Meeting of the Founders from Japan and India in the teplo Development Team

In this series, we will introduce the development team of teplo (LOAD&ROAD Inc.), which is not often highlighted. This article will cover the characteristics of the founders of LOAD&ROAD Inc. and the inspiration behind the company’s founding.

This article As briefly mentioned in the previous article, Konohe, the CEO, was originally a mechanical engineer in Japan, and CTO Mayuresh was a software engineer in India. After working together for about three years, they both left their engineering jobs to study business management. In 2014, they enrolled in the MBA program at Babson College in Boston, USA. It was at Babson College as classmates that the two founders first met.

During their graduate classes and after-school discussions, the two engineers developed an interest in the idea of “IoT,” which involves connecting objects to the internet. While “IoT” has become commonplace now, it was a relatively new concept in 2014. Given Konohe’s background in hardware engineering and Mayuresh’s in software engineering, they frequently discussed technical topics based on their respective experiences, as well as the potential of IoT and business.

So, how did this lead to tea? A major catalyst was the harsh winter in Boston.

As you can see from this photo, Boston’s winters are extremely cold, and Konohe drank hot coffee almost every hour to cope with the chill. One day, after drinking too much coffee and experiencing stomach pain, he decided to try tea instead. This led him to rediscover the deliciousness and gentleness of tea, which he had previously taken for granted in Japan.

Upon exploring how to enjoy great-tasting tea, Konohe learned that factors such as the quality of tea, the amount of tea used, the amount of water, the water temperature, and the extraction time all play crucial roles in determining the flavor. However, controlling these factors manually requires numerous tools and remembering the extraction conditions for thousands of tea varieties is quite challenging.

Thus, Konohe and Mayuresh thought that if a robot (hardware) could handle this precise control and software could manage the memory of numerical information, they could produce the best possible tea. Moreover, if they could create a system to easily purchase tea from around the world via an app, they could also ensure the quality of tea leaves. They envisioned that using IoT could allow people to enjoy updated and improved tea.

When Konohe discussed this idea with Mayuresh, they found it interesting and decided to pursue it. During their studies, they started a company and began testing their idea. The first prototype, built by the two of them from gathered parts, is shown here.

In this way, LOAD&ROAD began with the process of turning an idea into a tangible prototype and validating it. The culture of shaping and testing ideas ourselves remains deeply rooted in our team to this day.

Thank you for reading about our founding story. In the next part, we will discuss how LOAD&ROAD is structured today. Here is the article. I’ll introduce it in the article!