After stepping off the corporate ladder, a trek inspired Meenakshi Vashisht to found TekUncorked, a company facilitating reliable, outage-free electricity for all.
After working for almost 23 years in product innovation for leading organisations, Meenakshi Vashisht witnessed the hardship faced by people at the grassroots levels during a trek in Chamoli, Uttarakhand. Despite discouragement from people around her, she decided to step off the corporate ladder and embark on her entrepreneurial journey.
In 2019, Meenakshi founded TekUncorked, a company specialising in developing, deploying, and managing an enterprise-grade AI-IoT platform for real-time monitoring and tracking of assets, aimed at detecting wastage, leakage, malfunction, and pilferage.
Since its inception, TekUncorked’s AI and IoT-led Distribution Grid Management Platform has been incorporated in over 300+ locations, benefitting nearly 350000 consumers.
HerZindagi spoke to Meenakshi about the company she founded, its accomplishments to date, and her journey as a woman in male-dominated fields of technology and energy.
Starting TekUncorked to Tackle Energy-Reliability Issues
Meenakshi was working with a global corporation when she decided to take the leap. She had worked in tech journeys that inlcudes PSLV at ISRO, the Indian telecom dream at C-DoT, handphones and intelligent automotives at Motorola and NXP. “My colleagues, friends and extended family felt I was taking a big risk. They felt it was not wise to step away from a global organisation, huge pay cheques and the perks,” she recalled.
She said that her age, experience and gender defied the typical stereotype of a startup founder. Many said that her startup would survive only a few years and then she would either retire or rejoin her corporate job.
In 2010, she took a break from her corporate career and travelled extensively. “I spent nearly a year travelling across India. I travelled across 20,000 km through rural, suburban, and urban India. I met people from various walks of life including change-makers, academics, grassroots entrepreneurs, students, small industries and impact organisations,” she said.
During her travels, she witnessed the struggles at the grassroots level, which led her to want to address the challenges.
“One always reads that India is an energy-sufficient nation. In terms of generation capacity, that is true. However, there is a significant gap between energy generated and energy available to consume. This often goes unnoticed when we have several fuel-led back-ups for electricity,” she explained.
“However, the moment you reach the grassroots level, the day-to-day struggles of people and micro-enterprises due to energy reliability issues become visible. Also, the impact of fuel back-ups in terms of global warming is most felt by people who spend hours working in the fields and on the roads. When I closely saw these struggles, it motivated me to do a deep dive into the sector and revealed the challenges the grids face,” she added.
TekUncorked emerged as a potential solution to these issues. It aims to facilitate reliable, outage-free electricity for all and is committed to transitioning the distribution grids to being smart, predictive, efficient, and resilient.
What TekUncorked Works On
TekUncorked works towards managing outages, network imbalances, inefficiencies, leakages and theft of energy distribution gifts. Meenakshi said, “Our AI-led platform provides predictions and actionable insights about faults, leakages, imbalances and inefficiencies, recommends fixes, generates work orders and wherever possible auto-heals the grid, leading to reduced grid losses.”
The technology also contributes to India’s vision of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2070. “Automotives and electricity are two of the largest contributors to GHG Emissions globally. TekUncorked, by improving grid reliability, efficiency, energy mix and resource adequacy can reduce carbon emissions by about 60% in the grids,” explained Meenakshi.
Since its inception, TekUncorked has deployed LVIoT – its AI and IoT-led Distribution Grid Management Platform over 300+ locations while benefitting nearly 3.5 lakh consumers by reducing outages and minimising the downtime for breakdown recovery.
It has developed Smart Edge IoT Devices for the Distribution Grid which have a market potential of >5000 crores and has done early pilots with over six Private/Government Utilities in India
The company has also been recognised and awarded for the work being done in the grids by organisations like UN-Habitat, FedEx Cares, Third Derivative, New Energy Nexus, Microsoft for Start-Ups, Google for Start-Ups, Qualcomm Ventures, NASSCOM, and Start-Up Haryana.
Being a Woman in Male-Dominated Fields
Meenakshi admits that the field she works in, at the intersection of energy and technology, is vastly male-dominated.
“Engineering generally witnesses a lesser footfall of women. Energy is a very tough sector, where one needs to work in harsh conditions to solve tough problems. Together, unfortunately, they create a formidable barrier to entry of women,” she elaborated.
Her gender thus, like a consideration, when she was deciding to enter the field. However, she insists on the need for more women in all fields and positions.
“Women tend to be often right-brained and take decisions motivated by the positive impact it would have on the teams, customers, end consumers and humanity. They would often not compromise on quality, customer service levels and excellence in delivery. She said that they are often more flexible, tend to avoid micromanagement and drive transparency and fairness across all their interactions and transactions,” she said.
Article Credit: herzindagi