Thinking of controlling your digital world the way you move? Ever wondered how easy it can be to control his or her presentation just by using hand gestures? Ever watched Iron Man and wished to have a gadget that makes you the Tony Stark of your story? Search no further as VICARA is taking giant strides to turn all your fantasies into reality.

Mr. Adarsh Warrier, the founder of ‘Vicara’, a startup from Vellore, briefed that the name ‘Vicara’ originates from Sanskrit meaning ‘an idea or a thought’. ‘Vicara’ is providing one such world-class product namely ‘KAI’. KAI aims to make user interaction with the digital world more natural and intuitive.

• KAI is a gesture control accessory which interacts with all kinds of devices.
• It uses your natural means of communication and communicates to machines through gestures and voice.
• KAI means ‘hand’ in all the South Indian languages and the device is of great use for all the people who believe that they can empower, augment and innovate using gesture definition.
• It can easily fit into your palms and thus, it can be used by students too. The device finds its main purpose not only in the field of research and development but also in CAD, Gaming, AR and VR technologies.

“An idea is the key to future development”

How did the idea originate?

The inspiration of creating KAI came to Adarsh by an idea he along with his team members, Sonak Sahu and Abhishek Satish. They thought of this during a hackathon in the 3rd year of their engineering. The idea was to create a device ‘UHID: Universal Human Interface Device’ to communicate with other devices through natural languages, inspired by superhero movies.

“And it’s never too late to start”

How an incident changed an Engineer into an Entrepreneur

A funny incident made Adarsh realize that he is destined to be an entrepreneur. Like any other engineering graduate, he also dreamed of getting placed in a good company with a handsome salary package. Whereas another co-founder of the company was very confident of not getting into any company. He wanted to lead a happy and independent life in contrary to the hectic corporate lifestyles. In one placement drive, there were three rounds. After sitting for all the three rounds, he went back to his room and slept as he was very tired. After he woke up, he saw around 30 missed calls from the placement cell. He reached the placement cell hurriedly and found out that a 4th round was being planned just for him.

The management got pretty angry because of his so-called ‘casual’ approach and told him that his future is in their hands and he better respect that. This incident didn’t go well for Adarsh. The first thought that came into his mind was that he was not going to give the power of his future to someone else. Although the incident left him demotivated and disillusioned, it taught him that his fortune was in his hands only. And only he can take advantage of that fact. That was his last placement drive ever. From here, the idea of ‘Vicara’ sunk in.

How did the Journey start?

Adarsh, along with his team members from the hackathon and the co-founder of the company, planned to start a hardware company. There were no renowned hardware companies in India at that time as there were in countries like China and Taiwan. They realized that the right time is now and thought of utilizing the ‘Make in India’campaign and thus, a new journey started.

The idea of the startup was communicated to college students through multiple clubs and chapters like entrepreneurship, leadership, electronics and so on. Word of mouth played a vital role as well. Today, the company has six members in the core team and it is a base for 10-15 interns. Their goal is to become a pioneer in the electronics industry in India and innovate for a better future of the nation.

The ‘Vicara’ team was also part of the ‘Indiegogo Campaign’ which was held the previous year. The campaign is a global workshop. The company succeeded in earning revenue of 70,000 dollars from the campaign as part of the crowdfunding from 30 countries. The company is currently working on ‘Vicara Motion Engine’which is based on the technology on which KAI works. It will be like a module which when inserted into any device can help in communicating with that device. The team is working on it and it will be completely ready in one to three months.

Getting through the struggles

When in crisis, Adarsh has his own way of dealing with it. He adds that the best way to deal with such situations in a startup is to make sure that your team consists of a complimentary kind of personalities. Citing his examples, he says that he happens to be an extrovert and an outgoing personality who loves making connections with people whereas the co-founder is an introvert. He is a research developer and an innovator who is completely engrossed in his own world of ideas. This difference is helpful as sometimes where one sees a problem in the situation, the other one will be considering it to be an opportunity.

“Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines”

Talking about challenges, Adarsh says that one thing that created hurdles was credibility. Starting a hardware company at such a young age, people don’t believe your potential due to the lack of experience. They take time to understand and trust your skills. But throughout the highs and lows, it’s the investors, mentors and the startup clubs whom Adarsh gives full credit for having his back. They all are responsible for his progress in the domain of entrepreneurship.

According to Adarsh, the success mantra is to love your work. He says:

“Try to do passionate work rather than just hard-work that you don’t enjoy and following this, you will never get tired of your work.”

He believes that anybody with the will power can do it all. All you need are efforts, ideas, and passion. And then the plethora of success is open for you.