Entrepreneurial spark helped this duo light up India's stadiums, airports

These Bengaluru-based techies are now building UV products to kill Coronavirus

In 2013, the then 29-year-old Rupan Sarkar was fed up with the restrictions inherently associated with a corporate job when it came to experimenting with his innovative ideas. By that time, he had spent about five years working as a design engineer in global majors such as Schneider Electric and GE Healthcare. Sarkar took a six-month sabbatical, setting his eyes on entrepreneurship.

Around the same time, then 50-year-old Subrata Saha decided to hang up his boots as a senior executive at Bengaluru-based IT services company MindTree, to pursue a long-cherished dream of starting his own venture. He too was willing to take a plunge into entrepreneurship as he was sure of his financial stability even if the project failed.

Both the strangers met through a common friend and realised that they nourish a common ambition--to contribute towards making India self-reliant in electrical and electronic goods, especially sports, infrastructure and aviation lightings. This was an area in which the country was heavily dependent on China. A business opportunity existed for Indian companies to emerge in this niche area. Thus, Lokozo Technologies was born. 

The Bengaluru-based start-up won its first project in Aditya Birla Group-owned mines in Barbil, Odisha in 2013 soon after incorporation. The menace of street lights getting stolen at night had to be solved. "We had to build a solution where both the batteries and solar panels would be intact for at least three years. We used a solar micro-grid solution where the battery and the solar panels would be kept near the panchayat office and an alarm would go off if someone meddled with the battery box or panels," said Saha, co-founder and CEO at the bootstrapped start-up. 

Lokozo Technologies slowly graduated to more high-end segments such as aviation lighting that is deployed in airports and helipads, floodlights in stadiums, mobile lighting towers and solar-powered lighting solutions. The mobile lighting tower is a product in which high mast lamps can be made in portable form like the suitcase that has been deployed at Indian borders at West Bengal. The Bengaluru-based firm has also deployed its Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)-approved sports lightings of up to 1,000 watts in Sagarmal Cricket Stadium in Maharashtra, TRC Football Ground in Jammu & Kashmir, and tennis and badminton courts in Karnataka State Cricket Association.

In March when the Covid-19-induced lockdowns started hitting businesses hard, Lokozo saw a huge opportunity in the healthcare space, especially in the use of UV lights for sanitisation. The company found that Ultra Violet–C band (with 250-280 nanometers) light radiation is germicidal. It used its expertise in LED to conceptualise 'D-Box'— a disinfecting-equipment dedicated to non-living objects. The company has sold over 5,000 such boxes to companies such as Qualcomm, Mahindra Holidays and Chattisgarh Government offices since the Covid-19 outbreak. 

However, since UV rays are considered harmful for human body, Lokozo came up with 'Dual Polarity Plasma Ionizer Technology'. "The patent-pending technology generates controllable positive and negative ions that can kill the viruses present in the human body. The ions get attached to the germs and eventually inactivate them," Sarkar, co-founder and CTO of the company explained.

The company has incorporated this technology in a hand sanitisation equipment and a metal detector-style tunnel that can be kept at the entrances of businesses. The equipment can sanitise without using any hazardous chemicals. Saha said, the company plans to expand the same technology to air conditioners and water purifiers in the future. The company is also working to get external investment to scale up the business.

In the medium term, the company targets at least 50 per cent of its revenues to be made from the newly-launched healthcare solutions. The company has nearly 70 permanent employees currently and plans to build its own factory in Dabaspet in Karnataka. 

"It is a conscious decision to deploy only freshers in the research and development team of Lokozo. We look for technically-sound graduates and marks do not matter. We have around 20 such skillful employees right now," said Sarkar, who had faced similar issue of not getting a job due to lack of experience, after graduating. 

While remaining a mostly business-to-business (B2B) focused company, Lokozo Technologies is looking at strategically expanding into business-to-consumer (B2C) healthcare space. The firm also aims to achieve a three-digit turnover in the next two years.