Sustaining a deeptech company through years of R&D is a major challenge

Harmonizer will be a pioneer in AI based electrical system and product in five years. We believe there is a significant scope in implementing AI/ML based solution for industry and building application.
Manoj Soni, CEO, Harmonizer India

Harmonizer India is a knowledge driven organisation which provides power solutions and services to industry/building applications in form of its world-class products. In an interview with EPR magazine, the company’s CEO Manoj Soni gives an overview of the company’s business plan.

Could you let us know more about Harmonizer’s expertise in the electrical domain?
Harmonizer is addressing the global challenge of power quality which is a major issue faced by almost all the industries. Our Artificial Intelligence (AI) based software ELEX EXE is the foremost solution for disruptive power quality. It is an unbeatable AI algorithm that will help customers to enhance reliability, sustainability and productivity of electrical network and equipment. It is an energy and asset management software having high-caliber features such as real time monitoring and control, advanced alerts on asset performance and healthiness, UPS system, detailed auto generated reports and more.

What makes you better than your competitors?
Harmonizer as an organization has primary focus on bridging the gap between industry and academics by providing on field experience through ILabs under the guidance of professionals. Its vision is to provide knowledge driven business to its customers which distinguishes it from its competitors. It focuses on the pain points such as higher energy bills, down time and foremost the asset performance. It has expanded business verticals in trainings, PQ, power system and AI/ML-IoT with operations in India, Canada and UAE. As of now Harmonizer has filed 14 patents, developed Canny & ELEX EXE (USP) and has many more milestones to achieve.

What’s your take on the performance of start-up companies in India?
With the addition of more than 1,300 startups this year so far, India continues to reinforce its position as the third largest startup ecosystem in the world, according to IT industry body Nasscom. The startups have created an estimated 60,000 direct jobs and 1.3-1.8 lakh indirect jobs. Funding saw a huge spike in early stages (series A, B as well) with $1.6 billion being recorded and growing at 70 percent y-o-y. The trend witnessed over the year was that start-ups are driving more focus towards the B2B space and almost half of the country’s start-ups are offering enterprise focused services. Over 18 percent of all start-ups in India are now leveraging deeptech, which means there are over 1,600 such companies in India. This number constituted only 8 percent of start-ups incepted in 2014, and has seen a 40 percent CAGR (compound annual growth rate) over the past 5 years, the report said.

What are the key challenges for deeptech startups like Harmonizer?
In Annual Tech Startup Funding Report for 2019, DataLabs observed that total funding of $136.14 Mn in 2019 in the deeptech sector in India, which is a slight drop from 2018. While in the context of the overall ecosystem, the fall is not that significant, for the nascent deeptech sector, it’s a big drop. Looking at the market, a few factors come to mind when understanding this fall — the lack of high-skilled workers, stronger presence of global tech giants, low-level of readiness among Indian businesses and SMEs, weak intellectual property framework and lack of R&D spending.

In terms of market challenges, the risk of market adaption and the considerably larger push is required to successfully scale-up deeptech companies. A hardware deeptech company with a long gestation period is a sinkhole for money. Sustaining a deeptech company through years of R&D is a major challenge. For deeptech startups in India, is the long product development cycle which makes it difficult for them to raise funding from traditional sources.

However, the biggest challenge for the deeptech sector at present is the crunch in the capital, manufacturing facilities and funding opportunities as compared to global markets.

Please elaborate about cricket legend Kapil Dev’s association with your company.
The Captain of India’s first World Cup winning team, Kapil Dev has invested in power sector-focused Deeptech company Harmonizer India. His advice to us is “Follow your passion with strong integrity, pertaining to the company, customer and the product.”

Kapil Dev is known for his winning strategies. He has certain vital principles, which help in achieving goals, like:
• Follow your passion with strong integrity, pertaining to the company, customer and the product.
• Genuinely contribute to the environment by reducing the electricity usage, therefore leading to reduction in carbon emission.
• Move towards development of the country by providing training & employment on the subject of AI and IoT. Thereby bridging the gap between the industry and education sector.

Where do you see your company in 5 years?
Harmonizer will be a pioneer in AI based electrical system and product in five years. We believe there is a significant scope in implementing AI/ML based solution for industry and building application. We see a great opportunity to bridge the gap of ‘expert knowledge’ in the industry by focusing on innovation, patents and create market disruption particularly on power quality, energy efficiency and EV chargers.