Anup Akkihal solves challenges of rural Indian chemists
By siliconindia   |   Friday, 03 June 2011, 00:18 IST   |    6 Comments
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Anup Akkihal solves challenges of rural Indian chemists
Bangalore: It is quite a big challenge for chemists in rural areas to ensure that the medicines are stocked well and can be offered during emergencies. Siddaramappa Maranabasari, a 29-year-old chemist in Karnataka's Gadag district, was facing challenges on keeping a track of the medical products. Moreover he was not able to afford a pricey software solution used by large companies to track their products, inventory and forecast demand from customers, and had to wait for an emergency before reaching out to a distributor for life saving drugs, losing many precious hours for medicines to arrive, reports Srividya Iyer for Economic Times. Maranabasari found the solution to his challenges through the U.S Army Global Combat Support System (GCSS). The solution was developed by an Indian, Anup Akkihal, born in West Virginia but is a native of Dharwad, Karnataka. He was a systems engineer with over a decade of experience in supply chain software across a range of industries' including heavy manufacturing, consumer goods, defense, retail and healthcare. Presently he is the Chairman and CEO at Logistimo. Anup is a post graduate in logistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While working on a U.S. Army project with defence contractor Northrop Grumman during July 2006; he found the idea to develop software to solve problems of local chemists. Along with his team, he worked with local chemists to develop a solution that could solve their problems in a simple and effective way. The software uses mobile phone technology to manage supply chains in rural India. The solution also tracks demand, sales and movement of drugs. This supply chain management service has a simple interface that even semi-literate find it easy to use. Akkihal sells the software through his firm Logistimo. Logistimo's solution is finding takers in remote villages and districts of Africa. World Health Organization (WHO) uses Logistimo's technology to track the vaccines meant for the immunization drive in Tunisia since most regions there are not well connected to internet and were looking for some technology that would do it with the mobiles. In an interview with CNBC YoungTurks, Anup said, "We offer a unique mix of simplicity, scalability, flexibility and price. Our technology, a mobile and cloud logistics platform is designed to support a rapidly scaling user base and high transactional intensity. The tools are flexible enough to support heterogeneity across industry verticals, and are applicable to any warehouse, kirana shop, clinical stockroom, orchard, camp, truck, or backpack. Finally, our prices are kept low enough to generate widespread BoP adoption."

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