Startup India: 'Smart calculator' for shopkeepers' accounts!!!
A year ago Tohands co-founder praveen Mishra thought that building a 'smart' calculator would be a stupid idea and nobody would want it. But when he saw a woman running a small shop in Sarjapura, Bengaluru struggling to keep track of all transactions, praveen Mishra realized the importance of a 'smart' calculator that also records data.
Praveen Mishra, a resident of Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh, started ToHands in 2017 along with Satyam Sahu and Shanmuga Vadiwal. All three co-founders handle different domains of the business, Mishra looks after the product side of things, Sahu looks after the apps and software and Vadiwal is in charge of the hardware.
The calculator is the backbone of small businesses
Mishra observed that small business owners are neither comfortable using the wallet PLATFORM' target='_blank' title='digital-Latest Updates, Photos, Videos are a click away, CLICK NOW'>digital Cashbook mobile app nor do they have the resources to invest in expensive billing machines. What they prefer is a simple calculator to do the routine calculations involved in everyday life.
However, 21-year-old praveen Mishra decided to re-imagine the calculator, but the challenge was how to make it better. After all, calculators have already proven to be tools that are a fast and convenient way to calculate in minutes. Everything is based on buttons.
The first version of the 'smart' calculator developed by Mishra was a Raspberry Pi-powered prototype of a device with a keyboard and two buttons - one for credit and the other for debit. Mishra then went to some shopkeepers and showed them a prototype device to gauge their interest in smart calculators. Initially, they were able to get seven pre-orders of the device but Mishra and the team soon started working on version two of the calculator.
The second version was a more polished product and included calculation functionality as well as credit and debit facilities but the screen was smaller and the device used a membrane keyboard. After the startup was selected at T-Hub, an incubation centre for IT startups in Rayadurgam, Hyderabad, Mishra and the team were inspired to take another shot at hardware and layer the design to make smart calculators a reality. At present, this calculator is being sold for Rs 3,000. The 'smart' calculator has 16MB of built-in memory, which can store 5 million transactions.
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