Sumit Mukhija in a candid conversation with Business Today

Sumit Mukhija has been fond of fixing home appliances right from childhood. Whether it was a fan or an electric iron, he would work with electrical equipment to not only fix it but often just out of sheer curiosity. During a hot summer day, he converted a table fan into a makeshift cooler.

Even now, when he is not working, he is thinking about how he can make his home smarter. He has already automated his houses lights and fans, which run on voice command. The lights also switch on automatically when it becomes dark and switch off during bed time. The television and air conditioners, too, have been connected with virtual assistants such as Alexa or Google Home so that they can be switched off and on using voice commands. And, he didnt spend a bomb on all this. An integrator had asked for Rs 15 lakh to automate the electrical equipment in his home. He has done it himself under Rs 75,000 by ensuring minimum intervention. "I didnt change any wiring or switches. It did it by just adding a module or a controller," he says. Recently, he automated his home theatre system so that changing channels, switching on/off, moving from Netflix to TataSky and back can be done by tapping on the mobile or through voice command.

He says his love for fixing and modifying electronics has made him comfortable with problems. "I am usually never surprised in case of contingencies which are common considering the service-led nature of the data centre business and can come up with solutions on the fly," he says.

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