for utilities in driving this change. This solution gives the distributors real-time visibility of asset performance, outages, root cause analysis, along with predictive and preventive maintenance through sensor data with scheduling and tracking of on-field personnel.

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Smartron India, which had recently announced a new inning with cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar has launched a new smartphone. The phone was launched by Sachin himself and bears his initials. The phones have been smartly named srt.phone.

The cost of the 32GB storage variant of the smartphone is Rs 12,999. The 64GB option costs Rs 13,999. The smartphone is exclusively available on Flipkart. Smartron had been sharing the details about the launch of its phone on its Facebook and Twitter accounts. Srt.phone’s tagline is ‘Mastery at the core’. Since Sachin is the brand ambassador for the company, it has named the latest device with the legends iconic SRT initials.

Smartron is also offering an extra Rs 1500 off on exchange and free Sachin Tendulkar back covers worth Rs 599. No cost EMI for srt.phone starts at Rs 1167 per month. Additionally, users will get one-year of t.care extended warranty worth Rs 1,499, for free with srt.phone.

Smartron srt.phone packs a 13MP rear camera with phase detection auto-focus like we saw on t-phone. The front camera in srt.phone has been bumped up to 5MP. Smartron srt.phone will run Android 7.1.1 Nougat with stock Android UI and e company’s tronX suite of apps.

Also Read: MakeMyTrip is ready to raise $330 million funding

Smartron srt.phone will be backed by a 3,000mAh battery and support Quick Charge 2.0 technology. There’s no metal unibody design and back cover will be removable. The smartphone will support USB Type-C for charging.

Smartron had earlier launched the T-phones in India. Sachin Tendulkar, in July last year, became one of the first buyers of the t-phone. Sachin had gone on to call it the first world class phone to have been made in India. The phones were made available at a price of Rs. 22,999. Tendulkar, who retired from all forms of cricket in 2013 has reportedly invested an undisclosed sum in Internet of Things firm Smartron India. Earlier, Tendulkar had admitted having been fascinated by technology and seemed impressed by Smartron’s vision of growth. He had said that people need to support brands that are ‘designed and engineered in India’ and can compete on a global scale.

Smartron is headed by Mahesh Lingareddy, the co-founder and CEO of Soft Machines Inc, a US-based company with operations in US, India and Russia. Smartron’s mobile division is headed by Amit Boni. Boni, who is now Vice President, Sales and Marketing at Smartron, previously looked after Motorola’s India operations. Boni is credited as bringing the Motorola brand to India, and pushing for an online-only strategy when the brand relaunched in India.

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Last week, Asian telecom major Telenor Group surveyed technology buffs to better understand key startup trends for 2017 and the challenges and views of entrepreneurs in Asia.

The survey was conducted over Facebook and LinkedIn with 215 respondents aged 15 to over 55 years old from Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Singapore, Thailand and other Asian countries.

Here are the highlights of the survey:

Robotics to take centre-stage in 2017

Respondents were asked to share their views on the development of the 2017 Asia startup landscape and which sectors would be the most ready for disruption in 2017. Nearly half of all respondents chose robotics as the sector most ready for disruption in 2017.

With the number of industrial robots deployed worldwide to increase to around 2.6 million units by 2019 and automation becoming increasingly important across industries, robotics would indeed be a priority focus for businesses in 2017.

A distant second, 20 per cent of respondents chose consumer banking, 14 per cent believe that healthcare will experience the most disruption in 2017, 12 per cent see real estate as ripe for disruption, while 9 per cent predict that the air travel industry will experience disruption in 2017.

Will 2017 be the year of the self-driving car?

On the technology front, autonomous vehicles were crowned as the most disruptive technology of 2016 by about 40 per cent of respondents, with nearly the same amount (37 per cent) picking it as 2017’s most likely disruptive tech trend. With Asia leading the world in the race towards fully autonomous vehicles by setting milestones like the launch of the world’s first self-driving taxis in Singapore this August, 2017 might just be the year we see self-driving cars becoming the norm.

Understanding how Asian entrepreneurs think

To gauge the interests and personalities of the survey respondents, each person was assigned the type of startup they were most likely to create in 2017, based on pattern of their responses. Thirty-eight per cent of respondents were found to be the most likely to create an IoT startup in 2017, significantly outnumbering the number who would establish medtech startups (22 per cent), on-demand startups (14 per cent), enterprise startups (11 per cent) and fintech startups (10 per cent).

With a potential market of 34 billion devices expected to be connected to the internet by 2020, and nearly $6 trillion to be spent over the next five years, it appears Asia’s entrepreneurs are well aware of the potential opportunities offered by the Internet-of-Things.

In addition to these 2017 startup trend insights, the survey findings also hint at what Asian entrepreneurs think it takes to succeed in the tough startup world. More than a third of respondents (36 per cent) believe that cybersecurity and data privacy is their number one priority, and keeping their customers’ data safe and secure is the biggest challenge facing Asian startups.

One in four also admitted that the lack of business management skills and experience is another major obstacle, and having access to expert guidance would be an important growth factor. Another 16 per cent say they are hampered by public policy frameworks and environments that are not conducive to startups, while 14 per cent say that sustained funding across all stages of startup development would be important.

Fewer than one in 10 were seen as were concerned with the challenge of expanding into other markets in the region.

The survey also found that business growth and profit are not the only primary motivators, with 29.3 per cent of respondents stating that helping others gives them a sense of worth and purpose. From a personal perspective, 35 per cent said that they are most interested in augmented and virtual reality, followed closely by artificial intelligence (33 per cent).

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