Co-founder of Tohands Praveen Mishra believed that creating a “smart” calculator would be a foolish idea and that no one would desire a year ago. But Mishra realised the value of a “smart” calculator that also stores the data when he observed a woman managing a tiny store in Sarjapura, Bengaluru, straining to keep track of all the transactions.
In a video interview with media, Mishra said, “When I met the lady, I noticed that she used to calculate the final number on the calculator and write it on the paper, and then at the end of the day she will again calculate the final amount using a calculator.”
The rationale behind making a simple calculator into a “connected” one was explained by Mishra. “Calculators have a basic use case, but we can do a lot of stuff on top of the calculating component, which is where we think the smart calculator will be a really fantastic tool for the shops,” he stated.
Tohands was founded in 2017 by Mishra, a native of Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh, along with Satyam Sahu and Shanmuga Vadival. The three co-founders each oversee a separate area of the company; Mishra focuses on the product side of things, Sahu handles the software and apps, and Vadival is in charge of the hardware.
Small company owners, according to Mishra, neither have the resources nor the comfort level to use the mobile apps for the digital khata cash book. They would much rather use a basic calculator to carry out the routine calculations needed in daily life. Whether you walk from a jewellery store to a Kirana store, a calculator is still the foundation of small enterprises in India, he claimed.
In order to improve the calculator, Mishra, then 21 years old, decided to redesign it. After all, calculators have already demonstrated that they are useful tools that allow users to quickly and conveniently perform calculations with only a few button presses.
The initial prototype of Mishra’s “smart” calculator was a Raspberry Pi-powered gadget with a keyboard and two buttons—one for credit and one for debit. Mishra next visited a few business owners to measure their interest in the prototype smart calculator. The calculator initially received seven pre-orders, but Mishra and his team quickly got to work on version two.
Although the screen was modest and the device had a membrane keyboard, the second iteration was a lot more refined product that had the computation functionality as well as the credit and debit feature. Mishra and his team were inspired to try again with hardware and improve the design to make a smart calculator a reality after their firm was chosen at T-hub, a centre for IT startups in Raidurgam, Hyderabad. The company’s third iteration of the smart calculator, which is now up for pre-order on the website, is far more user-friendly and functional than the first and second iterations combined.
For Rs 3,000, Mishra is asking for the calculator.
