Mumbai-based Habitro Labs is planning to manufacture own IoT-based home automation products and is in talks for funding to set up a plant
Habitro Labs Founder Mrinal Kashyap
A year ago, when Mrinal Kashyap, a Leasing Manager at Indian ride-hailing company Ola, wanted to automate his three bedroom home in Mumbai, he could not find any reliable products in the market. There were some local products, but were sub-standard and not worth investing his hard-earned money in.
“I could not risk trusting domestic products, which I knew were of low quality and mostly white-labeled Chinese products,” he told e27. “International products are much better but costly. They cannot be trusted with after-sales services as they don’t have a presence in India. This forces customers like me to rely on small retailers for such products as well as for after-sales service. This often ends up in extreme disappointment. We want to change this.”
With this mission in mind, Kashyap started working on the concept of an affordable home automation solution after quitting Ola in September 2018. Two months later, he set up Habitro Labs out of Mumbai.
Kashyap, a serial entrepreneur, launched the startup, with his former colleague (who is still an employee) at Ola. Kashyap has built a couple of startups in the past. His last venture MyShipMate got acquired by Parcelled.in back in 2015. Later, he moved to head the Mumbai operations of Meru Cabs, before joining Ola.
In its current form, Habitro Labs runs a marketplace, which also doubles up as a network of small dealers and shops, spread across tier-1 cities in India. Habitro’s marketplace (not a typical online marketplace) allows you to connect with the best home automation companies.
“Habitro enables customers to raise queries on our marketplace, and we will do the initial discussions with the customer to understand his/her requirement. Once the deal is closed, the installation part will be taken care of by our dealers,” he explained. “We strive to maintain quality and customer satisfaction. So we will blacklist and remove dealers who sell low-quality or counterfeit products, or who are unprofessional. Also, the after-sales is insured by Habitro through our big network of dealers.”
The venture targets both B2C and B2B segments. “As for B2C, home automation products are mostly sold when someone buys a home or does a renovation of his existing one. Most of these leads come through offline channels. For this, Habitro has partnered with architects, builders, interior designers, and realtors,” he stated.
At the most basic level, home automation systems are made up of three elements: a smart device, a hub, and a connected application. Be it voice-activated rooms, digital room keys and interactive entertainment unit for hotels; or smart visitor management, voice-controlled home, app-controlled home, smart door bell, and smart door lock, Habitro finds you the best products from the best global brands as per your requirements.
Basic plans start at INR 40,000 (US$571) and it stretches to a few lakhs (1 lakh = US$1,429) depending on the requirements.
“Deep at heart, we are an Internet of Things (IoT) company that designs, tests, and deploys automation in homes, hotels, offices, and residential societies using our patent pending proprietary technology. The panoramic idea revolves around creating a smart community with endless possibilities of connecting and controlling your appliances on the go. We give you an intelligent ecosystem and smarter living by creating software, fabricating hardware, and connecting those two through Artificial Intelligence,” he said.
“We started off with a marketplace model as we didn’t have the financial resources to manufacture our own products,” added Kashyap. “We are now looking to set up our own manufacture products and create own brand, something similar to Amazon Alexa, a virtual assistant developed by the global e-commerce giant. This way, we will be able to keep cost low and increase our product line. Our aim is to create products for the masses, not just for the elite.”
Generally, products imported from European Union and the US are the best in the market. In Kashyap’s view, it is not just the quality but it is also their features that make western products more appealing. He also argues that domestic products are WiFi-based and poor signal strength could affect their performance, whereas foreign products come equipped with Z-Wave (a wireless communication protocol) and Zigbee (a wireless technology) and KNX (communication protocol), which effectively addresses such issues.
“More over, power consumption is higher in domestic products. Plus, they are vulnerable to a wide range of security exploitations and attacks. On the other hand, every Z-Wave network and its products have unique IDs for communicating with your hub, in addition to the AES-128 encryption. And there are over 700 companies under Z-Wave alliance and all are compatible with each other since those are using the same protocol. So, even if company A shuts down, you could always use the product of company B, C or D,” Kashyap said.
Kashyap is also believes that domestic products produce higher radiation than the maximum permissible limit. “Our responsibility is to give the best in terms of product quality, after-sales service, safety and security, in terms of how the data is generated and where it is getting stored.”
Habitro is currently in discussion with a few investors and well-known entrepreneurs to raise investments, which will help it expand its product line, increase use cases, and reduce costs, besides setting up its own manufacturing plant. “Here, I would like to quote Jeff Bezoz on something that describes our mission: ‘there are two kinds of companies; those who work to try to charge more and those who work to charge less’. We want to be the latter.”
Also Read: Excited for IoT and home automation? Here are the benefits of a smart, connected home
Kashyap feels that while home automation is not new in India, the industry is not receiving enough attention because of the lack of awareness and use cases, as well as the higher pricing. The entry of Amazon Echo and Google Home, however, has helped.
Now, even the middle class households in tier-1 cities have started automating their homes, which was — until recently — an exclusive domain of the upper-class segment. The dip in product pricing has also helped.
“We now have a favourable atmosphere, but sadly no local companies have emerged to become the face of home automation in India. We are trying to become one,” he concluded.
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