Sogle Borem (All is Well in Konkani)

In today's day and age, when products are services properly packaged, then the main challenge at every point, is to make sure that the consumer receives the product they are looking for, and inversely, the product gets the consumer they are meant for.

What we see, is that the local economy depends on other economies for their consumption, and inversely, depend too strongly on other economies for their revenue as well.

If the local economy was trained to look and create opportunities for themselves within the same economy they work in, then huge growth and happiness will be bestowed upon it, for it's inhabitants will be able to prosper and thrive, without leaving their local economy.

We are talking about the complete circular economy right from sourcing, manufacturing, selling, consumption and recycling. The entire world would change, if people were happy with living and earning in their hometown.

The problem is huge, currently in Goa, we are having huge issues with unmanageable garbage heaps in the South and conflicts over who is allowed to dump the garbage for recycling where, in the North.

It has affected the whole state of 14,00,000 people.

Goa has been considered a global tourism spot for generations and now it has received a bad name, and loss of tourism revenue; due to garbage.

The contributing factor is growing apathy, where locals have no qualms in taking their garbage and dumping it in someone else's property.

We are serving the local population of Goa.

We have worked with people who run supermarkets, to the people who make cooking pastes for cooking local dishes, to the people who provide local services such as taxi services and local spas.

Distributors in the supply chain, have also been engaged, towards understanding how the process of distribution can be simplified and standardised.

We have even built a solution for a maternity clinic, here in Goa.

Even laundry services, where we have been working towards creating solutions, around understanding the life of the laundry and creating processes for ensuring that when the linen gets old, it gets pulled out of the laundry.

Our solutions are all focussed on the supply chain and removing the virtual middlemen such as Amazon, Flipkart, Redbus, Cleartrip, Uber and Ola, who have sacrificed their vendors to the altar of customer satisfaction.

The solution is to create direct interfaces between the vendor and his client and vice versa.

We started with cashless Point of Sale mobile applications, app based taxi service solutions, restaurant Point of Sale solutions, hospital operational solutions, doctor appointment solutions, among others.

Most solutions, in an attempt to go global, try very hard to create systems which work globally and lose focus on the local economy.

These systems focus on the customer/user and forget about the vendor supporting their system.

We are bringing the customers back to the vendor, whether it is a hospital, spa, taxi service, distributor or local retailer.

Once the vendor is back in touch with the customer, the loop with the customer is closed. Which means that now the vendor realizes that the more environment friendly the product is , the more margin the business is able to earn.

Cashless is important, as long as the payment gateway is the customer’s bank, rather than an aggregator who just adds his commission and collects the money first, then transfer the money to the vendor in a T+2 or T+3 days delay.

Google Pay seemed to be a savior, but through integration with the Play Store, there is a direct deduction of application charges, without even issuing the user a notification.

  By creating transparency around the vendor for the customer, especially around compliances, we are able to ensure that vendors are socially and environmentally responsible, if they want to survive in the local market. So if a vendor is selling food pastes, the more healthy the pastes are, the more likely his product is able to command a higher margin, at the same time, ensure higher volumes.

The core technology here, is block chain.

It is the ability to see the demand of the consumer, versus the supply capability of the retailer, and ability to route demand up the supply chain to the distributor and finally to the manufacturer.

Having worked in a supermarket, the founders are very well aware of the losses which typically occur due to the dead stock.

The other point is the opportunity to stock exactly what the customer requires.

E-Commerce, has augmented the customer’s ability to get what they want.

Now our system is focused on bringing that knowledge to the local vendor and give them the capability to make their inventory discoverable to the consumer.

The more data we collect, the more we are able to ensure that the retailer only keeps the products, which the consumers want.

And by understanding the repeat buying patterns, the retailer, distributor and manufacturer, are able to actually work towards Just what you want inventory, rather than the current model of just making the products and expecting the customer to buy.

Since today’s customer is more want based, rather than buying what is visible, it is very important to quantify the customer’s need, rather than just assume it.

Today’s sales agent, should be in a position to correctly understand the demand, rather than just push supply.

Once we change the mindset of the business to be more more user focused, towards meeting user wants rather than just pushing inventory, we will see a massive change.

Our solution is based on a study of how the traditional manufacturer-distributor-retailer model exists.

After that, we looked at the typical consumer in a rural area, who having not found what they were looking for in the rural market, would actually travel to metros such as Mumbai and Bangalore, to buy what they were looking for.

Then we looked at how the e-commerce system and saw how these systems were able to provide the products to the customers, at a very high cost of delivery, which the customer did not see, but the investor would have to bear.

Therefore the thought was on how we can make the existing manufacturer-distributor-retailer model more effective in meeting consumer demand, by using the blockchain, to record customer need and make this demand travel up the supply chain to the distributor and then the manufacturer.

Currently retailers are using messaging clients like Whatsapp, to take orders, without realizing that the true effectiveness in an ordering system, is the ability to receive payments.

So our system is built on the concept of flow of inventory from demand to supply. And flow of money from customer to manufacturer.

This would reduce wastage, improve transportation efficiency and ensure that rather than focus on dead stock, businesses would focus more on delivering the right SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit) to the right customer.

Through technology, we ensure that the dealers, distributors, manufacturers and customers focus on the relationship, rather than on inventory and payment collections.

Currently we serve around five clients.

We would like to serve around 500 clients in one year, and around around 5000 clients in five years.

Goa being a state which is influential within India, we see other states looking to replicate the same model in five years.

Our goal is to cover local media in the Konkani language and make it available to the global expatriate community.

We see that if we can use technology to promote local products globally, we will create a healthy global economy where consumers will get what they actually want, rather than what they are made to want.

We struggled with demonetisation and GST.

This has made us put the business on the hold, while we worked on more technology around material movement, IoT and Building Management Systems.

The main issue, has been the lack of good internet bandwidth, where we saw customers struggling with installing good internet infrastructure, before they start using our systems.

We plan to overcome these barriers by setting up our own broadband service provider and ensuring that all our customers first get hasslefree broadband, before we provide them with our software platform.

We have not selected Other.

Right now, it is just two of us, where we had a staff of 4 people full time.

My partner, Ashish Kamat, has been in the field of ERP and financial process automation since 2000, while I, Werner Egipsy Souza, have been in mobile software since 2003, digital advertising since 2007, digital mapping since 2009, home automation since 2010 and worked for nearly 4 years for a local interstate bus operator towards scaling his systems since 2015.

Sogle Borem LLP has partnered with Yes Bank for the UPI payments infrastructure and with CCavenue as a payment aggregator in case customers want Sogle Borem LLP to do the payment collection on their behalf.

We charge customers between USD 300-400, which is their typical budgets. After they cross the first year, we charge them USD 1 per transaction.

The more varied product streams we are able to support, the better we will be, to manage variable margins and thereby attain a sustainable margin.

This is similar to how typical e-commerce or retail supermarkets work.

The reason for applying to MIT Solv, is the need to complete the circular economy with inputs right from improving employment, to improving sustainability.

We find that the main issue is the understanding on how the circular economy improves the environment and the overall business climate.

The economic barriers when we started the company, were demonetization and GST. We realise that we overestimated our ability to deliver the correct solution, so while we were able to reach out to the right customers, we were not able to provide the right solution.

The solutions range from IoT, to ERP to block chain, to cashless payments. This is where we see that we require a lot of technology to ensure that our system works seamlessly locally and in other geographies as well, since our main focus is to make local products, globally available.

We have not selected Other.

We would like to partner with organisations such as General Motors, towards using our solutions for completing the supply chain for suppliers and connecting with the consumer on what they would like to see new in their vehicles, electric as the case may be.

Walmart and Tesco, are other companies which come to mind, where we can use our acumen, to tailor their supermarkets to local economies, where most products are locally sourced.

Sogle Borem LLP will use the prize, to develop better algorithms for training the AI engine, towards ensuring that customers get the right product, at the right time.

We are looking at using AI, to ensure that customers get the products they want, through analysis of their existing requirements and making suggestions to make their consumption more healthy and environment friendly.

We are looking at using the prize towards educating manufacturers towards maximising usage of environmentally friendly materials and reducing usage of plastic, especially in water bottles. Despite expectations, very little recycling of water bottles is carried out in India, compared to recycling of aluminium.

We have seen that the main consumer especially for our shopping cart application, is the woman, who would like to be in the house, while the husband does the shopping.

Women prefer the convenience of groceries to be delivered at home.

It gives them more time to focus on what is more important, where their time can be better utilised. Especially considering that in rural economies, the main difficulty is transport, hence if the supply chain can be better managed, the vagaries of transport, can be contained.

In today's day and age, the main user of online commerce, is the woman.

Sogle Borem LLP will use the Innospark Ventures Prize, to ensure that data on inventory is accurate and up to date.

Data on consumer consumption, will be used within the engine, to ensure that the user gets the right inventory at the right time.

This means that the production cycle of the manufacturer will be tuned to consumption patterns.

All data will be stored within high security RADIUS and DIAMETER servers, ensuring AAA security.