The Ed-Tech Disruptor SpaceBasic caters to over 50 colleges and pan-Indian universities, including Shankar's alma mater, PES University, Manipal University, and REVA University, and 150k+ users with its digital campus facilities

Aby-chance meeting and a five-hour conversation is what led to conceptualizing SpaceBasic in 2017. A brainchild of Madhavi Shankar and Indu Navar, the startup aims at building a connected ecosystem in educational institutes across the country with digitized campus housing, integrated payments, digital cafeteria, smart IDs, etc. A graduate of computer science from CMR Institute of Technology, Bangalore, Shankar went on to do her master's in Engineering Management and Business Administration from University of Technology, Sydney. In Australia, she worked with an early stage software enterprise for four years and during that time realized that she wanted to start her own venture. In 2016, she met with a successful women BIZ Experiences and now co-founder from Silicon Valley and struck a conversation with her. The coincidental chat went on for a good five hours! And SpaceBasic was born. Shankar quit her job and returned to India to solve the problem in the education space. There she realized that over 80 percent of Indian universities used little technology outside the classroom. "Campus operations like student housing, managing cafeterias, and access control were ineffective and all performed manually with fragmented data sources. We knew there had to be a better way!," Shankar adds.

SpaceBasic caters to over 50 colleges and pan-Indian universities, including Shankar's alma mater, PES University, Manipal University, and REVA University, and 150k+ users with its digital campus facilities. Since its inception, SpaceBasic has been bootstrapped, but last year, it raised funds from early- stage VCs. The startup aims at reaching profitability by 2024 and plans to become a crossborder Software-as-a-Service company.