The Pandavleni Caves on the outskirts of Maharashtra’s Nashik offers a great view of the city. At a height of 300 ft above the rest of Nashik, this 2,000-year-old Buddhist monastery provides a bird’s-eye view of the urban sprawl growing around this ancient city of Hindu mythology.
Roughly 200 km away, in Pune, the newest hub for tech startups in India, there is a similar spot: Parvati Hill. The temple complex on the hill built by the Peshwas is only a few centuries old. Donations are collected and entry tickets are sold. While both spots are beautiful, Pandavleni is sparse, Parvati Hill is prosperous.
Together they are a perfect metaphor for the tech-entrepreneurial scene in Nashik. There are a lot of innovative ideas coming out of the city, but they lack the funding muscle of Pune. Consider this: AngelList, the international startups portal, lists more than 5,000 investors interested in Pune. Nashik’s score is just one. Equidistant from the financial capital of Mumbai (Nashik 160 km vs Pune 147 km), Nashik is an industrial and educational hub.
It has a growing aeronautical industry, is considered the wine capital of India and has 10,000 engineers graduating from its colleges every year. Yet when one looks out for funded tech startups out of Nashik, it is difficult to find one that quite fits the definition; Pune has 100.
Starved of Capital
ESDS Software Solutions, the Nashikbased company that offers cloud computing solutions and has a growing data centres business, started way back in 2005, but got its first round of funding only in 2015 — a Rs 25 crore infusion from Canbank Venture Capital.
Winjit Technologies, a company founded in 2006 that develops software, mobiles apps and games and is working on the internet of things (IoT), is yet to raise a formal round of funding. Gaming company Zabuza Labs has even had the success of having one of its games, Balloon Bow & Arrow, being listed among the top games by Google.
Piyush Somani, Founder and MD of ESDS, says, “In the last three years, I have seen at least 500 innovative ideas being presented in engineering colleges. Some of them are so good that I was zapped.” Somani feels Nashik is at the cusp of change. He points out that not only does Nashik have rich businessmen, who have made money as suppliers to larger industrial houses, but the district also has big farmers who want their children to be educated to take up newer professions. “Nashik is where Pune was 15 years back and where Bengaluru was 30 years ago,” says Somani.
The rich agrarian community also offers opportunities for tech startups. Winjit’s Founder Ashwin Kandoi points out that one of the successful apps developed by Winjit is for Sarda Farms — for their milk business.
Winjit has also built a banking app for Ratnakar Bank. People are key for any startup, and Zabuza Founder Manas Gajare, an engineer with a master’s degree in mathematics, says his 16-member team largely comprises residents of Nashik and nearby. Nashik has a plethora of educational opportunities — two state-run universities, 10 engineering colleges and a management college run by Symbiosis.
Digging Deep
Over the last year, Nashik’s tech entrepreneurship scene has got a leg-up. It started around the 12-yearly Kumbh Mela in the city in 2015. In a joint activity promoted by the state administration, local organisations, MIT Media Labs and TCS, a Kumbhathon was organised to find techbased solutions to problems like people going missing in the fair and epidemics breaking out.
At least 12 innovations were deployed during the fair. The experience led TCS to set up Digital Impact Square, or DISQ, a social innovation platform in Nashik.
Source: Economic Times
