Interview: Santosh Kumar Patil, Founder and President at MiQasa Inc.

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Published on March 31, 2017

by Bhasker Gupta

Santosh Kumar Patil, Founder and President, MiQasa Inc.

An alumnus from Osmania University, Santosh Kumar Patil has 14 years of experience within semiconductor industry, ranging from leading semiconductor organizations like AMD, Intel (Altera), Qualcomm, and TSMC to multiple other semiconductor startups.

Patil acts as the Founder and President for MiQasa, with a vision of building a world-class IoT organization. He has successfully built the team in India, and established an ecosystem of builders, developers, and sales & marketing partnerships.

Amrita University’s Technology Business Incubator (TBI) recently recognized MiQasa as one of the top 5 startups in India, which is remarkable. IoT India Magazine interacted with Santosh Kumar Patil to understand the value proposition created by MiQasa in the home automation business and to paint a more vivid picture about the IoT landscape in India. We present to you the detailed interview as follows.

IoT India Magazine: What are the factors that spurred the conception of MiQasa in the Smart Home arena? How has the journey been so far?

Santosh Kumar Patil: If you look across industries at the present, most of them underwent massive transformation in the past few decades. There are very few industries left to embrace such reflection, and Electric Switch board is one similar industry.

Electricity is an essential necessity of the world as we know it, every household across the world needs electricity to power up all their electrical and electronic appliances. This spurt of increase in appliances is good for manufacturers around the world, but due to alarming increase in number of devices in our homes, consumers look for better management of all these appliances.

MiQasa steps in to address this need for better management by furnishing user with a common platform where every appliance in their home can be connected, and more importantly it addresses static issue of CONVENIENCE. Times have changed, but addressing the need for convenience with better management of appliances has always been a big road block for consumers. MiQasa provides a mobile application with remote accessibility feature for its consumers, using which consumers can turn appliances ON/OFF, or schedule or create themes, etc.

The key moments of MiQasa’s journey in the IoT space would include:

MiQasa was incorporated in April 2015.
MiQasa holds an office in Hyderabad.
MiQasa has portfolio of various products to support Home Automation
The firm has an ecosystem that supports in-house development of hardware, software, firmware, application (iOS & android) and cloud.
MiQasa has successfully deployed 1000+ Smart Switch Boards so far.
The firm essentially relies on a B2B model.
The organization has strong foothold in Telangana & Andra Pradesh.
MiQasa is extending its base in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat & Delhi NCR.

IoT India Magazine: Tell us about the “QASA” Smart Switch Boards. How does it help in home automation?

SKP: MiQasa has delivered a product called QASA Smart Switch Board (SSB), using which the user can control and regulate all the electrical home appliances like lights, fans, TVs, ACs, washing machines, geysers, and microwave ovens. The user can use the touch mode, or utilize the remote within homes, or use mobile application from anywhere in the world to control the appliances.

QASA Smart Switch Boards comes with a range of portfolio of products

MiQasa brings every consumer appliance (Electrical/Electronic) onto one place on a mobile application, and let’s consumer perform whatever action he prefers, from wherever he is. It provides extended comfort, convenience & security for consumers by integrating IoT to build smart homes.

IoT India Magazine: What is the role of IoT at MiQasa? How do you address the need of home automation using IoT?

SKP: The Internet of things (IoT) is the inter-networking of physical devices, vehicles (also referred to as “connected devices” and “smart devices”), buildings, and other items—embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity to enable these objects to collect and exchange data.

MiQasa caters to IoT in a similar fashion, bringing all appliances of household to one platform to enable “connected devices”. This allows users to perform operations from anywhere in the world.

For instance, if a consumer wants to turn ON the geyser while heading back to home from gym, he has to simply open the mobile application and get to that particular appliance and tap on it. This remote action will turn the geyser ON immediately, and by the time he reaches home, hot water would be ready. Similarly, many other instances can be drawn.

IoT India Magazine: Why is QASA Smart Switch Board better than traditional ones? What are the features and functionalities that it furnishes? What are the other offerings and services MiQasa provides in the home automation and IoT arena?

SKP: The traditional electric switches have only one option to operate it, i.e., “get to the switch board and turn it ON/OFF,” however, MiQasa provides Electronic Smart Switches. Typically, the traditional switches won’t focus much on added security features. But, MiQasa ensures handsome security features with the Smart Switch Board along, besides ensuring greatest comfort & convenience.

QASA SSB makes human life simpler as the user can operate any electronic appliance using remote or smart phone (“QASA Mobile App”). QASA also has the following salient features.

The features are listed below:

Over/Under Load Protection
Over/Under Voltage Protection
Surge Protection
Retrofit Mechanism
Compatible to inverter, generator or solar power
Control the appliances through Soft-Touch, Remote control, or Mobile App (iOS & Android)
Cost efficient
Modular switches – user requirements adaptive
Round the clock Service

We are planning to release products in sensor category, Wi-Fi cameras shortly.

IoT India Magazine: How has your offerings benefitted your clients?

SKP: We are expert designers and manufacturers of high end home automation systems. We have hundreds of systems in operation which are used daily by happy clients. We specialize in complex systems for large houses. We simplify complex electrical systems such geysers, air conditioning, making them easy to use, besides saving energy.

MiQasa looks at any house comprehensively to create an energy plan which allows users to determine the systems with the most energy use, so that these systems can be optimized for energy efficiency. Lastly, MiQasa delivers COMFORT, CONVENIENCE & SECURITY to its consumers and this benefits everyone.

IoT India Magazine: How do you customize your solutions to meet the needs of different customers?

SKP: We provide tailored solutions, if consumers desire unique and specific lighting to suit their mood and choice. We can deploy Dimming-enabled Smart Switch Boards, which provides regulation on increasing brightness and dimming.

If consumer wants only Remote Control for convenience, MiQasa will produce unique Smart Switch Boards which will cater to this requirement.

If consumer wants full luxury of Smart Switch Boards, then MiQasa will deliver and ensure they have all the options, including Soft Touch, Remote, and Mobile Application to power up their appliances.

Front glass panels for Smart Switch Boards can be chosen by consumers according to their choice.

Smart Switch Boards’ front glass panels can be customized and added to interiors and exteriors.

IoT India Magazine: Please talk about the existing market scenario. Who are the biggest competitors? What are your key differentiating factors as a firm?

SKP: The below survey let’s understand where market is shifting towards Home Automation.

Our USP is:

The unique Product specification.
Cost effective pricing.
2 Years product replacement.

IoT India Magazine: What is the roadmap for MiQasa in the upcoming years? How do you plan to utilize the investment forwarded by Amrita University’s Technology Business Incubator (TBI)?

SKP: MiQasa would establish solid network of distribution ship PAN India by end of 2017. We are planning to ramp up distributors network to 450 by end of 2017.

We are also planning to set up experience zones at Metropolitan cities by end of 2017 and taking it across to major Tier-2 cities by end of 2018.

We are planning to produce 5000 units of Smart Switch Boards. A portion of the investment will be utilized on marketing front.

IoT India Magazine: Any word of advice for the emerging startups in the arena who want to make it big?

SKP: Emerging startups must validate their business idea against market acceptations from time to time. Put every effort to make it MVP. Do not forget that your business model is the core component that factors out the success path.

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Bhasker Gupta

Bhasker is a techie turned media entrepreneur. Bhasker started AIM in 2012, out of a desire to speak about emerging technologies and their commercial, social and cultural impact. Earlier, Bhasker worked as Vice President at Goldman Sachs. He is a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow.