The idea of connecting shoppers to brick-and-mortar retailers in a locality through a mobile app hit Rajesh during his summer internship in 2014. In December 2014, when the placement season commenced, Rajesh and his team were in Bangalore to launch Instano. Six months after he bootstrapped Instano, Ranjan and Co are betting on building the business into a personalised assistant for shoppers—for a nominal fee. Instano currently operates only in Bangalore’s Koramangala locality.