Phoenix Robotix — The nth degree of freedom
“Everything you can imagine is real!”
-Pablo Picasso
His passion for electronics and his inherent desire to storm IOT upon the world led Mr. Amiya Kumar Samantaray to materialize his dreams into Phoenix Robotix Private Limited. He is the founder of the company and an alumnus of NIT Rourkela with a B.Tech degree in Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering. With all his flair and efforts, he thus became an aspiring pioneer in providing Wireless sensor network (WSN) technologies and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to eliminate real world problems by connecting billions of devices and creating an impact in millions of industries and cities across the globe.
Established in 2015, the organization has been able to secure great heights within a short span and is recognized as one of the innovative start-ups Of India by Department of industrial policy and promotions as well as Government of Odisha under start-up Odisha policy. It is one among the top 10 innovations for smart cities in Innovate for Digital India(IFDIC) 2015 and has bagged notable awards for numerous Innovative products and policies.
Our interaction with Amiya gave certain insights about this magnificent journey towards success.
Firstly, it is imperative for the commonwealth to familiarize with the concept of IoT. It is a network of various electronic devices, vehicles or softwares which enable these objects to connect and exchange data. The global value of IoT will reach to about $7.1 billion by 2020. So, it requires a real techie and a genius to make an influence in such a rapid evolving field and Amiya is definitely the man of the hour.
The company, today, works with governments of smart cities to find solutions to environmental problems and city planning. It is a business to business kind of enterprise not directly linked to people. By spreading its effect through different other establishments, Phoenix Robotics aims at making people’s lifestyles better through its revolutionary IoT concepts. It has been able to grab many reputed customers like Tata steel among others and has made numerous achievements. It is counted amongst the successful start-ups of the country. It aims at becoming a global level company within 2 to 3 years.
It’s a strange fact that specifically diverse and vivid Indian society is very reluctant to embrace new ideas. This reluctance limits delving into entrepreneurship. The views of the society suppress a person’s courage to realize his goals. Even if some students strive to take the initiative, they lose the motivation and give up while, still in the making. But Amiya swam against the tide and worked on his own ethics and ideals. Because of his will-power and self-confidence, today he has been able to fascinate the world with Phoenix Robotics.
His secret to make a start-up successful is that one should first confirm the potential need of the product and the existence of a promising market. Having an idea is just 10 percent of the task. One should realize the need of the customers to get profit out of it.
Then comes all societal or monetary hurdles!
“Funding is definitely a very challenging factor for any start-up.”
In initial days the company drew some revenue from different workshops and customers but that wasn’t enough. Amiya contacted different investors to invest some capital on his ideas but it was truly difficult to convince them on basis of some raw ideas which had not been materialized by then. Although people around him showed some faith in his ideas, in their hearts they thought he was doing something stupid and extravagant.
Some people were very supportive and then there were others who bluntly criticized his innovative idea and asked him to reconcile back to the job-tradition. On being asked about how he overcame these societal negativities he said,
“If you feel you are doing something right you should stay silent, you should talk less and work more.”
His determination, faith and hard work fueled his ideas and helped him cross all these barriers of societal and monetary hurdles. Though the company still faces glitches in funding, he is willing to accept and revert back to all challenges that come ahead. At no point of time he failed to keep faith in himself and his abilities.
Like a true leader, he himself learnt a lot from his failures. There have been days when he had zero cash in his bank account and then came moments when many of their orders got cancelled, he recaps. He had very little knowledge of finances and little failures would dishearten him. But he eventually learnt that managing money is more important than making profit for a business to survive. One mustn’t go bankrupt in just meeting the operational expenses of a product. Also, the tiny little hurdles would one day be the ladder to his success.
A technical start-up as his’ requires highly knowledgeable and competent professionals who can carry forward his endeavor. This makes it hard to recruit employees. Amiya believes that the engineers in our country have knowledge, they can build a website or write impressive codes what they lack in are the basic practical skills such as interfacing hardware and software. His company deals with this by giving required training to the new recruits and prepares them to handle the job rightly.
On being asked how supportive the people in NITR have been in materializing his ideas, he fondly responded,
“I started on this journey alone but I couldn’t have made it up so far all alone. My juniors joined and supported me. NITR has definitely been supportive.”
In the end, Amiya left a message for the all dreamers and hence achievers,
“Do not keep multiple options for the future. It diverts you from your goal. Set one goal and traverse the path to that one goal. No matter what path your goal demands, take it and strive hard for success.”
By- Samikshya and Harsh Budholiya
