Founder’s Image: Virang Jhaveri (CEO) and Niket Sarvaiya (COO)
Table of Contents
When and how did you start?
We started off from Jan 2016. We both (Virang & Niket) were not keen for a 9 to 5 job. We were constantly searching for new and innovative ideas and this idea clicked for us.
How did you come up with the idea? Your inspiration moment
The idea first came to Virang, when he felt that switchboards are very far off, especially when we are in the middle of some work. So with this came the idea of why not make life simple and effortless, which is also our Tagline #LiveEffortlessly.
The basic idea of this is that we can switch on and off our fan, television set or dim the light without actually getting up. You can also control all the devices when you are not at home.
Brief about the organization and founding members
Picostone is set-up by a team of young and dynamic guys Virang Jhaveri (CEO), Niket Sarvaiya (COO) and Nilesh Jain (Director). The young and dynamic team comes from diverse fields & with a common mission to automate every home in India.
“Picostone takes home comfort to the next level; by providing easy access to your home utilities and bringing in automation through Artificial Intelligence, learning from consumer behaviour and their usage pattern. “We believe in delivering an affordable product range with fabulous user experience to have a meaningful impact in your life,” says Niket, one of the co-founders. In keeping with the same ideologies, they work to keep their costs low and their quality high.
The detailed journey, like what all you want to share with readers
We started on from Jan 16, and we were accompanied by two interns who also assisted in building the software of the tech. While Virang builds the initial hardware and communication layer. The first prototype was installed in Virang’s home where we printed out a 3D and made a casing for installing. Our first Customer was very generous to be the first one to become our first user for a product that was just a 3D printed case. Niket helped to make the product look more presentable to the customers. Then we moved to actually install the product. We were filled with joy when we saw our customer using it. In June we met Nilesh Jain in an event. He saw our product and saw potential behind it and helped us with the boost we needed to take the product to a bigger crowd. The number of installation grew. We grew across 18 cities and more.
About funding, plans For growth
We are getting funds from the market which is at the final stage. We would be talking about the details soon. In Feb we launched our second product “Polar” after the successful launch of “Basic” our first product. We are working on many more prototypes and will be launching more products soon. We aim to reach each household in the country.
Challenges and Opportunities/ Marketing Strategies
Home Automation though being a very old concept the acceptability of the concept is still slowly picking up. We are focussing more on educating the people on the use of home automation, about the concept and how it is really affordable.
But with Echo and Alexa becoming popular the concept will start picking up. We are trying here to break the myth.
A quote from the founder on the journey, or dealing with the challenge, or any inspiring moment
“We at Picostone want people to live effortlessly and we believe that connecting things like your home appliances to you, easily and efficiently, will make this happen. The future of home is Smart Home”, says Virang.
Provide some statistics like revenues or clients Reach
Since the inception till date, we have touched around 1800 homes and are present in 21 cities
Your website / apps / and contact details
Website- https://www.picostone.com/
An app is available on Android as well as Apple.
