A Bangalore-based start-up, co-founded by Abinash Saikia, a product of IIT Madras and IIM Bangalore, has built a “work from home” solution that gets enterprises back on their feet very fast .

Saikia is originally from Dergaon in Assam.

Engroup, a technology start-up funded by the North East Venture Fund (NEVF), has developed EnCloudEn, a VPNless VDI (virtual desktop) system which establishes a secure connection between any personal device of the employee and her office work station, enabling productive work at home.

EnCloudEn is currently helping a few departments of the Assam government with urgent solutions to this current work problem following the lockdown due to outbreak of coronavirus.

With the lockdown due to the Covid-19 situation in place, most employees are still struggling to work from home which has led to a drastic drop in overall productivity.

Saikia told this correspondent: “We set out to build on virtualisation and cloud technologies to transform how IT was being run. The old way was inefficient and expensive. We have been able to ensure that our customers are not interrupted by the current crisis and are able to remain very productive over the course of this lockdown.

What really adds to it is: deploying the EnCloudEn solution and on boarding users can happen within a couple of days. This has been very useful for our customers.”

Saikia, Vishwa Vijoyendra Narayan and Satya Kishore had started Engroup in 2016.

Saikia and Kishore are from IIT Madras while Vishwa was a friend of Saikia at IIM Bangalore.

“The nature of work has transformed over the years. Nowadays, most knowledge-centric work can happen on your personal device as long as you have access to the organisation’s applications and the data. EnCloudEn VDI solution establishes a secure connection between any personal device of the employees and their office workstation. Not just that; any enterprise apps or data is also readily available in these virtual desktops or VDI. That way work does not cease even in a lockdown situation like this,” Saikia added.

EnCloudEn has won a number of awards like NASSCOM Emerge 50 and Yourstory’s TECH 30.

It was also recognised as the “Winner of IT Innovation Award” by IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad recently.

Education start-up

With an aim to transform the education system, a start-up named Personal Guru has launched a series of programmes to support the students of Assam and ease their hardship through online classes.

Coaching is free and the classes provided are on banking, SSC and railways entrance as well as UPSC and APSC coaching for the people of Assam.

Apart from this, 21-day free JEE and NEET crash courses for the students of Assam are also being provided.

Chief executive officer and co-founder of the start-up, Mukhlesur Rahman, said, “With a mission to guide students in exam preparations, selection of institutes, constant mentorship and financial support, we truly justify our tagline: ‘Personal Guru – Always with you’.”

He added, “Personal Guru is for the people of Assam and by the people of Assam. We have received tremendous support from the students well as the celebrities of the state who have helped them in promoting their cause and reaching out to the masses.”

Additional reporting by Mohsin Khaiyam