Feel the direction with Lechal

Feel the direction with Lechal

 Hyderabad-based startup has developed footwear that tracks and navigates with touch sensors.

Hyderabad: Whenever we think about the wearable market space the first thing that comes to our mind is the fitness tracker either on our hand or on our smartphone. However, one Hyderabad-based company is trying its hands or do we say legs in the wearable and fitness market space. Lechal founded by Krispian Lawrence has been in existence since 2011 and started commercial sales of its product since the last one-and-a-half year.

The inception of the idea was to build footwear to help the visually impaired with the navigation, however Lawrence later realised that it could be used by anyone. The footwear works on a simple technology called Haptic which recreates the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user.

The user just has to download the Lechal app, set a destination and wear the footwear. The sensors in the insoles, shoes or even the buckle will guide the user through vibrations. “For example if the user needs to take right, then the right shoe will vibrate and so on,” Lawrence told Telangana Today.

Krispian Lawrence.

Now, while this is a good product for the visually impaired, the company soon realised that this could be used by anyone and everyone as most of the tracking devices now either need users to be glued to their phone or listen to the directions. With Lechal, however, it aids the user through vibration. Thus began the prototyping and testing of the product and after three years of intense research, the company was able to launch its flagship product in India in 2016.

“We have shipped our product to over 70 countries and have sold more than 25,000 units of our footwear in the last one year itself. We are confident the same sales run going ahead as well,” the true blue Hyderabadi informs.

Other than just providing directions, the footwear also tracks the number of steps taken and keeps a track of the user’s fitness. And it can also be used by the family to keep track of their loved ones. Other than its own website, the product is available on Amazon and in Croma stores.

Manufacturing

While startups in India and in Hyderabad are mostly about software and apps, Lechal is one of the few product-based startups in the city. What sets it apart from many startups is the ability to manufacture everything in-house. “Starting from our hardware to software to product design to product engineering and manufacturing everything is done in-house. And we have shipped all the products from here itself,” Lawrence informs.

One of the most interesting factor about the manufacturing is that 70 per cent of its workforce in the unit are differently abled. It has a total of 120 people employees. While the major raw materials are sourced from 12 different countries, according to the specifications mentioned by the company, yet all the innovations happen here in Hyderabad.

Expansion and Investment

Going ahead, the startup – that has diversified into other segments – plans to enter into partnerships with reputed brands for not only its footwear product but also the other products. Without specifying details about the future products, Lawrence informed that they are in talks with companies in travel and hospitality space to provide them with connected devices. “In addition, we are also looking at partnering with footwear brands to co-brand with them to sell our product,” he said.

The company has so far invested $3.5 million out of which about $2.5 million was bootstrapped. Going ahead, it plans to raise more funds as it seeks more partnerships and branding.

 

What Amazon Launchpad says about Indian innovators

 As the social stigma associated with risk-taking recedes, product start-ups are getting quirkier than ever before

Insoles that double up as fitness trackers (bottom left) is among the line-up for Amazon Launchpad.

 A shiny white sphere speaker floating magically above its magnetic base like a spacecraft hovering above earth. Insoles that double up as fitness trackers. An automatic dosa maker. The line-up for Amazon Launchpad, a curated collection of products from start-ups now available on the Amazon India website, provides a quick snapshot of innovators. India head Amit Agarwal says the timing seemed right because we’re finally more encouraging of risk-taking; the social stigma associated with it is slowly receding. Product start-ups are quirkier than ever before.

If you’re a technology writer you may not think these products are edgy enough to include in your year-end gifting guide (can anything compete with the latest offering from Bose?). If you’re me, it’s a great place to see what tech-savvy India is conjuring up for city slickers. If you don’t care about gizmos and if you’re not from south India, there’s always the “ready-to-use filter coffee decoction”, also listed as a unique product from a start-up. If you’re a cynic (you prefer realist, I know), you believe that the idea and execution of most Indian tech products continues to rely heavily on China. 

You might be occasionally surprised.

Wearable tech pioneer Ducere Technologies, which produces Lechal insoles and buckles that can turn your shoes into smart shoes, first experimented with producing in China. Now their assembly line is based in Hyderabad. “India is a fantastic place for up to a million units a year,” says co-founder Krispian Lawrence. “You control your entire item, nobody else knows what the entire product is and you control quality.”

If you’re an entrepreneur and angel investor like Sharad Sharma, you will promptly point out that the real innovation is happening not in your India (of 50 million families with an household income of more than $7,400, or about Rs5 lakh) but in another India (of 100 million families whose annual income lies somewhere from $3,300-3,400 and one that is on the cusp of entering the formal economy). “This is where the real action is. Launchpad will be important three years from now when it can penetrate this other India,” he says. If you dream the digital dream as Sharma does, connectivity equals creditworthiness equals overnight access to a virgin market. Here, innovators focus on areas such as health and education (an inexpensive RO water filter, for example), because that’s what people want to improve first when they have money to invest.

If you’re an innovator creating for urban India, you’re just grateful that someone’s finally assisting you to get the word out about your amazing-but-unheard-of product to a large number of people. Since Amazon has tied up with key groups in the start-up ecosystem, it’s easy enough to qualify if your product is of a certain standard (and for a monthly fee of Rs5,000). You must also fulfil other criteria, such as proving to Amazon that you can meet deadlines.

It’s not easy to meet deadlines in modern India, especially when your shipment dates happen to coincide with the early days of demonetisation and the death of J. Jayalalithaa, the chief minister of the state where you assemble and test your product. Somnath Meher, co-founder of Witworks, the start-up that created the smartwatch Blink (with its own operating system Marvin), recalls the delay when these events occurred in tandem.

He says that though lots of students tinker and make things, there are no role models for product start-ups that have managed to scale operations successfully. “We’re still very service and software driven. Even when we were raising funds, we were told: ‘You seem sensible enough, why don’t you solve this last mile problem for delivery? Why do you want to make products?’.”

Some entrepreneurs get past this block by telling a story that goes beyond the product. Vishal Gondal, founder and chief executive officer of GOQii (pronounced Go-Key), knew that it would be difficult to convince connected Indians to buy his Made in China fitness band over any other well known brand. So he offered buyers a personal trainer subscription plan with the device. “We built a health ecosystem and opted for the service model over the hardware sale model,” he says.

Amazon helped Gondal spread the news much before Launchpad, and the newer start-ups listed are likely to take inspiration from GOQii. Sharma points out that other recent changes in the start-to-finish cycle have also helped product start-ups. It’s easier to raise funds now thanks to the rising popularity of crowdsourcing websites such as Kickstarter. The growth of the Maker movement across India and the setting up of fully-loaded tech shops where innovators can prototype their products and interact with likeminded folks has had an impact too.

Aditya Agrawal, co-founder of ICE, a company that makes the quirky Ice Orb Floating Bluetooth Speaker, says they got the idea from friends who were working with levitation technology. “We began wondering how we could use this technology differently in making tech products,” he says. The company launched its product in the US first and it was a favourite online Christmas gift idea last year. “This is freakin’ awesome,” said technology YouTuber Lamarr Wilson in his video review.

A bigger, badder version of this speaker is now available in the US, where popular Launchpad products include self-cleaning fish tanks, a contraption that allows you to pour a glass of wine without pulling out the cork (intrigued?), a toilet bowl with motion sensors that lights up when you want to go in the middle of the night and a smart pet feeder that takes charge when you’re not at home. That’s probably the future of big city innovation everywhere. Meanwhile, I’m just happy that there are entrepreneurs who want to create for the connected, cynical India that has access to the best toys. It can only be good for our spirit of innovation.