Long before Grofers or Bigbasket made it big in the Indian startup ecosystem, two IIT-K mates decided to quit well-paid IT jobs to set up a grocery startup, Buy-Easy.
Being the fast mover in online grocery segment, Buy-Easy caught the attention of many. As with every growing startup, the founding duo faced problems in logistics & operations; scaling was a problem too. To keep funding the product, a services arm was set up which started working on various projects with clients from all over the world. Eventually, the product had to be shut down due to market pressures; however, the technology arm took a huge jump and was growing by the day.
Over the last 3 years, Mantra Labs has positioned itself as a result-driven company which likes to challenge the status quo and develop solutions that help its clients to achieve business goals. The team complements each other well with diverse skill-sets. Parag – the CEO, is a tech geek and a keen strategist. Kaushal heads Sales and Operations and is an out an out people person. Sambhav and Navin head Technology and Artificial Intelligence while Mikhail drives products, marketing and design.
The core drive of Mantra is to always stay ahead of the technology curve. Hence, it was one of the early adopters of the latest javascript frameworks, NoSQL databases and is now having a research-driven approach to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT).
MantraAI, the AI/ML solutions arm of Mantra, is a boutique AI/ML services firm which focuses on solving problems using AI and ML. Mantra is now an IBM Watson Business Partner and is working with clients all over the world on solving interesting problems in Health-Care, Fin-Tech and Consumer Internet space. MantraAI is also working on cracking real-time video intelligence to create its own Intellectual Property.
Xavi, the flagship product of Mantra IoT, is a nifty home automation device which aims to harness Artificial Intelligence Insights and NLP to build a more enriched lifestyle. Currently, you can simply talk to Xavi via your app and ask it “Show me the list of English Action movies starting in next 15 minutes” and it will automatically list it down. Be it switching to your favorite show or watching yet another Friends rerun – just talk to the App and it will do the rest.
Mantra Labs is also the co-founder of SellFash, a Supplier-Reseller app for the unorganized market to enable social selling over WhatsApp and Facebook while giving intuitive benefits like supply chain management, own web store with payment gateway and inventory management etc.
Touchkin was incubated at Mantra and through Wysa, its mental therapy AI bot which is part of Fb start program, Touchkin has been instrumental in driving AI driven mental therapy solutions.
How Mantra Labs Is Helping Startups
In its sprawling 3 floor campus in Bangalore, Mantra keeps incubating promising startups. Having built goodwill with VC firms and reputed entrepreneurs alike for delivering robust engineering solutions, Mantra frequently leverages the network to open doors and facilitate things for young startups. A 360-degree approach of taking ideas to market has been instrumental in all its engineers having a product DNA in them.
With companies like Ola, Bluestone, EzeTap, Leadsquared and Religare in its client list, Mantra Labs is focusing more on IoT, AI and Enterprise on Cloud and expects to be the leader in these segments in the near future.
