Anaxee Digital | Startup Bharat: How Indore based ‘network as a service’ startup helps cos access last-mile data

In July this year, Project Swaraksha, an initiative of Anaxee Digital Runners, received a commitment of $1 million from United Way of Bengaluru (UWBe). The project is aimed at resolving COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among the rural population.Project Swaraksha, launched on 22 May 2021 expects to deploy over 20,000 digital runners to help people in rural and semi-urban areas access CoWin app and find the nearest vaccination centres. The project is an example of the kind of digital divide that Anaxee, a last-mile outreach and data-collection service provider, plans to address in India.More than half of India is rural and highly distributed geographically. Despite internet penetration, businesses, and even social initiatives in this case, often find it difficult to reach the rural population. To capture this distributed demand, companies need a distributed network, and Anaxee resolves this pain-point with its ‘network-as-a-service’ offering.Started in 2016 by husband and wife duo of Arti Agrawal and Govind Agrawal, Anaxee provides a combination of both tech stacks with manpower on the field, to reach out to people in remotest of the corners of India. “Apart from this assurance of deep reach in remotest parts of India, we help the customer in making data-driven business decisions which were not possible earlier,” says Co-Founder Govind.The startup has a network of digital runners or mobile agents who go door to door to collect data.Anaxee claims to have created a network for 11000 pin codes, 540 districts across 26 states. It has a team of 75 employees and about 30,000 digital runners.Speaking of how Anaxee works, Govind says that businesses provide details about their target customer base, digital service needed, and the scope of work. The startup then handles the strategy and executes the required tasks.“It is like data delivery on door-step,” he says.The digital runners are local tech-savvy individuals who are connected to Anaxee platform and can work on phygital tasks. The startup’s network-as-a-service includes rural surveys, app marketing such as getting verified sign-ups, physical address verification, documentation collection, among others. The runners are paid per their service.The startup claims to have over 150 clients including Amazon, Escorts, Mahindra, Pepsi, Colgate, DeHaat, Agrostar, Udaan among others. Govind, says that Anaxee indirectly works with more than 1,000 businesses.Building the data foundationGovind’s entrepreneurial journey started back in 2006 with a biometrics company in Indore. He, along with his team, developed a vein recognition technology (US patented). He then worked for Aadhaar (UIDAI) project, which is when he got the idea of providing eKYC at the doorstep in 2015.Published by YourStory on October 21 | https://bit.ly/3Hrv2LfCheck out how Revenue Based Financing is the asset class for the Smart Investor and what investors should account for in Bharat-focused startups.