Your Tech Story

story

Fleet Space

Flavia Tata Nardini : Fleet Space Founder and a Pioneer in the Emerging Australian Space Industry

Leave a Comment / Founder, Inspiration, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

Today, everything is about connections; not the human connection, but the connection of humans through the internet. The Internet has transformed the world in less than the world had in the past 20 centuries. People just need their smartphone, and they can accomplish most of their daily routine work in a few swipes. Despite such advancement in human life, an aerospace engineer from Australia, Flavia Tata Nardini, does not want to stop here. She wants to create a network in the space, such that there will be no earthly object without an internet connection. Whether it is the students in the classroom or the tree in the forest, everything connected. The founder of Fleet Space Technologies has been developing satellites since she was a teen, and now, she is entirely focussing on the space as well as connecting the IoT devices.

Early Life and Career

Nardini was born into an engineer’s family in Rome, Italy. With a dream of becoming an astronaut, she completed a bachelor degree in aerospace engineering from University La Sapienza, Rome. She then completed a master’s degree in space engineering from the same university. In her late teens, she bagged an internship job at European Space Agency in The Netherlands, where she worked on the rocket propulsion technology.

In July 2009, she joined another company named TNO in The Netherlands, where she worked in various roles for four years, including propulsion design and test engineer as well as a product manager. Later, she even moved to Qatar to work with another space agency, where she sent nanosatellites to space.

Flavia Nardini founder Fleet Space
Image Source: amazon.com

Later, she moved to Adelaide, South Australia, to live with her partner (now husband) in 2014. Qualified with a lot of experience in space activities, it became tough for Nardini to find a job, as there was only one space startup back then. And having kids, she could not work in the defence, either. So, along with one of her future Fleet Space partner, Matt Pearson, she founded an educational startup named Launchbox. Under this startup, the two of the co-founders started teaching little kids about space and nanosatellites. Under the program, they even built CubeSat satellite using 3D printed components and launched them to the stratosphere.

Founding Fleet Space

While working for Launchbox, the two of the co-founders realised that they could also build a new space startup for connecting the IoT devices. Since no space agencies were working in Australia, founding one seemed a good idea to them. Hence in 2015, they, along with another aerospace engineer, Dr Matthew Tetlow, co-founded Fleet Space.

Fleet Space aims to create a network of nanosatellites around the earth, such that it can provide internet access to every person on earth for cheaper prices. The increase in the interconnection through the internet will make every single task accessible through a smartphone. For now, the company target is to connect 7.5 billion IoT devices on earth with the help of nanosatellites by 2020.

Partnerships and Fundings

Fleet Space has got the Australian as well the US government on board for the development process. Private companies like SpaceX has also partnered with the company to fulfil the goal. The French space agency CNES has also taken an initiative to help Fleet Space get the financial backing, and will be tracking and supporting the satellites built by Fleet Space. The company raised a $5m in Series A capital from Blackbird Ventures and Atlassian.

At the time Nardini founded the company, there was only one space startup in Australia. But with the success of Fleet Space, other budding entrepreneurs have also stepped into the same technology, and there are over 260 new startups that are working in the field of space research. In fact, the Australian government also announced in 2017 that it will be building the national space agency for Australia.

In September 2019, the company raised $7.35 million in the Series B funding led by Momenta Ventures and Horizons Ventures. Till now, Fleet has placed four CubeSat-class satellites in orbit and plans to send more satellites to the space to fulfil the demands.

Nardini’s love for space and satellites proves that the sky is the limit for her. She is an inspiring woman and a true example of women empowerment.

Reach Robotics

Silas Adekunle : The Founder of AR Robot Maker ‘Reach Robotics’

Leave a Comment / Founder, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

It is quite obvious to think that the world’s first gaming robot has been developed by a teen from the U.S., maybe from Japan, or even China, but in our imagination, Africa, and then Nigeria is way behind in this contrast. But would you believe if we tell you that this very robot does exist, and the inventor of the same does not belong to any of the developed nations, but Nigeria? Yes, a young lad, Silas Adekunle, of Nigerian descent is the developer of the world’s first gaming robot.

Early Life

Silas Adekunle was born in Lagos, Nigeria where he spent initial ten years of his life. He was always curious about technology, but due to lack of resources, could not get access to it. But when he turned ten, his parents moved to the UK, and he got the chance to know more about it. He had the desire to learn but had to pace up his learning process due to cultural shock. But soon, he was able to get among one of the bright students in his school.

After completing his school education, he joined the University of the West of England, Bristol to complete a bachelor’s degree in robotics and opted for C++. But it was before joining the university, that he had already started learning to code and do experiments with robots through YouTube and other online tutorials. Because of his knowledge about robotics, he became the team leader of the Robotics in Schools programme of the university. This programme targetted the students with a promising performance in the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This was the turning point of Adekunle’s life, as he got to learn more about the subject he loved.

Finding the Passion

Silas Adekunle
Image Source: owler.com

Besides going to college, he opted for a part-time teaching job, where eventually, he started teaching the kids about robotics using his robotic kits, he was using. But soon, he realised that the kids used to lose their interest in robots as soon as they know completely about it.

While teaching the kids, he conceived the idea of Reaching Robotics, a program to teach kids robotics, built in a more innovative way. The concept was to build robots with gamification. He pitched the idea in front of the university and Princes’ Trust. Adekunle always knew he wanted a career in robotics and had made some entrepreneurial plans as well. As he was always in love with motion, he decided to build a consumer product based on it.

Founding Reach Robotics

Inspired by the already existing pet robots, Adekunle started working on a robot that would also express emotions and be a character from a game. In 2013, he met Christopher Beck, who was studying for his PhD in computer science, and John Rees, a robotics expert and engineering consultant. Both joined Adekunle for the development of the robot. Next thing they did was founding Reach Robots.

It took the three of them to create their and the world’s first gaming robot named Mekamon total two years. Mekamon is a gaming robot using which a player can play the game through its Android or iOS phone. The robot has got sensors to sense the obstacles and can easily identify things around it. The robot is a combination of gaming mechanics and augmented reality.

Receiving the Funding and New Partnerships

Silas Adekunle pitched his idea of gamified robots in front of a few capitalists and was able to raise $10M in total, including pre-seed and seed funding. Later, he also launched an educational branch of the firm with the name Reach Edu. The company also launched an app that teaches the children robotics and coding. The Reach Robotics product Mekamon was influencing enough that it also got Apple onboard to sign an agreement with the company in 2017. According to the agreement, Apple is the official retailer of the robot and sells the product in both the US and the UK markets.

Today, Reach Robotics is one of the leading robot makers that make use of AI and AR for the development of their robots. For his development works, Adekunle has been awarded a few famous awards. He was named to the Financial Times’ list of the ‘Top 100 minority ethnic leaders in technology in November 2018. He was also in the list of Forbe’s 30 Under 30 list. UWE Bristol also awarded him an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Technology to recognise his contribution to the student entrepreneurship and technology development.

spicejet

Ajay Singh : The Man Who Saved SpiceJet From Vanishing into Oblivion

Leave a Comment / Founder, India, Inspiration, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

What is good in doing business without risks? When one aims for something bigger and more profitable, it is reasonable to go against the odds and take the chances. But, what about the companies whose strategies are failing and going downwards in the spiral of destruction? Should it give up or just hope for a knight in shining armour to appear and be the lifesaver. Well, the story of SpiceJet clearly narrates a tale, where they well resurrected by none but Ajay Singh. After facing excessive loss through 4 consecutive financial years, Ajay Singh finally stepped in to take over the control once again and re-establish the reputation of the company.

SpiceJet is an Indian airline headquartered in Gurugram whose history dates back to 1984.

Early Life

Singh was born into an influential family from Delhi. His father was an established businessman, Vijinder Singh, and his mother was Kalpana. Singh’s family business was mainly about real estate and fashion accessories.

Ajay Singh SpiceJet
Image Source: indianexpress.com

Singh was kind of an all-rounder from a very young age. He went to St. Columba’s School and apart from excelling in his academics, he was very good at playing cricket, table tennis and football. He was also the caption of his school’s football team. After completing his school, he went to IIT Delhi and graduated from there in 1988 with a degree in textile engineering. And, like kids in the family of every other businessman, he went to pursue his MBA. He completed his MBA from Cornell University.

Early Career

At Cornell, he became the President of the Indian Association, and thus, showed a keen interest in the events of India related to government policies. He was also interested in political matters and thought that more educated people are needed in the Indian political system. So, he came back to India in 1992 and pursued law at Delhi University.

In 1996, Rajendra Gupta, a BJP leader who later became Delhi transport minister, hired Singh for Delhi’s transport corporation board. After joining his first responsibility was to stabilize an already bankrupted corporation, which had 40,000 employees. Singh implemented the global transportation strategies and expanded the corporation from 300 to 5000 buses within a span of two and a half years. This was his first achievement after returning to India and stepping into both the political and business world.

In 1998, Singh became an officer on special duty (OSD), where he played a major role in launching DD Sports and DD News. Singh had some plans and suggestions in his mind to reduce the cost of telephony, and thus, persuaded BSNL to drop the incoming charges on mobile. All these developments took place only up till 2004 when BJP lost the general election, and Singh found him unemployed.

Singh Acquired SpiceJet

After BJP lost the election, Singh decided to get back in the entrepreneurial world, and his first move was to acquire ModiLuft and carrying the business as SpiceJet.

Looking back to the history of ModiLuft, it was an airline company established in 1984 by S.K Modi. In 1993, it came into a partnership with Lufthansa, a German airline, but in 1996, it ceased the operations.

So, whatever was left of the company was acquired by Singh after eight years, and this time, he renamed it as SpiceJet and followed the low-cost model to provide a good experience and low fare to the public.

Initially, Singh’s stake was 20% in SpiceJet, but it came to 6% when media tycoon Kalinathi Maran acquired 37.7% in 2010. Eventually, Singh sold his remaining stakes too.

The Downfall of SpiceJet

After Singh stepped down, SpiceJet rocketed in terms of making consecutive losses in three years. In the year 2012, SpiceJet faced a loss of Rs 604 crore followed by Rs 192 crore, Rs 1,001 crore, and Rs crore, in the next three following years.

The market share dropped from 20.9% in 2014 to 9.2% in 2015. Increased number of employees also created a problem, as, after some time, the company was unable to pay them. The oil companies also refused to refuel them, and by 2015, the company was barely able to crawl on the surface with no chance of survival. This is when Singh stepped in.

Bringing SpiceJet Back to Business

Singh was back in the territory of SpiceJet in 2015 and acquired 58.46% stakes of the company. He spotted that over employment was a very big issue with the company and brought down the number of employees to 4,000 from 5,500. After facing crores of loss for four consecutive years, the company finally made a profit of Rs 450 crore in 2016.

Today, SpiceJet has become India’s fourth-largest airline in terms of passengers and operates 306 flights on a daily basis.

4004 Intel Microprocessor (1)

Marcian Hoff : An Electrical Engineer Who Co-invented the First Microprocessor

Leave a Comment / Founder, Product, Story, Tech Story / By

The modification of an already existing invention is much easier than proposing the idea of creating a new one. With time, advancement in technology and acceptance within mankind both took place, which seemed like far-fetched goals in the earlier days. Even though there were many obstacles in the past, many significant scientists emerged out on the surface with innovative innovations. And, today, these are the innovations that are helping us take a step forward towards building a smarter world.

Marcian Hoff, popularly known as Ted Hoff, is one such brilliant innovator who invented microprocessor in the early 1900s. Hoff started co-invented things while he was pursuing a PhD. But, in 1968, his life completely changed its course and became a roller-coaster ride, when he was approached by Robert Noyce, co-founder of Intel Corp.

Early Life and Education of Hoff

Marcian Hoff was born on 23rd October 1937 in Rochester, New York. He was lured by the scientific world from a very young age, especially when he received a subscription to Popular Science from one of his uncles at the age of 12. For his undergraduate degree, Hoff went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and graduated in 1958 with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical engineering. As an undergraduate student, he worked at Rochester’s General Railway Company during the summer breaks. During his time in this company, he worked with magnetic cores and transistors, and also developed his first two patents during this time.

Ted Hoff aka Marcian Hoff
Image Source: blog.parrikar.com

After completing his college, Hoff received a National Science Foundation Fellowship which gave him the opportunity to attend Stanford University. In 1959, he received an MS degree and a PhD from the same university in 1962. During this time, he co-invented least mean square filter with Bernard Widrow, his guide and a professor of Stanford University. The algorithm they invented is still used in modems today.

Hoff chose to stay in Stanford to carry out his studies on neural networks and integrated circuits, hence, continued research for another four years. While he was learning about integrated circuits, he realized how hard it was to build one.

During this time, Noyce was hiring for Intel, and he contacted a professor of Stanford to know if there was anyone in the campus who had the potential to become an Intel employee. And this is how Hoff ended up as Intel employee in 1968.

Intel 4004

Marcian Hoff joined Intel in 12th September 1968, as the company’s twelfth member. Intel was established with the main goal to replace all the magnetic core memories with semiconductor memories. Since, it totally diverted from the conventional idea about computer memory, creating a market demand was very tough. So, they decided to take up clients and develop memories as per their requirements. Intel’s first customer for this semiconductor memory was a Japanese company who sold calculators under the name Busicom.

They demanded different types of chips for performing various activities, and hence, both the companies signed a contract to create these chips in April 1969. After this contract, engineers were sent from Japan to work on this design, but at the same time, Hoff on behalf of Intel created another design, which used DRAM (dynamic random access memory). The company liked Intel’s approach better, as a lesser number of chips were able to perform more functions.

Intel, after successfully designing product for this client, wanted to expand the utility of silicon gate, and they hired Dr Faggin in April 1970 to conduct research and make progress on this area. Today, this metal oxide silicon (MOS) process is extensively used in what we call embedded system.

Hoff said that nobody in the company expected as much growth as took place in the following years.

What after Intel 4004 project?

After the 4004 project, Noyce’s next target was to implement their MOS technology in telephony. So, Hoff started working CODEC (a decoder working used in the telephonic industry to convert analog signals to digital and vice versa). Intel was able to come up with monolithic CODEC which could be used commercially.

Hoff left Intel in 1983 and joined Atari as it was working on some really advanced ideas. But, the business strategies of the company were very poor, which resulted in the dropping of the revenue from $2 billion to $1 billion within a single year. Hoff left Atari in 1985 when the company was sold.

From Engineering to understanding Business

Today, Hoff is the part of Teklicon, a company that deals with business and law; established by Gary Summers, who was the head of semiconductor designing in Atari, when Hoff joined the company.

Graphcore

Simon Knowles : A Pioneering Engineer in the Field of AI-ML

Leave a Comment / Founder, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

In the 21st century, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have spread a cloak of mystique around the world that no one wants to drop off. Today, the prime area of learning, research and improvement have been revolving around these two things which so far seems to the two most important and necessary development of science.

With science already bringing a new wave of inventions to the shore of computation, Simon Knowles is ruling the world with his idea of creating chips for AI and ML which will make the computer’s brain work more like a human’s brain.

Simon Knowles is a famous entrepreneur and an engineer who is the co-founder of Graphcore, a semiconductor company that he founded along with Nigel Toon. Knowles’s main aim is to create an IPU (Intelligence Processing Unit) that can allow humans to explore the scope of AI more freely and not just scraping the surface.

Education and Early Career of Knowles

Simon Knowles
Image Source: http://scaledml.org

Simon Knowles graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cambridge. After graduating, he went to study early neural networks at a UK government research lab.

He co-founded his first start-up, Element 14, a wireless processor developing company in the 1990s, which came under the acquisition of Broadcom Inc. in 2000. He sold the company for $640 million and co-founded his second start-up, Icera, in partnership with Toon. The company was established for mobile chip making in 2002, which later was acquired by Nvidia for $436 million.

The Idea of Graphcore

After selling Icera to Nvidia Corp. in 2002, both the co-founders were trying to settle on one single idea, which could be their next field of research or next chance to make billions. Not being able to make a choice, Knowles decided to attend the series of lectures at Cambridge University. One day, he attended the presentation of Steve Young, a Cambridge professor of the Information Technology department, who was elaborating the limits of computational dialogue systems. Young is also known to invent a speech processing service which is now used in Siri.

While Knowles listened to Young’s speech, the former asked him multiple questions about numerical precision and energy efficiency. But, it seemed like Knowles’s questions were out of the field for Young, but that is where Knowles’s interest was stuck as he wanted to invent something instead of just swallowing the lump of information.

Few days after the lecture, Young contacted Knowles to tell him that his students found out that they were using 64 bits of data for one single calculation. They realized that this can be replaced by 8 bits data per calculation, as Knowles suggested in the lecture, which will save the energy that is consumed before. But the calculations won’t be that precise. Well, Knowles said that was his entire idea to manipulate the brain of the computer and make it more human-like. Knowles, in one of his interviews, said that if they could build this kind of processor, the performance factor will be increased by one thousand.

Everyone including, Young and Toon, was very impressed with his idea, and hence, Knowles and Toon decided to found Graphcore, to build this new kind of IPU. They started raising capital from 2013 and were finally able to launch Graphcore in 2016.

Success of Graphcore

After carrying out thorough research, for three years, to create energy-efficient and a cost-efficient chip, that can harness all the power at one single time, but uses less energy than a GPU, they designed a chip with 1,216 processor cores with 24 billion transistors. This chip was manufactured in 2018 and turns out, it was able to detect 10,000 different images per second.

The company is still working on these chips and making it recognize more complex data and not just simple objects. Knowles’s main goal is to provide the machine with lots of data, and the machine should find out a way to complete the given task. Knowles’s dream to make machines behave human-like is bringing a new era, an era of Artificial Intelligence.

The first funding round of Graphcore was led by Robert Bosch Venture Capital in 2016, followed by a round B funding in 2017 by Atomico, and a few months later, by Sequoia Capital. In 2018, Graphcore raised $200 million in series D funding from investors like Dell, Microsoft and Samsung, which resulted in its net worth to $1.7 billion in December 2018. The company also announced that it might hit $50 million revenue this year.

Graphcore also provides server blueprints to many big companies to guide them on how they should manufacture next-generation computers.

FetchMe Wishes

FetchMe Wishes : The Story of Two Delhi University Students, Who Developed Capital’s First Day Delivery Service

Leave a Comment / Founder, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

FetchMe Wishes is a Delhi based startup which provides on-demand delivery services. It is a platform which allows customers to order anything from anywhere across Delhi NCR. From stationaries to food items, and sanitary to cosmetics; it can deliver it all right at your doorstep within minutes. Apart from this, the startup caters to big business houses and food outlets as well as provides them with many perks like the freedom to expand their reach, save money and maintain a smaller fleet size by outsourcing their deliveries.

The Co-founders

Pranav Gupta and Vaibhav Dara are the co-founders of FetchMe Wishes Pvt. Ltd. Being a commerce student in class 12th, Pranav Gupta still chose Statistics Honours over other mainstream subjects, owing to his love for numbers.

However, the reality of this course was far different from what he had expected. As a result, he lost interest in the subject and fell behind everyone in the batch. Feeling pressurized by this sudden turn and change in the events, he started exploring different ideas, and one day, decided that he wanted to do something of his own.

Founding FetchMe Wishes

FetchMe Wishes Founder

Soon, the time came for Pranav’s sister’s marriage, and he also had his semester exams. Being an only sibling, he was given a lot of responsibilities. On the other hand, he was merely passing in his previous semesters. It was then that he got the idea of FetchMe, a startup that would make people’s lives easier and help them in completing their errands and deliveries.

Pranav looked upon it as an opportunity and brainstormed the idea with his best friend Vaibhav. Vaibhav Dara is currently pursuing mechanical engineering from Delhi Technological University and has the same core beliefs as Pranav when it comes to doing business. It was in June 2018 when both of them shook hands and made FetchMe happen.

Within ten months of FetchMe’s inception, it has already made over one lac+ social media impressions and has a customer retention rate of more than 80%. Major areas that FetchMe is covering in Delhi NCR as of now are East and North Delhi with some parts of Indirapuram and Noida as well. FetchMe has been able to create a fleet size of over 25 people with ten fixed employees and fifteen freelancers.

The Accomplishments

On average, they have more than a hundred orders per day and revenue of over 1.7 lacks per month. FetchMe follows different pricing policies as per the need of its clients. Normally, the charges are INR 40 for the first 3 kilometres and INR 9 per kilometre thereafter, along with some nominal waiting charges, if applicable. They also have special prices for businesses collaborating with them, and those charges vary from INR 25-80 depending upon the number and distance of each delivery. They have already collaborated with over ten such businesses, and their B2B collaborations are growing at a whopping rate of 25% each month.

Recently, FetchMe was able to secure a private investment of 12.5 lakh for 5% of its equity valuing the company’s net worth at INR 2.5 crores.

How it Works

The working is very easy. You can either call, Whatsapp or place an order by visiting their website and click on the order now button. After that, you will be showcased 4 options to select and when you select an option, you will be redirected to a window, where you can give your exact order details and provide them with the correct pickup and drop address. After providing the details you will be given an option to calculate the fare, and once you are good to go with the price, you can then proceed with the payment and review different payment options. For payment, they have various options for online payment like a Credit card, Debit card, PayTm, and other mobile wallets. Along with that, they also provide Cash on Delivery option to their customers.