Early experience and the shift to entrepreneurship
Co-founders Bikash Mohanty and Barsa Rani Mohanty began their entrepreneurial journey because they wanted to solve practical, everyday problems. In 2010, Bikash worked on a virtual trial solution that let customers upload photos to try on clothes before buying. The idea was promising, but technical limits, funding constraints, and network issues made it hard to continue. Years later, during a festive-season shopping trip in India, he stood in a queue that stretched 30–45 minutes. Watching frustrated customers and stressed store staff highlighted the need for better operational tools in retail. For Barsa, seeing recurring inefficiencies across stores, slow checkouts, fragmented billing, and inventory mismatches made the opportunity clear. Their corporate technology experience gave us depth, but small retailers and distributors needed simple, reliable tools that didn’t require large IT budgets or complex integrations. That led us to create two focused ventures: Smaket for business operations and DeepTechGenie for retail automation.
Why two separate companies?
Smaket addresses the lack of affordable, integrated business management software for retailers and distributors. Many businesses were using separate systems for billing, accounting, inventory, and distribution, which caused inefficiencies and slowed growth. Smaket combines these functions into a single, easy-to-adopt platform designed for affordability and reliability.
DeepTechGenie focuses on in-store challenges such as long queues, inventory mismatches, theft, and limited real-time visibility. Solving these problems requires hardware, embedded systems, IoT, and AI. Running the two ventures separately allowed us to align R&D, investment, and go-to-market strategies with each domain’s specific needs.
Meaning behind the names
Smaket combines the ideas of smart, simple, and automated business management operational intelligence for retailers and distributors. DeepTechGenie pairs “DeepTech” (AI, IoT, embedded systems) with “Genie” to convey an intelligent assistant that makes advanced technology accessible to store operators.
Technical foundations
Our background with Android ecosystems, Qualcomm chipsets, WebRTC, BLE, embedded systems, and IoT informed both products. For Smaket, this experience shaped a resilient cloud-mobile architecture supporting billing, accounting, inventory, and distribution. For DeepTechGenie, it guided hardware-software integration efforts RFID, smart sensors, computer vision, and no-counter checkout systems engineered to work reliably in real retail environments.
Building customer trust
Gaining credibility required different approaches for each business. Smaket invested heavily in onboarding and customer support to ensure migrations didn’t disrupt daily operations. DeepTechGenie relied on demonstrations, pilot deployments, and real-world case studies to show measurable benefits such as shorter queues, improved inventory accuracy, and reduced losses.
Product development approaches
Smaket follows a customer-driven development model: features are implemented to address clear operational pain points, with fast iterations based on user feedback. DeepTechGenie follows an R&D-intensive path because hardware-software solutions need prototyping, field testing, AI training, and live validation to ensure reliability under real-world conditions.
Early investment focus
Smaket’s initial funding prioritized software development, customer onboarding, and market understanding to build a stable product and support structure. DeepTechGenie required more intensive R&D investment for embedded hardware, IoT infrastructure, sensors, and AI models. Early prototypes included smart carts, handheld asset trackers, and no-counter checkout technologies while we validated demand and unit economics.
Balancing innovation and business value
We prioritize innovation that delivers measurable business value. Smaket focuses on reducing manual work, cutting errors, and supporting sustainable growth. DeepTechGenie aims to lower operating costs, reduce shrinkage, and improve customer experience. New technology must translate into clear commercial benefits to be worthwhile.
Managing both ventures
Structured planning, clear product roadmaps, and separate focused teams enable effective management of both companies. We maintain shared playbooks for customer success and engineering where helpful, and regular knowledge transfers ensure synergies — for example, distribution insights from Smaket informing DeepTechGenie’s automation strategies. Together, Smaket handles end-to-end business operations and distribution automation while DeepTechGenie advances intelligent retail systems.
Outlook for the next five years
We expect AI-driven automation, cloud platforms, business intelligence, IoT, computer vision, and edge computing to reshape back-office operations and in-store experiences. Smaket aims to grow into an end-to-end business management and distribution automation platform for India and international markets. DeepTechGenie plans to scale AI-powered, hardware-software retail solutions from India to the world, with an emphasis on measurable impact and real-world constraints like intermittent connectivity and cost sensitivity.
Advice to founders and retailers
Begin with a real operational problem rather than a technology first. Validate solutions with pilots, measure outcomes, and design for the environment you serve. Solve practical constraints well, and adoption and impact will follow.
Interview By : Sejal Thakur
