This Startup Takes Entire Tech Projects Off Businesses Hands: SMOKETREES DIGITAL

• BySheetal Sidhu     |    September 5, 2021

“ Entrepreneurs should not necessarily shy away from being helpful, in the Startup world every help you extend comes back to you” Pranjal Srivastava, founding partner, Smoketrees Digital while in an interview with Startup Story.

About The Founding Partner

Pranjal, still a student in the last year of his graduation, started Smoketrees with three of his friends. They started in the third year of college. They would attend various events and hackathons that is where they met the rest of the team. After the team was ready they participated in various competitions and  won in a few of them. They undertake clients and projects solving technical problems, building products from scratch and further maintaining them.

Why the name Smoketrees?

This was the name that they entered with in various hackathons. They randomly came up with the name picking it up from a song lyric. After they sequentially followed the name in every competition they entered it was decided to stick with the name for the company as well. 

About the company

Pranjal and his friends who are also the co-founders of the company after winning a prestigious hackathon with prize money of Rs 1lakh from a company called Honeywell decided to establish a startup of their own. They had prepared a product for the company where they created a robust end to end product. Honeywell followed them about the product and wanted to put it to use. So after realizing that a company could approach them and put it to use they were quite confident about going out on their own.

Individually each one of them had actively been a part of the startup world. Pranjal himself was a part of four startups while in college. They had a rough idea about the working of startups and so to put their skills and experience into use they developed something that could be launched in the market with a proper working model. 

Team At Smoketrees

They are a team of 14 with four founding partners Abhijay Kishore, Anshuman Chhapolia, Pranjal Srivastava, Tanmay Thakur. They have been working remotely because of the pandemic. But have synchronized way of working making it easy for them to deliver products just as quickly and efficiently as they would have by working in an office. As a company they started working during the pandemic itself. Most of the team members were found while visiting hackathons  and meeting people who enjoyed working in Tech. 

Future Plans

Recently they have started forming partnerships, one of these significant ones is with an energy corporation, which is in itself a huge success. With whom and for whom they are currently making products.  Further they wish to form partnerships with other bigger companies who require services and end to end tech teams. Not necessarily in the tech area but also into extended departments that might need tech support and products. 

As for funding they haven’t sought funding as of now. Having a lean model they aren’t necessarily looking into it but they have and follow a model that helps them self-sustain.  They also have a few of their own products some of which Pranjal told Startup Story about. One of these products is called the SmokeCert which helps automate certificates for various events. They plan their products to be cheaper, affordable and use a robust method. They might plan on raising funds later down the line but as of now they are sustaining and planning on doing it without funding. 

Setbacks And Challenges Faced

Being a young startup presenting themselves to bigger companies and convincing them to bring them on board proved to be a bit challenging. But over time they have proved to be a competent and a viable company. 

He further added that most people he came across in the tech field have been considerably easy going and good. They have been working in close coordination with others in the business and likewise been extending help as well. They have tried to form a good rapport with other company’s altogether. 

Facing Competition

“We are learning as we go,” Pranjal said, further telling us that they have an efficient team covering every aspect. As a small startup they have the liberty to try new things which gives them an upper hand over relatively bigger and established companies. They try to bring newer technology to use. Bigger companies usually shy away from using newer improved technology just because they cannot afford to fail in the testing phase. But a new startup can always take the risk and form alliances with these big players. 

Customer Experience

Pranjal told Startup Story that they have had a huge client base not just within India but also internationally. They try to keep the clients informed about the developments and how things work keeping them within the loop which is highly appreciated by the customers. They trust them with the process and the product. Word of mouth has gone a long way for them as they haven’t tried very hard to market themselves or in mining clients. They are also quite prompt with maintaining the product in the later stages as well. 

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