A master in the new revolutionary world of IoT technology called the ‘Internet of Sound’, a set-up of Boston and Bengaluru, Trillbit is rapidly growing as one of the unique and innovative startups in this field of IoT technology. As of now, it is finding its relevance in areas like proximity intelligence, retail, smart venues, and TV/Radio broadcasting.
HOW DID IT ALL START
In the year 2017, Trillbit, a deep-tech startup was founded by IIT Kharagpur and ISB alums- Bhaskar Deo, Shashikant Burnwal, and Mrigesh Parashar, that aims at disrupting the authentication space by designing the ‘Internet of Sound’. Trillbit’s proximity intelligence technology platform allows standard audio speakers, smart gadgets that communicate and authenticate without the need for the internet and any additional tools or hardware. COO of Trillbit, Shashikant Burnwal share their personal experience of listening to a talk show on a car radio which led them to establish the startup. “There are many shows that mention visiting their URL at xyz dot com, but since you are driving, you don’t have the time to go to the URL and later when you want to check it you might have forgotten the link by that time. It was then that we thought of how can we transfer this into a smartphone as everyone carries it today which can then reveal these links anytime later,” he shared.
The group of three started researching alternative options and realized that there is only one solution that would not require any additional tools or hardware. Burnwal said that they began researching for sound as an alternative option to send data and started exploring more use cases with time in this area. It took them eight months to design the whole technology platform and solution after which they started to connect with clients. With time they had the opportunity to use it in industries such as retail, where retailers even needed to communicate to their customers in real-time to expand their customer reach, marketing, and many more. The startup, Trillbit states that the fact that differentiates them from others is, they are researching larger avenues of using this technology and is able to help transfer the data in the larger market. “When we started we did not know if anyone is working on that on not and thought it was a novel idea. But later we found out that there are companies across the globe working on similar ideas. In India also there are companies that use sound technologies for payments which allows payment transfer between two mobile devices using sound technology,” Burnwal said.
TRILLBIT AND THEIR IoT GAME
The startup serves its customers with a unique and innovative technology called data over the sound, where they take the help of sound waves in order to transfer or exchange data. Burnwal says that this technology is somewhat similar to a communication protocol, where its users compare it with other technologies such as Wifi, internet, or data communications that are also used to transfer data.“We have chosen sound as a medium because there are more speakers than the people on earth. There are audio speakers everywhere such as the shopping mall, retail stores, and more. Audio speakers have become data transmitter for us and at the same time, everybody has a smartphone which can act as a data receiver and there is a hyper-local data communication between these two devices,” Burnwal adds.
TRILLBIT’S GROWTH AND FUNDING
Recently, Trillbit has created its place in the Top3 among Lockdrop(Canada) and Shaxware (Japan) at the well-known and prestigious global FIDO alliance developer challenge for its deep technology. The startup is also awarded by the Nasscom, TiE, IoT India Congress, Economic Times Power of Idea.“Trillbit’s aim is to lead the IoT authentication space with the most secure and seamless solution, and the funds will be used for business development activities in the USA and other geographies. Not only will we be catering to existing use cases of device setup and authentication but we see a bigger opportunity here. Voice commerce is expected to explode and so are deep fakes which is a big problem for voice commerce. We are the only protocol that is PSD2 compliant and truly brings authentication to voice commerce and circumvents deep fakes, ” Bhaskar Deo, Co-founder and CEO said in a statement.
This Boston-based startup with its office set-up in Bengaluru has raised $1.5 million in funding from an early-stage venture, Refex Capital and from early-stage venture capital, Good Growth Capital. This funding will be used for business development activities.
By Gitika Mandhana