How a Start-up brings homes across India “Alive”

It is hot summer of June 2015, tired and exhausted, Alok Dixit, a student of IIT Kharagpur returns to his room after a hectic day and lying on his bed he wonders, only if he could switch off the lights and slow down the fan without going to the switch board. Little did he know that a year later this thought would result in one of the most successful IOT-based student startup “Alive Homes”. Alive homes was founded in June 2015 by four start-up enthusiastic students of IIT Kharagpur which included Alok Dixit and Poonam Gupta from Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering, AnkitDubey, From the Department of Electronics and Electrical Communication and Ravi Shankar from department of Electrical Engineering.

After working day and night for 6 months by investing all their saving into buying IC’s and other components of the circuit, the hard-work paid off and they were finally able to make a Minimum Viable product (MVP). Alive home’s product called "LIFE” is a smart switch which replaces the conventional switches and can be used through an app even in the absence of Internet connectivity and also provides facilities like user access and real-time analysis of the power consumption of various appliances and thus helps in reducing electricity consumption. Their vision is to make this technology so affordable and cost effective that it can even reach the lower-middle class people.

The new team consisting of co-founders and newly hired interns worked on creating a more solid product. They created a better version of app and qualitatively better PCB and hardware and built twenty such switchboards to operate in different circumstances to test the durability and reliability of the product and then do the debugging.

They also got incorporated in May 2016 and also pitched IIT Kharagpur to build a smart campus and install their product in hostels of IIT KGP. IIT KGP was positive and was keen to install the product in some of the newly built hostels. Even some of the real estate builders have been interested in installing the product in their newly built apartments.

Their product also won the most innovative product in Empressario, an annual business model Competition conducted by Entrepreneurship cell, IIT Kharagpur and also they were the runner’s up in the B-Plan competition conducted by Kshitij, the Techno-management fest of IIT Kharagpur.

Hoping to live in Alive Homes soon!