7 startups from Bhubaneswar setting the benchmark for aspiring entrepreneurs in Odisha

From deep tech, to healthcare, to manufacturing specialty chemicals for mining, and many others, we bring to you seven innovative business ideas from Odisha’s capital city.

Odisha aims to emerge as one of the country’s top three startup hubs by 2020, and to facilitate at least 1,000 startups over the next five years.

To encourage entrepreneurship in Odisha, the State government provides three types of funding - a monthly sustenance allowance of Rs 20,000 per month, monetary assistance up to Rs 15 lakh for new product development and marketing, and need-based funding.

Apart from direct incentives for startups, the State is also putting in place measures to recognise the importance of other key stakeholders in the ecosystem, such as incubators, angel networks and mentors. Currently, there are five incubators registered with Startup Odisha, and there are plans to add one more soon.

Here’s a list of a few of the innovative business ideas based in Bhubaneswar:

Etrix Technology 

Founded in 2015 by Harshwardhan Kumar, Nitin Kumar, Satish Kumar Singh, Dhiraj Choudhary, and Josef Suess, Etrix Technology helps startups and enterprises in building products. Etrix Technology team works closely with clients at software development stage to understand their needs and provides the best fit solution in graphic design, UX-UI, database management and backend integration, among others. The startup has so far worked for clients in domains like travel, online business and consultation, technology, and others.

SlickAccount

Bibhu Dutta Dash and Jyotirmaya Dhal launched SlickAccount in 2013 to help SMEs, small software firms and startups to stay profitable via their web-based accounting and invoicing software tool. It is a money management and profitability software that claims to offer simple cashflow management, invoicing, bank transactions, tag transactions, project-based profitability, pricing advises, and financial analytics. SlickAccount has also introduced a GST accounting software to handhold businesses in invoicing, billing, challans, stock/inventory management, double entry bookkeeping, journal entry, and Indian format financial reports.

Arrelic

This deep tech firm was established in 2016 by Deep Kumar Sahoo. Arrelic aims to bring the next level of Internet of Things (IoT) -based sensor technology to transform the manufacturing sector. Leveraging the power of deep technology assets like reliability engineering, predictive maintenance, industrial IoT sensors, machine learning and artificial intelligence, the firm helps manufacturing industries improve their overall plant productivity and reliability, and claims to minimise total production cost by 25-30 percent by eliminating machine downtime, and analysing the machine data for smooth operations.

Vasitars

Vasitars was founded in 2016 by IIT Bhubaneswar alumni Vishwas Chandra and Tushar Gautam. Leveraging the power of technology, Vasitars provides composite repair solutions like composite pipeline repair, and composite kit. It also offers products like ballistic chronograph and artificial odour generator.

MedTel Healthcare

MedTel Healthcare was founded in 2016 by a group of doctors and engineers, including Shashank Singhal, Lalit Manik, Lalit Choudhury and Aseem Sheeraz. This healthcare startup is working towards digitising healthcare services and bringing urban specialty healthcare services to rural areas. MedTel works on less ownership model (B2B2C) by opening virtual health clinics (telehealth pods) with diagnostic kits (i.e. blood pressure monitor, blood sugar monitor, thermometer, weighing scale and other strip-based tests), helping patients get access to specialist doctors consultation on demand basis.

Innocule

Started in 2014, Innocule helps mineral industries enhance their productivity and cost-effectiveness with innovative products. The company manufactures dispersants, dewatering aids, flow aids, grinding aids and other specialty chemicals used for the upgradation and beneficiation of the minerals. The products are developed at Innocule’s in-house R &D facility that also offers customised products and the company has collaborated with several labs across India to ensure high-quality products.

Prantae Solutions

Founded in 2015 by Sumona Kajree Mishra, Prantae Solutions aims to create affordable technologies for rare and neglected disorders via its medical devices and interventions. Currently, the platform has four offerings – ProFolU (a smartphone-based self-health monitoring device for kidney health), EyeRa (an early-detection platform for preeclampsia, a pregnancy disorder), Salubrious (a solution for hidden hunger), and Embargo (a detection platform for antibiotics in food product).

The World Bank’s ‘Doing Business - Subnational reports for India’ pegs Bhubaneswar in the third spot in terms of ease of doing business. So one can expect many more such innovative solutions arising from the State.