Inspirational business leaders are driven by positive attitude and the focus to bring change through their dedicated endeavors. They believe in working together with the team and achieving not only the organizational goals, but also each employee’s objectives. These leaders never give up in the face of adversity; rather they face each situation with confidence. They are ethical, fearless, and constantly motivate everyone to achieve their best.
One such dedicated change leader in the business arena is Chetan Patil, the Co-Founder and CEO of Aiddition Technologies. Hailing from Vijaypura situated at 600 kms from Bangalore, he was passionate about electronics since his childhood. This passion made him pursue the BE course from his home town. His desire to learn concepts of embedded systems brought him to Bangalore, where he pursued post graduation in embedded systems and VLSI design. He is a maker, who believes in transforming fantasy into reality, through dedication and a never give up attitude.
The Beginning
Chetan’s childhood dream was to make products, and coincidentally, Bangalore had started nurturing startups during that time. Initially, he joined a start-up to gain necessary exposure and learned the nitty-gritty of rapid prototyping for nearly 2 years. Then, he joined hands with his professor in PG studies, Mr. Kumaraswamy K and his friend and mentor, Mr. T R Vishwanath. After quitting his job, he established Aiddition Technologies in 2016.
Facing Challenges and Achieving Goals
Under Chetan’s leadership, the first product of Aiddition was a digital signage software that was deployed on 3rd party display players. “Since we were from electronics background the limitations of supplying Signage software didn’t satisfy our inner desire to make something big. By understanding the limitations of deploying mere software we started developing our own Interactive display with built-in processor,” he said. Like any other start-up, they also faced monetary problems at the beginning.
The company had to hire interns and freelancers from industries on per-task basis. This helped them in making their own interactive displays. Chetan said, “Believe me it took nearly one year to find suitable manufacturing partners for getting spare components as the Industry was relative new for many players. In fact we had to train many partners to get our design done”. His team worked 24/7 to ensure that the product was ready in time. These efforts resulted in the launch of Aidio All-In-One- Interactive Displays bundled with Interactive software package. This opened the doors to catering services to hospitality, retails, restaurants, educational sectors, and so on. Chetan is constantly working hard to highlight the products in the global market.
A Dedicated Front Runner
Chetan states that he is a maker, who believes in disrupting the retail shopping experience technologies by adopting innovations. He focuses on providing customers and the brands same kind of experience they derive from online shopping environs. Under his ardent leadership, the company launched India’s first home grown Hardware-As-a-Service (HAAS) model on professional grade public interactive displays and its software for retailers and brands.
Opinions about the Industry
Chetan believes that the digital era leads to lots of transformations in our daily life. Technology is enabling us to feel anything is possible these days. In his opinion, the lifestyle of the people is changing & everyone is looking for something new in whatever they do. Be it shopping or doing anything, everyone just wants to explore the innovation everywhere. “Even in the retail industry, it hasn’t been a different story. Retailers are behind modern solutions to give a better in-store customer experience at the stores,” he adds.
Chetan believes that, even in the E-com boom, India has the highest number of outlets per person. With CAGR 20-25%, organized retail has an enormous opportunity to make the shopping more convenient than ever before and be neck to neck with E-com. Retailers don’t approach this opportunity with ‘one size fits all’, rather they find solutions to make it more ‘personalized and interactive’.
About Aiddition Technologies
Situated at Bangalore, Aiddition has developed an interactive software stack with the brand name Aidio, which is an integrated all-in-one interactive display having smart sensor interfacing, designed for interactive applications. Aidio displays are packed with in-store customer experience software suite. This enables retailers/brands to give a better customer experience at offline setup by capturing unprecedented in-store customer activity data. This product brings online/ e-commerce environment in offline store helping customers to check digital catalog/ self order, which helps in increased order rate for the store.
Approaching towards a Bright Future
Chetan states that he wants Aiddition to be recognized as a pioneer/ leader in interactive display and in-store experience technology market. He aims to assist brands/ retailers to create virtual shopping store to reach every corner of the country and in creating leading in-store customer experience solutions.
Words for the Future Generation
Chetan advises budding entrepreneurs not to be afraid of failure. He asks them to work with their full potential and to give the best of their efforts in achieving their goals. He concludes by advising them to chase their dreams and transform them into realities.
