The co-founder Praveen Mishra of Tohands had thought a year ago that building a 'smart' calculator would be an inappropriate idea and no one would ever wish for it. However, the young man saw a woman running a little shop in Sarjapura, Bengaluru has been struggling to keep track of all transactions. Then, the Praveen Mishra had eventually realized the importance of a 'smart' calculator that even records data.

HIGHLIGHTS
Mishra had realized the importance of a 'smart' calculator that even records data
All of the 3 co-founders had handled completely different domains of the business
Second version was more polished product and involves calculation functionality

Praveen Mishra, a resident of Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh had started ToHands in 2017 with Satyam Sahu and Shanmuga Vadiwal. All of the three co-founders have been handling completely different domains of the business, Mishra takes care of the product side of things, Sahu takes care of the apps and software and Vadiwal was responsible of the hardware.

However, 21-year-old Praveen Mishra determined to re-imagine the calculator, but the challenge was the way to make it much better. After all, calculators have already tested to be tools that were quick and convenient way to calculate in minutes. Everything on it was based on buttons.

The first version of the 'smart' calculator was developed by Mishra which was a Raspberry Pi-powered prototype of a device with a keyboard and two buttons – one of which was for credit and also the different for debit. Mishra then visited to some shopkeepers and showed them a prototype device to measure their interest in smart calculators. Initially, they were able to get seven pre-orders of the device but Mishra and also the team soon started working on version two of the calculator.

The second version was a lot of polished product and involved calculation functionality along with credit and debit facilities however the screen was smaller and the device used a membrane keyboard. After the startup was selected at T-Hub, an incubation centre for IT startups in Rayadurgam, Hyderabad, Mishra and the team were inspired to take the other shot at hardware and layer the look to create smart calculators a reality. At present, this calculator was being sold for Rs 3,000. The 'smart' calculator has 16MB of integral memory, which might store 5 million transactions.

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