An International brand in the making – Nexta Group, One of the fastest growing start-ups

The entrepreneurial dream of two students of Sambalpur University, Manas Ranjan Panigrahi and Prabhat kumar Sahu is well on its way to become India’s next million-dollar start-up.

Two years ago, who could have thought of buying the most advanced tech products in most affordable price would become a custom when NEXTA changed the demographics by entering the market in 2017.

At the time of initial launch, Nexta Group had tied up with some local SMEs for addressing its customer requirements. It evolved as a technology based company in 2017 after being registered. It has now expanded it network with nearly 31 branches PAN India.

The company offers tech products like Inverter LED bulb, Speakers, Robotics equipment, Educational products and blind stick and has its own supply hubs in 30 cities.

Changing the way India shops for electronics products was not an easy task, but NEXTA took up the challenge and came on the top. Cashing in the strategy to ‘Let’s turn the middle class into a class’, Nexta has been positive in the last two quarters (Q1 and Q3) of 2018 and has plans to grow 100 per cent revenue in FY19.

The Bengaluru-based startup, Nexta Group, aims to redefine the technology with an operational LED bulb that provides 5hou rs battery backup, which comes as bio-degradable in nature and without any harm for human eyes.

Z LED, is a revolutionary product that focuses on improving the customer experience of a LED bulb by putting the advanced technology and affordable price range.

In 2018, Nexta came into the spotlight when it announced the world’s first open source android application platform called Nexta app store, where people can develop the projects by using Nexta’s development tools. Not only that, as per reports, the founder of Nexta group Mr.Panigrahi is known as one of the youngest entrepreneur of India.

Nexta has accessed the fields of Robotics, Artificial intelligence, Advance Electronics, Space Technology through its innovative products. The CEO of Nexta, Mr.Panigrahi, is also referred as the youngest ever Chief Guest and Speaker to the IEEE conference held in NMIMS University, Mumbai in 2019 at the age of 20.

But even amidst of all the successes Nexta has achieved, the founder duos have developed familiarity with uncertainty.

Quoting Sun Tzu, from the Art of War: “When your army has crossed the border, you should burn your boats and bridges, in order to make it clear to everybody that you have no hankering after home”, Prabhat says, “Uncertainty doesn’t scare him anymore.”

Ever since Prabhat started writing code at the age of 12, he has been completely immersed in the high-tech, build-or-die digital world that has now started becoming everybody’s reality. “In fact, I’d say that certainty scares me.

When I walk into a situation that’s too perfect or too quiet, my spidey sense tingles. I don’t take the ups too seriously, but neither do I take the downs. But I try to always be prepared,” he says.

How he keeps himself motivated has got a lot to do with what he’s doing. “I’m very motivated about the things I like doing, but won’t move a muscle if I’m not interested in something.

All the things NEXTA does and is involved in are an extension of its co-founders’ interests,” he adds. And like every other entrepreneur, he has had his fair share of doubters in the last 2 years.
According to him, people love making predictions on what will or won’t happen, and what others think of his ideas mattered a lot to him.

Now that he looks back, he realises most of them as wrong. “When you see your heroes and the people you look up to be wrong, that actually builds your confidence because you understand that at their core, everyone is just human, and humans are wrong, often. In fact, even when I was “very sure” about my assumptions, I had my backside handed to me by the market.

This has happened so many times to me that at this point, I believe the only way to tell whether an idea will work is to take it to the market. The market decides,” says Prabhat.

The company further revealed that in the past two years, it has witnessed more than 3x increase in product sales and valuations. This is driven by its “deeper tech presence and affordable price” which continues to attract users repeatedly.

Besides offering LED bulbs, Nexta is now putting its steps into fields like home automation, Educational services, and the Internet of Things (IoT).