We all have heard about the driverless cars but do weknow about one such start-up in Jalandhar? Minus-Zero is an initiative of twofriends from different backgrounds. Gagandeep Reehal, a B.tech student ofThapar University came along with his long time friend Gursimran Kalra, who wasthe CBSE district topper of commerce in 2018 and a graduate from Shree RamCollege of Commerce, Delhi University, one of the top most colleges of commercein India. They studied together in thesame school for almost 10 years and after changing streams they finallycoordinated in September last year to build this project.
At Minus-Zero, they are working on driverlessvehicles. In conversation with Truescoop, Gursimran said " We have testedour first prototype, we converted an e-rickshaw and drove it without a driveron a stretch of 2.2 km in Jalandhar. Weare the first company in India to operate Driverless vehicles on public roads. Right now we don't have legalregulations laid down in India for the autonomous vehicle who can certify ourproduct but we got permit from local RTO to run this test on public road."
Vehicles are to be always handled with care to avoidaccidents, keeping in mind the safety concerns the team is always monitoringthe vehicle when it's on road. Since this technology is in its initial stagethroughout the globe, they are planning to launch the vehicle in the form of asubscription based service instead of selling the product directly to theconsumer. They are targeting in-campus mobility, industrial parks, theme parks,airports and such kind of private places where there is huge area to be coveredon a daily basis but there are not good alternatives available.
During their beginning phase, the project was at theirown expense but after their prototype, they attracted a lot of attention in themarket, people really appreciated their work and they were covered by variousmedia houses, not only in India but also around the world.
Gursimran was looking for a corporate job when he wasat SRCC and he even got one in a multinational company. But for a long time, hehad interest in building something of his own, he saw huge potential in thisproject and left his job to pursue building this project. People even calledhim out for leaving a paid and secured job and taking this risk but now it payswell and he is doing something that he always wanted to do. Gagandeep handlesall the technical work at Minus-Zero and Gursimran handles all thenon-technical work.
They have received a government grant from theMinistry of Electronics & Technology to pursue this further. These vehiclesare five times cheaper than the other overseas companies because they are notusing any expensive stack on their vehicle. They take already built vehiclesand remove the steering, breaking columns, acceleration and other parts andretrofit it with their modular stack. Then they install their software which is on a predefined server to operate thevehicle and have complete supervision on all the activities.
Just like the other entrepreneurs, they workfull-time, hustling and investing atleast 12-14 hours a day and sometimes eventhis duration exceeds. In their process of building Driverless Vehicles, theyrealized how much our country lags in autonomous vehicle front as compared tothe global counterparts and their start-up is an initiative towards coveringthat gap.