• Source:JND
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“During one of my treks in Chamoli district, I came up close to the struggles of people at the grassroot level. This proved a trigger and helped me make up my mind to step off the corporate ladder and start on an entrepreneurial journey.”

Before stepping off the corporate path to start a life as a first time entrepreneur, Meenakshi Vashisht spent nearly 23 years being part of tech journeys - PSLV at ISRO, the Indian telecom dream at C-DoT, handphones and intelligent automotives at Motorola and NXP.

While on a trek to Chamoli district in Uttarakhand, Meenakshi came across the hardships faced by people in remote areas, cut away from much of the modern world. This sparked a desire in her to find a solution to an endemic issue, in the country using technology.

“Having spent long years either contributing to or driving disruptive innovations at global scale, I had an inherent dream of building a deep-tech, high impact company which built products for India and the world,” Meenakshi explains, in an interview with Jagran English.

Travelled 20,000 KM Across India To Understand Ground Realities

After taking a year off from her corporate job in 2010, Meenakshi travelled nearly 20,000 km through rural, suburban and urban India and met people from various walks of life, including change-makers, academics, grassroot entrepreneurs, students, small industries and impact organisations.

She was a part of ‘Jagriti Yatra’ which takes a train full of youth – about 1,200 of them across India over 13 days to help them get close and understand the grassroot challenges in India.

“As a first-time entrepreneur, I seeded TU Technology – an edutech experiment, which was primarily aimed at evolving the approach for product (specifically hardware) incubation and commercialization within start-up framework. As part of the project, my team and I through Innovation Bootcamps with nearly 20,000 engineering, B-school and vocational training students developed over 40 innovative products using self-sustainable business models and collaborative innovation – ranging from rural solar battery chargers, rural light as a service – wallet linked pay as you use emergency lights, smart solar street lights, crazy robotics, solar diya and many more,” she explains.

In collaboration with MDI, TU Technology was registered as a case study in Ivey Business School vaults. The project was integral in shaping Meenakshi’s approach to product incubation and commercialisation within start-up framework— with an eye on strategic and disruptive innovation to drive high impact transformations on a global scale.



Breaking The Glass Ceiling With The Go-Getter Attitude

Evidently, when it comes to entrepreneur roles, the number of women leaders dwindles. Meenakshi too, did not start her entrepreneurial journey with a specific plan in mind but with the firm belief that her next decade of challenge would come from there.

“My colleagues, friends and extended family felt that I was taking a big risk. They felt it was not wise to step away from a global organization, the power play, huge pay cheques and the perks. As my age, experience and gender defied the typical startup founder stereotype, I was given a maximum couple of years, after which the start-up mania would subside and either I would retire or join back the corporate,” Meenakshi recalls what it takes to be a woman in the world of work.

“The naysayers just firmed up my resolve. Secondly, my immediate family was quite open to me pursuing my dream, so that helped too,” she added.

TekUncorked: Building Efficiencies In Electricity Distribution Grids

Meenakshi, along with Ram Sethi and Rohit Monga, co-founded TekUncorked in 2019. Fueled with a vision of facilitating reliable, outage-free electricity for all, TekUncorked is committed to transition the distribution grids to being smart, predictive, efficient and resilient. She currently works with customers to drive operational savings and customer engagement through TekUncorked IoT, AI & ML solutions.

Highlighting the efficiency of TekUncorked, she says, “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 per cent in the grids.”

Meenakshi’s unfettered passion and humble approach to being a change-maker has done wonders for TekUncorked.

“Deployed LVIoT – its AI and IoT led Distribution Grid Management Platform over 300+ locations – benefitting nearly 3,50,000 consumers by reducing outages and time to recovery from breakdowns, has developed Smart Edge IoT Devices for the Distribution Grid which have a market potential of >5,000 crores, has done early pilots with over six Private/Government Utilities in India and executed commercial orders in India,” she says, stating the milestones achieved by the company.

TekUncorked has been recognised and/or 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.

The 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 thereby leading to reduction in grid losses. The biggest challenge is managing outages, network imbalances, inefficiencies, leakages and theft.

To navigate and thrive in the future, innovation and change are inevitable. On similar lines, Meenakshi thinks of technology as a great problem solver.

“Organic farming, sustainable agriculture, water scarcity, city traffic, city infrastructure are some of the challenges which can be solved through technological intervention,” she says.