We had the wonderful opportunity of speaking with Deepak Shukla and Pratik Singh, Founders of CoreData Networks Pvt Ltd. CoreData has a team of experienced professionals involved in product customization which includes electronics system design & development, software development and IT Services.
Hey, here are response on the questions:
- How did the founder conceive of the idea and talk about the first year of the company?
Response: During our job stint we always felt that each customer is having specific issue which they wanted to solve but unable to do so due to unavailability of devices as per customer requirement. We both founder came together to solve custom problems with help of new technologies involving IoT & AI. Â We are having our corporate office based out of sector 62, Noida.
- What is your company solving?
Response: We are solving issues as per client requirement by designing & developing complete solutions. We design & develop the electronic devices along with software/application for complete monitoring and control of devices over unified dashboard complied with OneM2m standards. Sometime clients problem are very specific & only custom devices can solve their problem. Since, very few companies are working in the sector  where both hardware & software expertise is required for development of technological solution. We are solving their issues & helping them to execute their plan in more effective & efficient way.
- Explain your business and industry ecosystem in India – how are different companies solving different needs, explain the scenario in B2B and B2C?
Response: In India, there are very few companies working into ESDM sector. There are very few companies making custom devices or products. There is requirement of custom products in both B2B & B2C category.
ESDM currently accounts for 2.5% of India’s GDP and employs over 13 million people. Additionally, the nation’s share in the global electronics manufacturing has grown from around 1.3% in 2012 to 3% in 2018. India has also emerged as the second largest manufacturer of mobile phones across the world in 2018 with the production value reaching $24.3 Billion. The ESDM sector holds a position of key importance in the nation’s goal of generating $1 trillion of economic value from the digital economy by 2025.
Ex. 1. For B2B, there is need to have very less turnaround time to build the quality solutions & able to do PoC to demonstrate how proposed solution will solve their issues. We are trying to establish our space in this area. Industry 4.0 will play a big role for B2B segment.
- For B2C, Many medical small electronic devices can be built to assist, automate and monitor medical SOPs. Nowadays people are using oximeter, thermometer, oxygen concentrator etc. some of devices are very new but every middle class family now using at their home. We are building different product for home automation as well. We are working on our home automation product Corify. We believe we can play significant role in both sector.
- How does your product or solution work?
Response: We build different product & solution as per client requirement. We design IoT Devices to collect data from sensor & forwarded it to our cloud dashboard. The overall project execution from designing of device to device installation in field are taken care by our own team. Some of our product are as follows:
- Water Supply Monitoring System(CD-WSMS with AquaData):
Our solution works by monitoring running status including extraction of water of 5000+ aprx motors installed in rural areas through our dashboard hosted on cloud platform. Our WSMS device communicate with our own cloud hosted Dashboard AquaData.
- Hybrid Solar Charge Controller(CD-HSCC):
This device actually helps to keep Wireless AP live using 3 power sources solar, battery & AC. It always prefer solar over other two conventional power sources.
- Public Response Support system(CD-PRSS):
It is designed to get installed in public area so that in any emergency situation people can connect & speak to police/authorities concerned by just pressing the button. Police/authorities will get their location automatically & able to rush nearest team to the location. Our PRSS solution can be installed in different kind of used cases such as feedback system, technical support, grievance.
- Solar Street Light Monitoring system(CD-RMS with Helios):
This solution helps to in real time monitoring of Street Light, battery & solar panel. All data received from our RMS device can be monitored on our cloud hosted CMS platform Helios.
- Smart Home Automation (CoriFy):
This product made to control home electrical appliance with the help of voice command or through internet. With the help of CoriFy any traditional appliance can also be controlled with voice command after integrating it with by Amazon’s Alexa & apple’s home pod or any other smart devices.
- GPS Tracking Solution(Trackcoredata)
Trackcoredata made for real time tracking of vehicles/fleet. Users can get monitor their vehicles with the help of our product. Trackcoredata is useful for transporters, commercial vehicle owners & school buses etc.
There are many other solutions which are currently under development. Our objective is to build solution of any real life problem by use of latest & reliable technologies..
- How did you win your first customer and your first pay cheque? Please explain in detail
Response: Just before lockdown we participated by taking confidence of an system integrator company into a published govt tender. On May 2020, we were informed that we became L1 & needed to give the demo by govt department. There was full lockdown imposed by the authorities. We were allowed to give demo in the month of August by installation of  some devices on remote sites. After 1 month of successful operation, we were given go ahead by the department and we received the order.
- How much have you invested in your company personally?
Response: We invested by our own pocket(bootstrap) initially to develop our own team & products. Some of team member who were part of our team during job tenure, they came & joined us to create the great team. We started looking for the problem & we came across these opportunities.
- Have you raised money or angel round or seed round?
Response: No, We didn’t approached any angel fund or seed fund. We are profitable company & managing our business operations through revenues & bootstrap only. Though, we are open for VC funding for expansion, having own premises & building more solutions with own capability & resources (team, R&D setup & machineries etc).
- What have been the difficulties in building this business
Response: We faced many of problems professionally for gaining trust in the market. Due to pandemic, we faced challenges in mobilising team for project execution, logistics & component availability.
- What is your business model and how do you make your revenues?
Response: We design, develop, manufacture, test & deploy whole end to end project execution taken care by our own inhouse team or by team of system integrator partner. Our devices comes with subscription/license model with own respective cloud hosted dashboard. We work on BOOT model with our client & we earn revenue from them against the sale of product & service(warranty, amc) provided to them under contract.
- What was the most difficult time for you to go after?
Response: Last year when I lost my father despite of making all efforts on July 28th 2020. He was diagnosed with advanced stage cancer. During those days, we both founder worked in great sync so that works didn’t get hampered. We were preparing ourselves for PoC during pandemic time. We appreciates our clients, project partners & our team members for trusting us during those days.
- What is your plan for the next 18 months?
Response: We will be focussing on building products as per customer requirement .
We are in discussion with some customer for their custom requirement. We will be ramping up team members in our R&D department to cater customer requirement. Our business development team working on different used case of our product in different geographical areas.
- Anything else that you want to add.
Response: We will look forward to connect people/investor/companies who are interested to explore with us.
- Talk about how different markets shop and how many customers do you have in total.
Response: Since, we are providing customer what they need to get rid of their issues. We have very high rate of retention. We have 6-7customer in B2B segment who prefer us for any customized device/solution development. For B2C, category we already have more than 100 paying customers.
- What is the USP/value proposition of the product.
Response: Our USP: Since, the design of the product is being done inhouse, we are able to offer more reliable product based on SMT(surface mount technology). End to end execution responsibility is ours. We have hardware, software, server, development & management team inhouse. Less turnaround time, quality products & ability to develop custom products with experienced team are our key value proposition.
- What are your revenues like today and how much do you expect to make by the end of this year.
Response: We have revenue of 3cr aprx. as of now. We are expecting to achieve 5cr by end of this year.
- How has the Coronavirus affected your business
Response: We were affected a lot by Covid-19. We faced challenges in arranging logistics, component availability, manufacturing & deployment of devices in the field. The cost of electronic components & chipset is also at higher side due to pandemic. Everything is affected. More significantly, we were not able to connect with potential customer for discussion of any other requirement.
Despite all these challenges we are having good size projects & we are comfortable to continue our operation. We are also adding new team members  for development of smart devices & solutions.
Company Name: CoreData Networks Pvt Ltd
Web.: www.coredata.co.in
Corp Office: C-56, A, 2, C Block, Phase 2, Industrial Area, Sector 62, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201309