Once in 2011, Abhishek Latthe had to take a train at Liverpool
in order to go to Southampton. He boarded the train, placed his luggage in the
compartment, and then got off it to beat the boredom. There was still some time
for the train’s departure. By the time he re-boarded the train, the cops had
come in on a routine check, noticed the unattended baggage and took it away and
put it in the lost-and-found centre. That was when Latthe first contemplated a
venture in the lost & found space. He was then doing an MSc in mechatronic
from the University of Southampton, studying advance digital control, sensors
& signal processing and instrumentation. Soon after his post-graduation, he
worked as a management trainee and then moved to become the head of operations
in his family-owned business in Belgaum that was into alloy castings and
manufacturing.
In 2013, he decided to revisit his lost & find idea, and
launched a venture called SenseGiz in Bengaluru.
He decided to experiment with sensors and wearables, ideas that
were just emerging at that time. “People thought I was pursuing a bold
experiment,” he says. Last year, Latthe’s team launched their first product
called Find, a Bluetooth based tag that can be used to track and find keys,
pets, laptops, mobile phones or luggage. The small square device can be synced
up with your smartphone through an Android, iOS app. Find consists of 25
different components including micro controller, sensor, buzzer, and a battery
unit, and is manufactured and assembled in Mysuru. Some 20,000 customers have
been using it. Among the customers are some US retailers. One uses it for
geolocation, for pushing notifications on your phone-if you are looking for
shirts, it will alert you on the best deals on the shop floor. SenseGiz
recently floated a subsidiary in San Francisco where it employs a few sales
professionals. It has also raised $600,000 from Japanese investor Indigo
Ventures and Karnataka Semiconductor Venture Capital Fund.
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