Indian wearable technology platforms gain pace

BENGALURU: Be it in fitness, safety, gaming or smart watches, Indian wearable technology platforms are beginning to find increasing consumer acceptance and funding. Vishal Gondal's GOQii is now the No. 1 fitness band in the Indian market, having beaten Xiaomi's Mi Band.

SenseGiz, a Bengaluru-based startup that makes a safety monitoring wristband called SAFR, has sold around 35,000 devices so far. Priced at Rs 3,000, SAFR connects to a smartphone app and can detect if a user has got into an accident and alert emergency contacts.

Its primary markets have been Japan and the US. “Now, awareness is growing even in India,“ says Abhishek Latte, cofounder and CEO of SenseGiz.

For most wearables, the challenge is to be relevant to the consumer all through the day and every day . “People should not throw the devices after a few months. To prevent that, there should be enough services that keep the consumer interested. Hardware is just one part,“ says Gondal, whose GOQii counts former Google search head Amit Singhal and WhatsApp's business head Neeraj Arora among investors. IIT-Kharagpur alumni Somnath Meher, Ankit D P and Chandrashekhar Iyer's Witworks recently raised funds from entrepreneur-investor Anupam Mittal, and other angel investors. But it wasn't easy when they started in 2014.The first set of investors they approached were clear they didn't want to fund a venture building a hardware device.

Witworks has built a device called Blink that operates like a smartwatch and uses an inhouse operating system. The device will be priced at around $200 and will be launched by the end of September.

Some of the wearable ventures that have won funding include Actofit, a fitness wearable that has received funds from Next Orbit Ventures; Azoi, another fitness wearable funded by Vedanta Capital, MadRat Games, which has built a wearable gaming suit and has been funded by Ratan Tata and others, and Leaf Wearable, a bluetoothconnected jewellery for safety of women and funded on crowdfunding platform Ketto.

Still, a lot of young companies struggle Challenges include having to go to China for manufacturing. The design ecosystem to build a prototype in India is yet to mature.