InnCreTech Seeks to Ramp up Its Incubator Work with Funded Startups
It often takes the experience of one startup founder to pave the way for others. Princeton-based software-engineering service InnCreTech seems to be setting such an example. The company develops software and technology for blockchain, machine learning, data science and mobile-app needs, while also offering guidance to other up-and-comers.
CEO Ritika Singh founded InnCreTech seven years ago with her husband, Vishal, the company’s tech lead and resident research scientist. Shortly after they founded the company to develop software and applications, the Singhs were approached by others in New Jersey who wanted help in focusing their own technology efforts, said Ritika.
InnCreTech develops software for small and midsize companies that want help in fulfilling their technology demands. The pervasiveness of technology means that sectors such as healthcare also need software and applications to remain competitive, but they do not always have the resources to go it alone. “Small companies often don’t have the budget to invest in a tech research arm in their own company,” she noted.
InnCreTech also has some Fortune 500 clients, which help sustain the business, Ritika said. The range of InnCreTech’s prior work gave it the expertise to provide incubator services to startups in such fields as 3-D printing, artificial intelligence, health care and private equity.
For these startups and small companies, she said, InnCreTech provides access to cutting-edge technology and advice on how to develop initial ideas into working products ready for the market. For example, if a startup founder is trying to solve a problem for a highly regulated industry, InnCreTech helps address the nuances of those solutions. Such a startup might be developing software that would let banks share information with each other while remaining within federal guidelines on how that information is controlled.
Currently, four startups are participating in the InnCreTech incubator. This is in addition to the other clients that use the company’s services. Two of the startups in the incubator are backed by angel investors, Ritika said. The third startup has obtained Series A funding, and the last is pursuing a Series A round.
Starting a company and then providing incubator services has been a learning process for Ritika. “Switching gears between working with startups and established businesses was very difficult,” she said. “The pace and the agility that startups need is totally different from the constancy and slower growth than other, established businesses see.”
That meant having to change response and turnaround times to suit the different categories of businesses that InnCreTech works with, Ritika said. Startups need immediate action and responses just to keep going month to month. Established businesses move at a more tempered pace and take longer to act.
Ritika has a master’s degree in biotechnology and a post-graduate diploma in clinical research. She also has an MBA in business strategy.
InnCreTech is a self-funded business and has adapted to the changing cycles of technology. “While we were helping startups and doing projects for other companies, we were building our expertise,” she said. “We chose to work with blockchain technology because it sits between data science and software development. It’s a sweet spot for us.” She expects blockchain technology to continue to evolve and remain prominent in the coming years.
The transparency that blockchain can provide, she said, means it can be used across multiple industries ‒ including banking, private equity and 3-D printing ‒ that want to verify transactions between two parties.
In addition to the 15 people on staff at InnCreTech’s offices in Princeton, the company works with partners in Germany, Romania and India in the areas of data science, software development and software testing.
As for the future, InnCreTech would like to start working with more startups that have grown beyond the seed stage and have secured Series A funding, Ritika said. That is a sort of litmus test that proves their ideas have traction and could scale up.
While InnCreTech has a packed work calendar, Ritika said, “I would like to have partnerships with tech companies in New Jersey and the tri-state area.” She believes that more local collaborations will not only elevate the state’s presence as a place for innovation, but will improve these companies’ chances of growing into tangible endeavors.
