Visakhapatnam’s first startup gets going

Visakhapatnam: Living up to its promises, Technology Research and Innovation Park (TRIP) - startup village at Vizag— has successfully incubated its first startup.

‘Unihalt’— the first financially sustainable product mentored by SV— aims to bridge the gap among student, parent and institution and takes care of attendance and security of students.

The product informs parents about in & out timings of the students via mobile app, sms, and also provides other facilities, says SV Chief Operating Officer (COO) Gautham.

The business which hit the ground in 2013, has so far generated revenue of Rs 40 lakh and is also on the verge of grabbing an angel funding of Rs 2 crore, said COO.

Raja Teja Konathala, the CEO and dreamer of the project said “We provide bio-metric devices to institutes free of cost and register every student onto the system. Our service is integrated with SMS and mobile app which any parent, who would like to use our service, can opt for it. Every parent availing the service will receive SMS/ notifications with regards to student in/out time instantly.”

“This device would help the institutes to manage attendance electronically, saving a lot of paper and time, and parents can be at peace knowing the whereabouts of their children. Schools in Vizag can avail this service free of cost for first academic year. Later, we will charge a very nominal fee from parents who are interested to take our service via APPs,” informed the dreamer of the system, adding that his team is also building parent teacher communication/feedback platform. The government has initiated bio-metric process in attendance from schools to offices, so there is a huge scope from installation and maintenance of the bio-metric instruments.  This showed a convincing revenue stream and potential for the product to evolve,” said Gautham.

“We helped Unihalt in developing its revenue model and building technical product like mobile applications. We also helped them by connecting to investors and mentors from India and abroad,” the COO added.