Lab to market to communities is the key for impact tech startups: Manoj Kumar, Founder, Social Alpha – The Indian Express

Manoj Kumar in his earlier avatar, which he calls a closed chapter, was a senior govt within the banking, treasury and capital markets, know-how, enterprise capital sector. Now, he’s totally engrossed with Social Alpha.

He’s additionally a director at mach33.aero, a three way partnership between CSIR-Nationwide Aeronautics Laboratory and Social Alpha to handle challenges in constructing firms within the house tech, precision engineering and robotics sector and unlock alternatives to create optimistic affect in areas like local weather change, human well being and meals safety.

Manoj Kumar spoke to indianexpress.com on the challenges of figuring out deep tech social affect startups, elevating funds, discovering markets for them, and eventually placing them on the trail to sustainability and profitability. Edited excerpts:

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Are you able to give an outline of Social Alpha’s journey, its philosophy, and its achievements?

Manoj Kumar: We started our journey in 2016 after we recognised that there was a scarcity of innovation on points and themes which affected the marginalised sections of the society and in addition sure points which have an effect on the bigger society; like say local weather change. This could possibly be as a result of the market dangers have been too excessive for startups and traders, or the challenges have been too many.

The challenges for entrepreneurs and startups in these sectors vary from curating the issue assertion to establishing product-market match, to discovering markets, capital and scaling it up. With out a mentoring and funding accomplice with deep experience within the innovation ecosystem that is troublesome to execute. That’s the reason we have now constructed a full tech stack for the affect sector with three pillars: laboratories, ventures, and communities.

Why Manoj Kumar

We now have our personal labs for product improvement, and still have accomplice labs at varied analysis establishments like IITs for our incubatee startups to work on. After the product improvement reaches a sure stage in our labs, we then take the startups to the Enterprise phase, the place we make investments and showcase the identical startup to a bigger set of traders and eventually we take the startup to our communities phase. Communities are the place we work with nonprofits and social sector organisations on the bottom to check these merchandise and consider their efficacy. We get detailed suggestions on the merchandise from customers, and based mostly on it, we finetune the merchandise. It’d look straightforward, however that is one thing that solely an ecosystem participant with deep connections with accomplice nonprofits in rural areas can present. Our group companions carry a wealth of expertise of the issue statements which isn’t straightforward to duplicate. Then we do pilots in varied locations for these merchandise to see if there may be offtake and if individuals are seeing worth in the identical. Utilizing our community, the startups may discover out the snug value factors for his or her merchandise.

It’s throughout this course of we work on Go To Market readiness, methods to beat regulatory hurdles, and assist the startup achieve accelerated market entry and scale it up additional. We’re among the many few organisations in India which have the mentoring and hand-holding playbook all throughout the journey of a social affect startup.

There are some troublesome challenges these startups face and these could possibly be when it comes to market failure, mission drift and suboptimal scale, and we work with them to resolve the identical.

We now have mentored and incubated round 300 startups, and invested in round 90 of them. Our investments are within the vary of Rs 50 lakh to Rs 2 crore. We usher in a bigger pool of traders for startups to lift extra funds.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Social Alpha, SustainPlus, Mach 33, how do these converge?

Manoj Kumar: We now have constructed many collaborative platforms with varied stakeholders throughout the spectrum.

Maintain Plus is a multi-stakeholder collaborative platform focussed on clear power entry and seeks to combination world philanthropic capital and allocates it to impactful initiatives that use clear power options.

mach33.aero is a three way partnership between CSIR-NAL and Social Alpha, and works with organisations like CSIR, to create a platform for deep science founders, leveraging superior tech throughout varied sectors. We wish to unlock the alternatives that the applied sciences present and discover related makes use of in local weather change, human well being, and meals safety.

We additionally work with the Indian Area Analysis Organisation (ISRO) for the SpaceTech Innovation Community (SpIN). India’s first devoted platform for innovation curation and enterprise improvement for the house entrepreneurial ecosystem, SpIN works on facilitating house tech entrepreneurs in three distinct innovation classes: geospatial tech and downstream functions, enabling tech for house and mobility, and aerospace supplies, sensors, and avionics.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Are you able to inform us about a few of your startups and improvements with social affect which have emerged out of your incubation/ mentoring programmes?

Manoj Kumar: Lots of our incubatee startups have produced merchandise which have had a considerable quantity of affect and have additionally raised a very good sum of money of their journey of being sustainable enterprises. One such occasion is Voxelgrids Improvements, which is a pioneer in manufacturing reasonably priced light-weight MRI machines in India. The machine can be utilized in each stationary and cell modes. It may be deployed and operated below difficult set up circumstances and generates top quality photos for medical analysis. This prototype was deployed in 2017 on the Sathya Sai Institute of Larger Medical Sciences, Bengaluru, and in 2021, it went on to lift funds from Zoho.

Hasiru Dala is a pioneering Bengaluru-based enterprise within the waste administration sector that focuses on creating dignified livelihoods for waste pickers whereas delivering substantial environmental affect.

Manoj Kumar, founding father of Social Alpha. (Specific picture by Jithendra M)

Phool.co has developed a singular know-how to recycle used flowers into artisanal natural merchandise. Based by engineering graduates Ankit Agarwal and Prateek Kumar, it’s a flower recycling tech startup and is a pioneering biomaterial startup from India. It’s a pure incense stick and cone manufacturing firm that employs ladies from marginalised sections of the group and affords them a good wage. Phool.co has invented Fleather — ‘leather-based comprised of flowers’. This might show to be a substitute for animal leather-based and will disrupt the worldwide leather-based items business. It has gone on to lift substantial funds from enterprise capital.

Satyukt analytics is an agritech firm, which makes use of satellite tv for pc distant sensing know-how within the subject of agriculture and agribusiness to offer companies world large. It’s a resolution analytics platform that works on satellite tv for pc distant sensing, machine studying, and massive knowledge analytics to reply massive points in agriculture. Their tech assists crop insurance coverage firms in assessing, stopping sowing, estimating crop injury, and paying funds as rapidly as doable.

Tan90’s transportable chilly storage simplifies the transportation of temperature-controlled merchandise from farm to fork. The specifically designed thermal panels, containing proprietary chemical compounds, are positioned inside an insulation field to maintain meals at desired temperatures. The product was designed to handle the issues of the very individuals disregarded of the massive, centralised chilly storage infrastructure.

Khethworks creates new tech and merchandise for smallholder farmers. They’ve constructed a submersible centrifugal solar-powered irrigation pump to cut back farmers’ dependence on monsoon rains and expensive gas pumping.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: What do you suppose has been your affect on the innovation ecosystem in India?

Manoj Kumar: We now have evaluated greater than 20,000 improvements, supported greater than 300 startups, have funded round 90 of them, offered alternatives for catalytic funding for 100 of them, other than arranging for grants and market entry for them. With greater than 20 grand challenges, our startups have generated greater than 65 patents, other than profitable 350 awards from varied nationwide and worldwide organisations.

Social Alpha has constructed an in depth accomplice community throughout the innovation and funding ecosystems, with deep engagement with the central and state governments, personal sector, educational establishments, R&D labs, philanthropic foundations, traders, nonprofits, and group organisations.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Inform us about your labs; how they’re structured and what do they work on?

Manoj Kumar: Impression-focused tech start-ups addressing issues in areas like local weather change and healthcare (with a give attention to entry and affordability) typically work on breakthrough applied sciences like power storage, medical gadgets, superior supplies, and many others and require in depth analysis and improvement earlier than reaching a stage the place they are often deployed. That is the problem and that is the place our labs are available.

Our labs have transitioned greater than 20 applied sciences, making high quality healthcare accessible and reasonably priced. Greater than 130 improvements from our labs have been deployed by our startups in additional than 300 districts throughout the nation. With particular reference to medical tech, greater than 1,000 establishments have adopted the applied sciences which have come out of our labs.

Social Alpha structure integrates backwards with the R&D ecosystem, co-creating laboratories for analysis, product improvement, and enterprise incubation.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: How does your innovation scouting/grand challenges work? What does it give attention to?

Manoj Kumar: We now have run greater than 20 grand challenges, from the clear power sector to assistive applied sciences to agritech, healthtech and waste administration and processing options.

We additionally held challenges on City Livability, a nationwide scouting programme for innovators and entrepreneurs who’re working to unravel complicated issues of urbanisation by deep-science and tech innovation. Lots of our problem winners proceed to work with us.