Forget blackboards and textbooks. In many of today's classrooms, conventional learning is a thing of the past and digital learning is all the rage. This is thanks to various advanced technological devices, such as “smart” interactive projectors, IoT-enabled tools, virtual reality and others. As schools become more digitally efficient, would one assume that the same technology would be used in laboratories and research centers at universities and educational institutes?
Four engineers from the National Institutes of Technology (NIT) in Rourkela, Durgapur and Jamshedpur noticed this gap in higher education facilities and organizations and decided to do something about it. The team developed a business model to address the lack of decent laboratory infrastructure in India.
One of those engineers, Aniket Thakur, encountered this lack of technology in one of his first jobs in the industry. He worked in quality management at a steel plant in Jajpur, Odisha, and was constantly traveling between Bhubaneswar and Ahmedabad – while transporting extremely important samples. He noted the poor state of laboratory infrastructure and control measures in the country.
“While operating in the quality laboratory, we also faced problems in obtaining specific and accurate laboratory equipment for testing,” explained Thakur. This ended up inspiring Thakur and the team of engineers – including fellow collaborators and NIT alumni Hitesh Kumar, Sunil Panda and Amrit Raj – to launch a startup company, Labkafe . Its focus is on meeting the diverse needs of laboratories for advanced research equipment and methods.
“This inspired us to build a portal to solve the bottlenecks in procuring laboratory products,” says Thakur. He left his job in 2015 to found Labkafe in May of that year and is now the CEO. “We focus on resolving the bottlenecks faced in procuring laboratory supplies (equipment and accessories) in schools, colleges, healthcare and research institutes through our platform,” he said. “We provide complete solutions for laboratories.”
Labkafe is headquartered in Kolkata, with additional branches opened in Ambala and Ranchi.
“We chose Kolkata mainly because we were operating from a steel plant in Odisha and it was the nearest metropolitan capital,” he said. “Secondly, as an early startup, we required every penny to count, and Kolkata delivered fixed costs, low rents and low expenses with a high employee recognition rate.
Today, Labkafe is a profitable business, stocking over 12,000 items of laboratory equipment and 200 laboratory furniture ideas. However, it was not always like this. It took a few hiccups before Labkafe found his flow and success.
“We started offering industrial laboratory products to companies only to realize high competition, low margins and complicated procurement routes,” Thakur said. Eight months into the company, the founding team said it has accepted orders worth around Rs 10 lakh for industrial laboratory equipment and safety devices. But the margin on this equipment was small and it became extremely difficult to enter the market.
Engineers quickly realized that acquisition and decision-making methods were much simpler for academic and research schools – the margins were also much better. This understanding, combined with the fact that they were a startup with limited resources, led them to pivot and start targeting institutions, colleges and universities. For information and research institutes, the average order was between Rs 1-1.5 lakh, Thakur said. The startup is now officially profitable, closing at around Rs 8 million in FY19. They are also considering more important goals.
While Labkafe primarily generates revenue by selling products to institutes, over time, it has also produced specific lab combinations for classes 10 and 12 as per the CBSE/ICSE/State Board syllabi. This combination is quite popular among schools.
Additionally, the team contributes technical knowledge to meet customer needs.
“This helps us minimize competition, leverage high perimeters, maintain a high barrier to entry, achieve high net order value and improve brand value,” explained Thakur.
So far, Labkafe has helped more than 500 institutes including DRDO, Air Force Gwalior, State Forensic Science Laboratories, Indian Army, Baidyanath Pharma, NITs, St Xavier's Group, IBSD, South Point High School, GD Goenka Group, Techno India, Group DPS and KVs. The goals are getting bigger and bigger.
“We are gearing up to develop a global chain of Labkafe Innovation Centers, which will present a unified platform for efficient, activity-based learning for students, classes and institutes,” Thakur said. “This will help millions of people improve necessary skills, scientific acumen and cognitive knowledge.”
