Former Mitacs intern launches company providing unique GPS-based apps
However, his experience led to a change in perspective. “In a big company, there isn’t as much opportunity to make decisions that lead to improvements in a technology.”
Rohit had come to Canada in 2012 to pursue an MBA focused on entrepreneurship at the University of Victoria. During his program, he undertook a Mitacs Accelerate internship with Limespot, a small e-commerce start-up with five employees, a far cry from his experience at Blackberry.
“At Limespot, I attended board meetings and met with investors. I conducted market research, wrote business plans, and learned about IP protection, patent filings, equity structure, and share distribution.” he explained. “I learned about the start-up culture and what it takes to succeed.”
Taking the next step
Buoyed by his Mitacs internship, Rohit and a classmate, Samarth Mod, launched FreshWorks (originally AirSenze), a technology company that creates location-based apps aimed at simplifying business processes using the global positioning system (GPS) and beacons.
What sets FreshWorks apart is its unique platform that enables it to create mobile apps much faster and cheaper than their competitors. Typically, robust location-based apps can cost $25,000 to $50,000. The company’s platform is able to create an app for a fraction of the cost, around $5,000 to $10,000 in as little as three to four weeks.
It just takes one small success
Rohit and his business partner came to a realization common to tech entrepreneurs:
“Developing a technology is easy,” he says. “Making sales, understanding your customer and finding people who will write cheques are hard.”
Fortunately, he has the attitude and determination required to guide a start-up through the difficult early years. “You don’t have to be successful every day. You can fail constantly, but you just need to succeed once. I look back at where the company was a year ago compared to today. Now, we have two investors, an office, five staff — things have really improved.”
Rohit’s determination led to a partnership with a provincial government department and the development of a dike and dam inspection app for inspectors. A pain point for inspectors was the requirement to submit lengthy, handwritten paper reports after each inspection. Rohit saw an opportunity to develop a user-friendly app that facilitated online reporting. GPS technology records the time and location of the inspection; workers simply sign in, record their observations, add GPS-tagged images, e-sign the report, and press “submit.”
“I knew that the inspectors all had smartphones and knew how to use apps like Facebook and Twitter. So I was confident that they could adopt this new technology,” he explains.
With the success of FreshWorks, Rohit has made Canada his home. He is certain that he wouldn’t have started the company without the experience from his Mitacs Accelerate internship: “I’d probably be working in a big company, lost in the shuffle. My Accelerate internship set my career in motion.”
Mitacs thanks the Government of Canada and the Government of British Columbia for their support of the Accelerate research internship in this story. Across Canada, the Accelerate program also receives support from Alberta Innovates, the Government of New Brunswick, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Government of Nova Scotia, the Government of Ontario, the Government of Prince Edward Island, the Government of Quebec, the Government of Saskatchewan and Research Manitoba.
Do you have a business challenge that could benefit from a research solution? If so, contact Mitacs today to discuss partnership opportunities: BD@mitacs.ca
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Mitacs empowers Canadian innovation through effective partnerships that deliver solutions to our most pressing problems. By driving economic growth and productivity, we create meaningful change to improve quality of life for all Canadians.
