Engineering degree and a high-paying job in an MNC is the ideal life for majority of Indian parents and so was it for founders for Data Sutram. Rajit Bhattacharya, Ankit Das and Aisik Paul dreamt of having a startup of their own but their parents wanted them to do MBA post their engineering. This resistance did not stop them and they laid the foundation of their startup in 2018 after skipping the placements.
It always starts with an incident and for the trio it was their internship project in third year of college and a project on analytic solutions for retail chain. These projects brought them to the idea of Data Sutram and understanding the power of unstructured data.
Data Sutram helps businesses to increase delivery efficiency and reduce market burn using their AI-based operations. Rajit claims that through their services, companies have been able to increase the deliveries by over 35% and reduced market burn by 60%. They use their technology to create usable data including demography, ethnicity, affluence and spending capacity to understand a location.
The data points collected through their AI-based extensive process are then used by the businesses to analyze their position and make changes accordingly. Their platform works in two forms- data engine and visualization platform. The data engine does the core research work and organizes raw data and the visualization platform gives the client an insight on the impact of their decisions on the locations through Geographic Information System.
They began with surviving on revenue from consultancy projects but after 3 months post their college, they were invited to Mumbai by 100X.VC to pitch their idea. They received an initial funding of Rs 25 lakh from 100X.VC within 2 days. This also exposed them to like-minded fresh college graduates’ network. The team of 11 is currently looking at raising around Rs 2 crore from angel investors.
Due to coronavirus their business has been affected as their focus retailers have started delaying payments. This challenge though hasn’t stopped them but given them the idea to target essential services like groceries and medicines. They also give chance to the citizens to put down things on their platform that aren’t available in their area. The brand has been gaining speed as it has already helped the biggest pharma chain of Western India to deliver medicines to a larger area in more optimum way.