ah! Ventures bring together investment guru Mark Mobius, AdvantEdge to fund engineering tech start-up Entropy Innovations

Entropy Innovations, a Mumbai based engineering technology start-up, has raised an undisclosed sum as angel capital through ah! Ventures, a start-up focused growth catalyst bridging ideas and money. The Angels from ah! Ventures, together with Dr Mark Mobius, Executive Chairman of Templeton Emerging Markets and AdvantEdge Incubator partnered to fund the startup. The deal was solely advised and syndicated by ah! Ventures and led to closure on its private equity investment platform, CLUBah.com.

Founded in early 2013, Entropy Innovations Pvt. Ltd. is an engineering innovations company that has disrupted the two wheeler service industry. The team, alumni of IIT & IIM, has designed and manufactured automatic motorcycle wash machine - 'Express Bike Wash' that addresses multitude of problems faced by an individual owner as well as a service station. The machine is capable of washing even the dirtiest of motorcycle within 2-5 minutes. Starting with a few retail touch-points in Mumbai under the name - 'The EBW Store' and a few installations at service centres, the brand has catered to roughly 100,000 motorcycles over the last eighteen months.

"Washing a motorcycle is an integral part of its ownership. A whooping 15 million new ones were added nationally to the existing lot last year. Our streets are flooded with them. A host of players offer wash related products. However, there are barely any organized players for wash and related value added services. Through 'The EBW Store', we wish to bridge this gap at an affordable price, faster service rate & with an ease of accessibility to the retail customers. Additionally, we remain environment friendly owing to some of the unique machine features" says Niraj Taksande, co-founder of Entropy.

Going ahead, the team has identified this B2C segment lucrative enough for scaling exponentially via a franchise model. "Our future plan is to empower all manual washing centers with an automated washing machine. Petrol pumps, malls, corporate parks, societies are the potential B2C target areas. We see a huge potential at captive areas like petrol pumps. These markets have an analogy in foreign markets where pumps have an automated car washer" adds Jigar Vora, co-founder of Entropy.

On market potential from the Authorized service centre, Bhushan Karn, Co-founder of Entropy, explains, "Wash quality is the lone factor which makes or breaks the impression of a service centre. An average biker cares less about the mechanical tweaks and more about the appearance of the bike. With ever increasing and often unpredictable loads, service centres invariably struggle to deliver bikes on time as washing becomes a major bottleneck". With this round of funding, Entropy now looks forward to increase its team size in key areas for a nationwide presence in both these segments.

Abhijeet Kumar, Co-founder of ah! Ventures said, "Entropy is another engineering technology startup which got me excited from the very first day. Their technology innovation is superb and they have definitely delivered a world class product. I am very happy to say that we have another really good tech product startup from IIT. Also the IP behind auto bike washing product is very scalable and robust. Besides the product, they have a dedicated and sincere team working round-the-clock to make it a successful company."

Rajesh Sehgal, Sr. Executive Director, Templeton Emerging Markets, was the deal lead for CLUB ah! platform and besides getting his friends to invest in the deal, he also helped rope in the investment guru Dr Mark Mobius, as an investor. Subject to compliance clearances, Rajesh is most likely to join on the board of Entropy Innovations as the investor director.

Giving an investors' perspective, Harshad Lahoti, Founder & CEO of ah! Ventures, said, "In an era saturated with a deluge of IT, mobile and cloud-app ventures, Entropy's conventional brick & mortar and yet super scalable offering was an instant hit amongst CLUB ah! investors. This, backed with a large readily available addressable target market for its services and a highly competent IIT-IIM team with a clear vision to disrupt the current two-wheeler service industry dynamics, made Entropy an extremely favourable investment opportunity. These were the most impressive qualities which our investors have loved. We at ah! Ventures are glad to have partnered with Entropy in their next growth phase."

ah! Ventures is in the process of closing 3 more investments in the coming weeks.