A start-up story is unfolding in the Nasscom Startup Warehouse in Salt Lake's Sector V even as investment-starved Bengal waits for two proposed marquee projects in information technology to see the light of day.

The warehouse in the current context refers to a plug-and-play infrastructure designed to tap and help flourish Bengal's budding technology start-ups or entrepreneurs.

Mahesh Bhupathi Pardhasarathy from Nellore, the founder of Changer Mints Pvt Ltd, a start-up firm that is in the process of creating solutions to solve the loose change problem at small shops, has raised Rs 1 crore funding from Andhra Pradesh-based private investor Gagan Reddy.

When a customer has no change, Mahesh's socially innovative product may help whereby he can use a Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled card, tap it against a terminal that shopkeepers will own and receive his small change to the Changer wallet.

For this, customers may buy a Changer Mints kit, scratch a card and call on a hotline number 888002222 and key in the scratched pin. They will then receive a message regarding registration details and pin.

A shopkeeper on the other hand has to buy the NFC terminal from a marketing representative. He has to recharge his changer account to send money to the customers.

Keys such as F1, F2, F3 and F4 may be used for sending money to customers, receiving money from customers, checking balance.

This is the first funding success achieved by Nasscom's Startup Warehouse since it started operations in January this year.

It provides techies adequate handholding at an early stage of a tech-company and an affordable, co-working space to thrash out new ideas after an intense evaluation and selection by Nasscom. The one in Calcutta is Nasscom's second such facility after Bangalore and is financially supported by the Bengal government.

The warehouse may be the Bengal government's soothing balm post the wound inflicted on it after Infosys put on hold its proposal for a maiden campus in Calcutta and Wipro's second campus expansion plan was in the doldrums owing to Mamata Banerjee's staunch opposition to new SEZ's.

Mahesh however, chose to address another crucial issue of inadequate change and traced it back to Bengal in terms of magnanimity.

Reports have indicated that in Calcutta, shopkeepers pay a steep commission of close to Rs 200 to buy change worth Rs 1,000.

Instead the current offering being pitched by the startup firm will earn a commission of Rs 300 for purchasing change worth Rs 10,000.

Mahesh was earlier selected in the first batch by Nasscom 10K programme and then later on by its Startup Warehouse after coming back to India and he has built the first workable prototype of his product. But a proper roll-out of his product could take at least six months more.

Nasscom's 10,000 Startup Program struck a partnership with the Bengal government and the information technology and electronics department of Bengal with a larger objective to make Calcutta an emerging hub of global businesses and start-up companies.

The 10K program was started with an objective to empower 10,000 start-ups by 2023.

A postgraduate student at Lund University in Sweden in 2011, Mahesh was home for a break in Nellore when the idea occurred to him.

While trying to buy a chocolate for his nephew from a shop, he offered Rs 500 to the shopkeeper to pay for the Rs 20 purchase.

He was refused because of inadequate change. He tried his luck with other shops and failed much to his dislike, wasting close to an hour.

He took his frustrating experience back to Sweden. At an idea competition one day at his institute he proposed a virtual solution for shopkeepers where they can put in the change amount and press 'enter' to send it to the customer's mobile.

This was selected and he found himself pitching his idea at the Mobile Heights Business Centre in Sweden, a business accelerator for start-ups.

"When I was doing my research, I tried to find out which regions suffered.... They gave me Rs 2.5 lakh for doing my market research," said Mahesh.

He came to Calcutta and did his research. He employed a marketing survey company who gave him six to seven people and e prepared a survey form.

They went to shops asking about the magnitude of the change problem and how long they have been facing it.

Mahesh and his team then pitched for a smartphone app to solve the issue and asked whether they will use it.

Among 570 shops surveyed, over 90 per cent said they own smartphones but do not know how to use it. Most suggested a calculator-like device for ease of use.

"Shopkeepers will have to buy the terminal at Rs 5,000. Efforts are on to bring down the cost to Rs 3,000 to make it more affordable and appealing to solve a niggling issue faced daily.

"The device has an internal built-in wallet. The shop owner first has to recharge the wallet with Rs 10,000 or whatever amount of change they need. We are also talking to banks so that shopkeepers can use Changer Mints terminal to directly transfer the loose change after transaction in a shop to the customer's bank account," he said.

Changer Mints is also in talks with banks so that shopkeepers can use Changer Mints terminal to directly transfer the loose change after transaction in a shop to the customer's bank account.

It is also mulling providing these machines for free to bus owners whereby the company earns 20 paisa per ticket.

For shopkeepers, it will not be for every transaction but 3 per cent commission on buying the change.

Changer Mints have tied up with a Hyderabad-based company called PMR Embedded Systems to manufacture these terminals.

It is also in talks with another Nasscom-selected start-up firm called Tickto. Tickto has a hardware solution lesser in size than a mobile phone and this is an option being explored as well.

Nasscom, meanwhile, is creating an interesting collaborative environment whereby startups, which are working together can also help each other by sharing expertise, knowledge and technology.

"A few cases where startups will get proper funding and focus on expansion and scale up in the East, will also change the outlook towards starting new innovative ventures here.

"Opportunities are plenty, expansions here will also fuel employment and influence further investments," said Nirupam Chaudhuri, regional head (east), Nasscom.

With a Changer Mint kit, the feasibility of giving a debit card is also being studied which will have a NFC built round it. For a customer, when there is enough money loaded, he has the option of visiting an ATM to withdraw cash.

Under Enterprise Connect program of Nasscom, Kotak Mahindra is a sponsor. Options are being explored where Changer Mints can work together with Kotak Mahindra and launch a co-branded card.

Incidentally, in India, Bangalore and Delhi-NCR continue to be start-up hotspots. Top six location in India account for 90 per cent of the start-up activity.

These include Bangalore (28 per cent), Delhi-NCR (24 per cent), Mumbai (15 per cent), Hyderabad (8 per cent), Pune (6 per cent) and Chennai (6 per cent). Calcutta, Ahmedabad, Cochin, Jaipur and Trivandrum figure among the next emerging locations.

In tech product or digital start-ups, US occupies the top slot with 41,500 (number of startups in a particular country as of 2014) followed by UK with 3,500 and Israel with 3,300.

India ranks fourth with 3,100 while the fifth slot is occupied by Canada with 2,700 such start-ups.

Close to 53 per cent of start-up founders are in the 25-35 age group.