IoT Startup Precimetrix Leverages 'Industry 4.0', 'Smart Factory' Concepts

The Germans gave us the term “Industry 4.0” to christen connecting manufacturing to the internet. Just like the internet made phones smart, it has made the factory smart too. Precimetrix is an Indian startup trying to set up those intelligent, automated infrastructure using IoT, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data and all the goodies of the digital revolution.

Ashish Nene, CEO of Precimetrix Technologies dishes the deets.

Why did you decide to start this venture?

We were always building software services in the manufacturing space. But the need for the extra oomph, the extra push for innovation was felt. And that was why we decided to start implementing Industry 4.0 strategies to our products.

There’s a huge need for this. More and more manufacturers, even the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) want better visibility of their operations and ROI from their investments.

We decided to launch Precimetrix in late 2015 as a 50:50 JV between our company Websym Solutions, and Maestrotek Innovations. Together, we have over 20 years of expertise in IoT, factory automation, big data analytics and cloud computing.

The cofounders of Precimetrix are Satish Patil, COO; Prasad Khadilkar, CTO; Subramhanya Hathwar, VP Engineering, and I, Ashish Nene who takes on the role of CEO.

Share with us what’s special about this venture and how it’s different from its competitors?

Our Precimetrix IoT/analytics platform is the most flexible platform in the market. It can be easily configured to meet the requirements of manufacturers for their factory monitoring and predictive maintenance needs. OEMs can use our tech for remote monitoring while controlling assets. Pharma and FMCG customers can monitor their cold chains.

The Precimetrix platform is natively built on top of Microsoft’s Azure and IoT suite of products that allows quick adoption and faster time to market vis-à-vis other solutions in the market.

How did you manage to fund this idea?

Precimetrix is presently bootstrapped. Both the founding organizations Websym and Maestrotek too are bootstrapping at present.

But we may consider strategic investments with very large manufacturing conglomerates/OEMs; leading software ISVs who would like to extend their solutions into the manufacturing space; VCs who have large investments and interest in Manufacturing IOT space.

What are/what will be your monetization paths?

Precimetrix’s solutions are monetized in several ways:

We make collect monthly revenue from out solution suite monthly revenue model (per machine/per asset etc.)

IoT hardware – we work with several IoT hardware partners as their reseller partner – they offer us a revenue share on successful sale and deployment of their off the shelf IOT hardware at customer sites

Software implementation and customization revenue

Tell us how the business has grown so far – how many customers, number of product offerings, profit percentages etc.

In the last 9 months we have been active in the market segments where we have signed the customers:

2 customers in the automobile manufacturing domain
2 OEM customers
1 customer in the cable manufacturing industry
1 customer in Discrete Manufacturing

What marketing strategies and plans are in place to grow the business?

Nothing groundbreaking to say here. We will be focusing on relationships built over the years to gain more customers. Other than that we actively work with Microsoft and its reseller network to build our brand while participating at industry events to promote our names.

We are also currently active expanding our focus to the Middle East and Asia Pacific markets.

What is the market size and opportunity?

As per the market estimates, IoT in the manufacturing market is estimated to grow to more than 13.49 billion dollars by 2020 worldwide, 30 per cent of that revenue is expected to be generated from Asia.

Any challenges faced setting up? Anything unique to your situation?

The biggest challenge we face is the long sales cycles. Most of our customers are aware of the benefits of our technology, but adoption is slow as some manufacturers still consider this technology as a “nice to have” and ROI becomes difficult to prove unless the solution is deployed and proven. We often deploy our solution as a proof of concept first, before a full rollout.

Share with us some best and worst memories while running the business

Long sales cycles inherently takes up a lot of work and energy from the team, but customer acquisition when they do come eventually, brings with it a lot of satisfaction.