Necessity meets innovation

CHENNAI : Zeus Innovatives was founded by a group of seven talented entrepreneurs who wished  to become job-providers and contribute to the Indian economy. It was founded by Lipson VP, Amrutha Mohan, Chippy S Kumar, Rohith K, Asish Mathew, Asish Krishnan and Nikhil Mohan, who are pursuing BTech degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) at College of Engineering Pathanapuram, Kollam.

Zeus Innovatives was founded in 2016 when they attended a start-up summit called 13 Summit conducted by KSUM (Kerala Startup Mission). They wanted to make an innovative product named Smart Mop which was built on embedded system and uses Internet of Things (IoT) for its user-friendly application. But the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC) couldn’t provide necessary funds for developing it as an industrial product. Lipson, CEO, says, “We had a vision to accomplish our dreams using some alternatives. So we thought of a business service to earn revenue and using the revenue we could develop innovative products. Hence, we decided to manufacture LED products like bulbs, panels, tubelights and toplights.” 

Since the LED lighting appliances are commonly used and it was affordable to set up, they decided to go ahead with the plan. However, they encountered challenges. “ I am from Kollam and I found that there were no LED manufacturing units there. We raised `1 lakh and purchased the necessary machinery and goods. After studying the technical aspects of, we started manufacturing on our own,” he adds.The start-up is funded through bootstrap and is registered under the KSIDC as a small scale industry. They solely own the revenue and develop the products’ prototypes. Currently, they run two outlets besides a manufacturing and assembling unit, which is run by student entrepreneurs. It is probably the first such unit to be established in Kollam.

Currently, they are working on their new venture, the mop. The market does not hold any floor cleaning robots affordable to people as the machines are expensive — ranging form `25,000 to `50,000 — and are rather bulky like Roombaa, iBot. This idea was proposed by one of their members, Amrutha Mohan, who found that floor cleaning consumes a lot of time and effort. So they decided to make a new product for home cleaning which simply resembles a robotic vehicle which is automated.

“There is a clock to find the global time and we can set the working time for this we can programme it to work on different spaces and senses obstacles. It has a rotating brush which uses proximity sensor for human interference along with GPS for location, a battery-level indicator and full automation excluding the manual charging,” he explains.