Noel Sequeira, Sameet Singh, Amith George, Prakhar Verma, Creators, Creative Riot Software

“Green IT”

A dollar saved is a dollar earned but finding out where and how to save that dollar is not the exclusive premise of financial geniuses anymore. Sameet Singh, Amith George, Prakhar Verma and Noel Sequeira are four Entrepreneurs propagating Green IT solutions that may permanently change energy consumption patterns in India.

Noel spoke to Yourstory on behalf of his co-creators telling us about what Creative Riot Software has created and hope to achieve. He says “Creative Riot Software is a team of young engineers focused on IT energy efficiency solutions for the enterprise. The company was born out of a program jointly conducted by the Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship at IIM-Ahmedabad and Microsoft India.”

“We’ve just launched our first product, ENPOWER. ENPOWER is a centralized power management and monitoring solution for computer networks. It enables IT administrators to optimize PC power consumption on their networks by effectively transitioning idle machines into power saving modes (monitor off/sleep/hibernate) and ensuring that only the machines that are in use are actually on and drawing power.”“We’re in conversation with several early adopters and have installed ENPOWER at three clients’ offices. They include a couple of BPOs and an educational institute.”

Green IT is a concept in its infancy in India and Creative Riot are banking on their pioneering effort to capture markets before all others. Noel explains “We’re early movers in the business in India. Ours is essentially a product license revenue model. ENPOWER helps organizations lower their operational costs and we earn by charging them a fraction of their savings. Enterprises should ideally see an ROI within 6 months to a year.”“We have multiple differentiators. ENPOWER has unique web based architecture, so it can be deployed with equal ease in IT managed or IT unmanaged networks. We’re working in stealth mode on a second differentiator. Finally we’re indigenous, so we’re cost effective in comparison to our competitors and offer local support.”

Their sense of humor shines through when describing how they would like to take things into the future. “Sell. Improve product. Rinse and repeat.” States Noel with glee.

Their entrepreneurial journey was built on the backbone of victory and recognition. Noel recalls how CIIE and a competition were factors that propelled them saying “ENPOWER was conceived as a project for the Microsoft Imagine Cup, a software development competition, and we won the Interoperability Award at the world finals. We were, thereafter, awarded incubation at the Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship, IIM-Ahmedabad. Support from the CIIE has been a huge confidence booster and helped us burn our bridges without looking back.”

Though their winning concept is an undoubtedly sound and sensible investment, they have like all entrepreneurs discovered the chinks in their armor. They are learning form the drawbacks that have been exposed and Noel spoke on this saying “Like any other product company, meeting the right customers is extremely difficult. It is a challenge that we’re still grappling with. We’re making mistakes all the time and learning from them.”

“We’ve bootstrapped and are sipping funds from the cash awards we’ve received from the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 - a worldwide student software competition and Eureka! 2008 –the annual business plan contest organized by ECell, IIT Bombay.”

Despite the minor speed bumps that they are encountering Creative Riot has an impressive array of achievements that proclaims their mastery of their realm. Noel lists their most important milestones saying “Definitely the launch of the Social Power Array. (http://creativeriot.com/the-social-power-array/) While PC Power Management is widely accepted as a great way to cut unnecessary energy waste, it still remains the preserve of large enterprises.”

“We felt we could get individual users / small businesses involved through a unique social initiative (http://apps.facebook.com/enpower/) built around the Facebook platform and have them download a free version and compete with their friends in a "savings race". We already have 49 users from 7 different countries who've collectively saved over 100 kWh in under a fortnight. Hoping we can grow those numbers in the weeks to come.”

“We developed the initial version of our product over a year back and won the Interoperability Award at the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 at Paris (http://www.microsoft.com/interop/events/default.aspx).We subsequently emerged winners at IIT Bombay’s Eureka! 2008-09, Asia’s largest business plan contest, (http://www.livemint.com/2009/02/09224236/Clean-tech-new-designs-win-at.html) and were also awarded incubation at the Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship, IIM - Ahmedabad. (http://www.ciieindia.org/?incubatee_id=19)”

Noel and Creative Riot are in high spirits and explained their optimism in entrepreneurship saying “The fact that the startup scene is evolving and a supportive ecosystem is gradually taking root. We’d like to be part of that evolution.”

The concept of saving energy in India through software is one that merits a try by everyone. We are sure that Creative Riot will find many people who appreciate and value their efforts. Yourstory wishes Sameet Singh, Amith George, Prakhar Verma, and Noel Sequeira a speedy journey to success and stability.