The accidental entrepreneur whose app protects 12,000 housing societies

Vijay Arisetty, who turned entrepreneur some years after quitting the IAF following a mishap, has developed MyGate, one of India's most successful security apps

One would hardly expect an Air Force pilot to quit his job, do a 180-degree career shift landing jobs in companies like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, and then getting bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. But that is just what happened to Vijay Arisetty, when a shoulder injury playing handball in 2011 put paid to a 10-year career flying sophisticated helicopters for the IAF. 

Once out of the Air force, he got into ISB, Hyderabad, from where he got picked up by Goldman Sachs, a company he spent a few years with at a senior level. Arisetty would then move on to Bank of America before venturing out on his own.

What sparked MyGate 

Having vacated the cantonment, Arisetty realised that the security systems at the gated community he had to shift to, were woefully inadequate compared to the kind prevalent in military residential colonies. Of course, you had men in uniform who would monitor the entry and exit of visitors to the society. But more often than not, the exercise was limited to turning the register towards the visitor, requesting him to fill in the columns seeking his name, address, mobile, and other details. The guard would then call the concerned resident on intercom or cell, before allowing or denying entry to the person seeking to get in.

Says Arisetty: "Just imagine a small entry point to (a society with) 200 houses, and one security guard managing maid-servants, support staff, delivery boys, cab drivers, courier boys and the like. You have multiple people entering the colony, making the task of managing them difficult, That's where the shortcuts creep in, posing a risk to the residents. You would have heard of cases in which delivery boys have misbehaved with senior citizens in the house."

Arisetty's argument is that there has been a shift in consumer behaviour with going out to shop yielding space to a situation in which "commerce comes to your doorstep". You can order practically everything--food, clothes, mobile phones, books, kitchen appliances--on the internet, and have the delivery boy bring it home. He says he and his partners, Shreyans Daga and Abhishek Kumar, also realised that the level of interaction among the residents of most societies has become very limited, and quite often, one wouldn't even know the names of many of one's neighbours.

Mulling over these issues kind of ignited the spirit of enterprise, and he teamed up with Daga and Kumar to work on developing an app that would seamlessly cater to all three human constituents of his proposed business--the resident, the guard at the gate, and the visitor. 

Developing the app

Arisetty and his partners would spend two months at the gate to understand the kind of problems security guards really face. There were many, apart from monitoring the inflow of 'traffic'. For starters, the team noticed that the guard would be harassed by a barrage of calls from residents wanting to know whether or not the maidservant or driver had checked in. Another was the irritation on the part of guest who would have to get out of the car, fill in his details in the visitor's register and wait for clearance from over the intercom before being let in. The third problem was the reluctance--and in some cases the inability--of the man at the gate to fill in the visitor's details properly in the register. He would invariably ask the person seeking entry to do the job. 

Says Arisetty: "We found that most security guards were more comfortable with numerals than alphabets and words. And it was this understanding that helped us develop an app that simply involved the use of digits from one to nine.

How the app works

For guests: If you are expecting a friend or relative, all you need to do is fill in some very basic information about him on the app. You will get an SMS with a four- to six-digit OTP that you can forward to your guest, who only needs to show it or read it out to the guard. He will be let in immediately. No filling up annoying registers at the gate.

For daily visitors: Oftentimes, maidservants and cooks work in more than one flat in a society. So when one of them checks in using a OTP that is set for her everyday, the minute she goes past the gates, all the households she works in will be informed of her arrival on the app, and each one can also keep a track of which flat she is working in at any given point of time. 

For delivery boys: MyGate has tied up with food delivery services such as Swiggy and Zomato to provide a seamless experience to the rider, the security personnel and the customer. So if you've ordered a Chinese meal online, the service provider--Swiggy or Zomato in this case--will enquire on the app itself whether or not your society uses MyGate. If it does, Swiggy will locate your gated community on the app and inform it about your order, mentioning your flat number. That will trigger a notification to you and once you confirm having placed the order, the rider will get an OTP even as he is heading to your society with your parcel. All he has to do once he reaches the gate is to show the number and he will be let in.

Growth at a glimpse

MyGate, which was launched in July or August of 2016, got its first contract from two colonies in Bengaluru. It has since grown from a three member set-up to a 1,400-strong enterprise, with plans to raise this number to 1,700 by March 2021, as it seeks to ramp up its sales and service teams. The company has a client base of about 12,000 societies, consisting of some two million households. The company, which is focused on 18 cities in India, has received a total of $70 million in PE/VC investments since inception from Prime Venture Partners, Tiger Global and JS Capital Management. The most recent infusion was a Series B round of $56 million. 

The Covid push: Arisetty acknowledges the role the pandemic has played in boosting demand for MyGate as societies strive to be better equipped to deal with the malady.

So, when supply channels were hit during the first lockdown, MyGate rushed to build partnerships with a number of retail brands (Grofers, ITC and Box8) to ensure preferential delivery of foodstuffs and other essentials in bulk to its client societies. Then, as gates were reopening, it built features like body temperature measurement and mask check, integrated with Aarogya Setu and found healthcare partners, such as Nightingale and Portea, to help communities. 

Arisetty says he is focused on improving the product further. "Even now, we’ve solved just 15 per cent of the entire problem. We are eager to solve the remaining 85 per cent," he explains.