In a rising economy with a growing appetite for food, refrigeration takes on a key but, often, under-appreciated role. Atsuya Technologies, launched at the end of 2017, has stepped in to make a difference in the food sector. The company provides an IoT (Internet of Things)-based refrigeration solution called ‘Kryo’. Kryo’s goal is to reduce food wastage, ensure food quality and optimise energy through an end-to-end solution that allows for real-time monitoring and Big Data analytics for easy actioning of business insights. Given that IoT is an emerging area, Atsuya faced challenges in market penetration but now has a growing portfolio of clients that are committed to quality while also looking at cost savings.

In conversation with GlobalLinker (GL), Atsuya’s CEO Rahul Ganapathy (RG) shares the startup’s business journey.

GL: Tell us about your business and how it came into being.

RG: Atsuya Technologies is one of India's leading IoT-based refrigeration monitoring startups (Source: CIO Magazine), and it was launched by a team of US patents-winning hardware and software engineers, with several years of experience in Tier One IT companies. Atsuya was launched late last year with the goal of helping the food industry solve certain key challenges including wastage of refrigerated food, ensuring high food quality, and energy optimisation. By using state-of-the-art Internet of Things technology, Atsuya allows anyone whose business depends on refrigeration to monitor their refrigeration assets real time, 24x7, and on a smartphone application. The refrigeration performance data generated by our sensors can be used not just to satisfy regulatory audits, but also for Big Data analytics to yield powerful business insights.  

GL: What are the challenges you have faced in establishing your business?

RG: We've had to do significant R&D (and therefore capital) to come up with sensors and an IoT platform that can work in any condition. But we are glad to have invested that time and energy, because today the Atsuya sensors are certified by CSIR and have proved themselves exceptionally well in actual store-level deployment. IoT is still an emerging area, therefore, we've also had to educate our clients on the power of this technology and show them return on investment. However, we do not consider these as challenges. The more progressive companies that are committed to quality and also cost savings by using technology, have adopted our solution with great enthusiasm. We believe that it's only a matter of time before more companies adopt our solution.

GL: How did you hear of GlobalLinker? How has it helped you?

RG: As a JetPrivilege member, I have had a long and deep relationship with the airline. I was invited to join GlobalLinker, which I find quite useful for everything from discounted tickets, to finding service partners, to interesting and valuable articles on a variety of subjects. The team at GlobalLinker is doing a great job. I wish them the very best.

GL: What is your big business dream?

RG: As an IoT company, our big business dream is to help ‘dumb’ machines (or assets) become smarter, so that their corporate owners can use them much better to improve not only their own business efficiencies, but also deliver better products and experiences to their customers. We believe IoT can add significant value to economic growth at incremental costs. IoT is a win-win for everyone involved. We would like to measure our success by the value we are able to generate for our clients, and not by our own revenue or market capitalisation.

GL: What is your message to aspiring entrepreneurs?

RG: If you think there's a problem you can help solve, don't hesitate. Become an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is what brings innovation, employment, better products and services for consumers, and economic prosperity for everyone. Like it is often said, ‘if you don't build your dream, someone else will hire you to build theirs.’

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