Aurassure, an innovative Indian startup based in Rourkela, India started its journey in May 2015. Co-founded by Amiya Kumar Samantaray and Agniva Das, Aurassure stands as a crowd-sourced platform for pollution monitoring, offering real-time pollution information at street resolution. Through geo-location-based data, individuals gain awareness of city pollution levels, enabling them to plan daily routes via the least polluted paths. This comprehensive solution includes personalized healthcare suggestions, empowering citizens to make informed choices. At the core of Aurassure lies its IoT device network, strategically placed in key locations across cities, continuously monitoring vital air parameters.
Today, we are delighted to have Agniva Das, co-founder of Aurassure, with us ConflatingVisions. In this conversation, he shares with us insights about this groundbreaking venture. Let’s not waste any more time and delve into the journey of Aurassure, a pioneering platform for pollution monitoring, brought to life by Agniva and his co-founder Amiya Kumar Samantaray in May 2015.
Hi, glad to have you among us today in this session at ConflatingVisions. To start with we would like you to say a few lines about yourself and other founders of Aurassure.
I started off with this company in January 2015 with an intense passion for startups and a failed startup “UNE-AMP” already in my resume. There was a poster titled “Being Engineers” which attracted me towards this company. I got a chance to meet and work with Amiya from then on. I am really grateful for this chance that Amiya has given me to exercise my passion to create something new and develop it for the benefit of society. He is a great leader and a greater friend. Honestly, I couldn’t have reached this far in the journey of realizing my dreams of becoming a change, of becoming an entrepreneur without Amiya’s constant help and support.
I am working towards realizing the vision and the goals of the company which has helped me recognize my strengths and weaknesses beautifully. I am a reserved person and find it quite awkward to talk to new people at first. I take my principles and ethics quite strictly but am flexible enough to adapt to new situations. Though the journey is undulating and risky, I am obliged to work beside Amiya to achieve success and satisfaction in our company’s endeavour.
Please tell us about Aurassure. How does it work?
AURASSURE is a crowd-sourced platform for pollution monitoring which can help people to know about real-time pollution information at street resolution. People can be aware of the city’s pollution status through geo-location-based pollution information. They can plan their day by looking into the predicted pollution levels at different locations and can plan daily travel routes through the least polluted path. This platform will also give citizens personalized healthcare solutions and suggestions for day-to-day activities. The data being available will enable the government, and the research people to work together to build smarter and cleaner cities driven by information. The complete solution is possible due to our Aurassure IoT device network deployed in key locations of the cities, namely – markets, offices, corporate houses, hospitals, schools, colleges, building complexes, traffic junctions, etc. which monitor the crucial air parameters around the location.
Aurassure is a complete end-to-end Internet of Things (IoT) solution for pollution monitoring systems with a complete package of hardware and software integration. This works like a smart network of pollution monitoring sensors deployed across a wide landscape continuously monitoring vital pollution parameters like harmful gases, weather conditions and dust particulates. The monitored pollution data is stored and stacked in the cloud server. This data is then retrieved from the cloud server, and with various big data analytics and algorithms, will be represented onto a cloud platform in an App interface for the people to make informed choices about their health and lives.
What invoked you to think of creating such a platform?
Yes, there are meteorological departments for weather forecasting and a few governmental pollution monitoring stations in a few cities. But it is not enough for the vast multitude of the ever-growing population and landscape. Our aim is not only to create a better-distributed network of pollution and weather monitoring stations in India but also to bridge the gap between the government and the people. We work towards eliminating the ignorance of the people towards the surrounding pollution and bring about a transparent e-Governance.
Share the investment details.
Our startup is bootstrapped so far. We have more than 25 industrial clients. Currently, we are looking for angel funds which can help us to take our product to manufacturing and ultimately to the market. It is more important for us to get investors who can bring in a similar set of vision, experience in “hardware and software” start-ups.
How is the journey so far?
The journey has been perilous and risky with a disaster hiding in every corner. It was hard to gain the trust factor in the market and move along to reach a consensus between the requirements of the customers and designing our product to meet the needs of the people. Although it was quite rough, we have been successful in holding onto our grounds and creating a white space for ourselves in the IoT market. We had a few additions to our team and improved productivity towards our cause. In short, I enjoyed every twist and turn of this unpredictable journey.
Share some of your success stories.
Although I failed in my 1st startup, I see that as a success in my career. I learnt what to do and what not to do in a year of gruelling with a product in this shifting market. We sure have won various competitions with this company, but what really matters is the ability to rectify your mistakes soon and develop a crispy business model for our idea.
We were successful in reaching the top 10 positions in Intel’s Innovate for Digital India Challenge and currently competing for the top 3 spots. We also secured a position in the top 10 in Ideas to Implementation, IIM Calcutta event. Through my journey in this company, I found new friends, learnt the art of having a conversation and opened up to work in multiple avenues of the company with an eye on perfection. I believe this to be a success so far.
How do you build a successful customer base?
At first, we will create a distributed network of pollution monitoring stations in the cities after the complete field testing and validation. One of our core customer base is Government, basically the upcoming smart cities. Through B2B marketing, we are targeting small and medium-scale polluting industries for Ambient Air Quality monitoring, research institutes, meteorological departments, and NGOs for our hardware device. All data will be collected in our cloud server and our analytical solution will help them in planning and building smart city infrastructure to better the lives of the people. Then, we shall be moving to B2C marketing through which we shall be providing the Aurassure App for the benefit of vulnerable members of society like respiratory and heart patients, pregnant women, working women, children and new-born and the elderly.
This app will not only provide regular alerts, notifications and spatial maps of pollution in their cities but also articulate daily predictions of the environmental conditions and advise suggestions with the Dos and Don’ts to make informed choices in their lives.
What makes you different from your competitors?
We provide complete end-to-end hardware as well as software integrated complete solutions followed by predictive data analytics so as to reach the extra mile in solving the problems of the people. We can say this is not a product, but rather a solution. The product and the services cover a wide range of the needs and requirements of a large number of sections of the market.
The devices are compatible with any existing stand-alone device and the solution costs less compared to the current city monitoring devices. Our devices are easily installable, solar powered and require almost zero field visits during a device life cycle of two years. We also work together to bring the most advanced and upgraded technology for the service of the customers followed by astute research and development.
What has been the most challenging part of your entrepreneurial journey so far?
The most challenging aspect of my entrepreneurial journey so far was to create awareness among the people about the need for Aurassure which will eventually make their lives easier. At first, it was about the extensive market survey and moulding our product to the expectations of the people. Now, it’s about the perfect delivery of our idea so as to achieve the outcomes that we thought of as a company. The refinement of our goals and objectives has changed over the course of the journey but it was difficult to select the perfect combination of our ideas and the shifting market scenario.
How did you overcome it?
We adopted the Lean Startup plan to shape our idea and product according to the market scenario. Extensive field testing and implementation of corrective measures to our product have finally reached the perfection of our final working prototype ready for market implementation. The realization of the fact that not everything is according to the original idea we had come up with has changed us into adopting a flexible business model to suit the needs of the market. The most crucial part was our customer interviews. Those interviews helped us a lot to understand the market.
What are your future plans?
I have planned to work towards the mission and vision of this company and be an integral member of this company and help to become a major player in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Wireless Sensor Network solutions. To preserve and uplift the company’s reach to global markets is my sole aim. It has been a privilege to work with Amiya and the other team members and I am looking forward to continue working with them.
Anything else you want to share?
The entrepreneurial journey will always be rough, but that one golden egg at the end of the line will make the whole fight worth it. The most important thing to build is not a perfect product, but a perfect team who will stand by you in every battle. Look forward and stay rigid in what you aim to achieve with your idea rather than pivoting to other business models over the course of your journey. After all, you must make something that your idol will look up to!
