CHENNAI: What do former software professionals and cow milking contraptions have to do with each other? If you were thinking ‘not much’, you are wrong. Apparently, putting the two together results in award -winning business ventures.
The Takeda Foundation of Japan has awarded Venkatesh Seshasayee of Stellapps Technologies, a product of IIT-Madras’ Rural Technology Business Incubator, the ‘Takeda Young Entrepreneurship Award’ for his work in the company co-founded by him and his four partners, Ravishankar Sharoor, Ranjitha Mukundan, Praveen Nala and Ramakrishna Adukuri — all erstwhile employees of software giant Wipro.
So what does Stellapps do? “We are a dairy farm automation company,” pointed out Seshasayee. “We have come out with what is probably India’s first semi-automated milking parlour,” he added.
For a company founded by five software engineers with no previous experience in dairy, the firm has done quite well. “We have managed to install semi automated milking parlours in about 20 farms until now. And we are set to increase that,” said Seshasayee.
The semi-automated parlour that the company sells is a thing that manages to milk cow and remotely monitor its yield.
“We’ve made certain that it is affordable. A parlour that can deal with five cows at once only costs around Rs 1.5- Rs 2 lakh,” he pointed out.
His work in the product design, manufacture and component manufacture has landed him a diploma and a monetary prize of 200,000 yen, roughly Rs 1 lakh.