Smart moves

Arupjyoti Gogoi

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After working in leading MNCs like KPMG, Reliance Communications, IBM, and Reliance Jio at senior positions for more than two decades, Jamshedpur-born Sumit Chowdhury wanted to get into entrepreneurship in his favourite field of solving urban problems by using technology and design. Sumit is a graduate from IIT Kanpur followed by MS and Ph.D from Carnegie Mellon University, US.

After quitting his job in Reliance Jio as the President of Enterprise division, Sumit founded ‘Gaia Smart Cities’ along with another partner Bipin Kumar in 2015. And within a short span his venture is creating a nationwide sensor network and common platform for IOT smart devices and smart cities. They also do strategic consulting using Global experts in Smart Cities and execution of smart projects using their technology stack. Starting from a small team of six, within a year’s time he now has a team of 22 with as many others working as associates across the country.

Here's what job creator Sumit has to say about his journey from being a job seeker to a job creator:

The genesis

The idea of setting up a new company came into my mind while I was working in Reliance Jio. I could see huge potential in the rapidly-emerging field of Internet of Things (IoT) in India. The whole objective was to work in the field of urban technology that improves the quality of lives of people. At Gaia the idea is to create a public Network as a Service (NaaS) in India for low-cost/long-range IoT applications. We started by investing from our own savings into the venture. I along with my co-founder Bipin had come up with the idea of ‘Smart cities’ way before the present government announced smart cities projects in the country. The country almost endorsed the idea of our company.

The journey so far

The journey of Gaia Smart Cities so far has been quite phenomenal. Last quarter, we received two angel investments, one from Silicon Valley and other from Bangalore. We recently acquired the IoT division of netCORE Solutions, a leader in marketing technology and enterprise communication. netCORE will invest in Gaia and continue to support the company through its rapid growth period.

We are working with several cities in India to define their Smart Cities solutions and building unique propositions to solve urban problems in the cities. We have helped 14 cities in India in their smart city proposals. Seven cities are in the list of top 33 cities of smart city projects announced by the government.

Challenges faced

For any start-up, funding is the major challenge. We were no exception. Even if you have a great idea, you can’t convert it into scaled reality without monetary support. Your ideas are always ahead of your available money. Secondly, the rules of Government procurement almost exclude the start-up community all the time, it favours the established companies. Innovation is stifled. As a start-up, we sometimes have to partner with somebody who doesn’t bring any value other than just helping you meet the qualifying requirement of tender. We will have to keep fighting with this tender battle.

Future plans

We want to be a telecom company for IoT and Smart cities. For that we are in the middle of raising our Series A investment. We are also on an expansion spree across the country. Our clients are now spread across 50+ locations. We want to become a team of 100 by this year. We are adding around 10-15 people by next month. This essentially means that we are going to add 65-70 more people in our team this year. We are going hire mostly hardware engineers, software engineers, product designers, telecom engineers (network).