Meet the founders of Cloudblocks, an Internet of Things based home automation Startup

Internet of Things (IoT)  is one of the hottest ideas that entrepreneurs globally are tinkering with. With the sudden spate of cheap handheld devices and the gradual penetration of internet in remote areas, IoT is becoming the top choice for investors and tech entrepreneurs.  This inclination towards IoT is based on some hard facts.

According to TechSci Research report which was released last year, “India Internet of Things (IoT) Market Opportunities & Forecast, 2020”, the Indian IoT market is expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 28% during 2015 – 2020. More than 80 billion devices are expected to be connected by 2020 and the worth of Indian Internet of Things market is expected to be around 15 Billion US Dollars by 2020. But like the Smart Phone market in India, which grew at a pace which many tech-gurus never imagined, the growth projections for IOT can turn out to be grossly underestimated.

What exactly is Internet of Things or IOT?

“The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital devices, objects, people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.”

Internet of Things can be applied in different fields. Some of its application include Smart homes and Smart wearables along with its highly engineered application in the field of healthcare and agriculture among others.

Inspired by the diverse potential of IOT in India and abroad, and with the vision to provide home automation facilities to the masses and that too at a reasonable cost, two young Entrepreneurs, Archit Gupta and Harmeet Singh founded Cloudblocks in 2015.

Cloudblocks is basically a home automation Startup which uses the power of Internet of Things and aims at making the lives of people easier by providing them cost efficient smart solutions.

How CloudBlocks work?

Cloudblocks team installs their smart device or blocks unit behind customers existing switchboard. Cloudblocks team configures the blocks unit with the home router which enables a user to control home appliances/devices via Cloudblocks app.

Currently, Archit is handling the business end of the company while Harmeet is taking care of the technology part. It took them more than a year to come up with the product.

“Running a hardware startup has its own challenges. A lot of money go into R&D and testing various prototypes and building a saleable product from those prototypes. It becomes hard to survive without funding. Due to lack of resources, we did everything ourselves from market research and analysis , handling server side, product building,testing,prototyping to app building” said Archit to Times of Startups.

Archit believes that an entrepreneur needs to come out of his comfort zone and should be willing to take all challenges head on.

“There is nothing you can say no to. One needs to be very disciplined and unlike a regular job, there is no one to guide you or instruct you on what you should do. For Cloudblocks, we are using the most advanced technologies which are highly encrypted and light weight. Without compromising on the quality aspect of our product,we have managed to keep our product affordable so that it is within the reach of everyone.” he added.

Archit added that Harmeet introduced him with this business idea. Harmeet felt the need to make a product by which he could control his appliances using his smartphone. The duo did some initial research and found that there was a dearth of affordable smart home devices in the market which propelled them to go ahead with the business idea.

When asked about VC investments in Cloudblocks, Archit said that they have not demonstrated their idea anywhere because their aim was to get this product into production and get sales out of it.

Cloudblocks has started its operations in Hyderabad and Delhi and is planning to expand its operations to Bangalore and Mumbai soon.

Related : Read about inventrom, a Goa-based Internet of Things company.