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Abhay Rangan: TCE, Veganarke Pvt Ltd.
Abhay Rangan: TCE, Veganarke Pvt Ltd.
Abhay is CMR PU College student, and he is a vegan activist when he entered in CMRIT for Engineering. Observing his ability to balance education & entrepreneurship, the faculty handling his class has encouraged Abhay to participate in FKCCI Manthan business competition. Manthan is a business plan competition which offers training in sales, marketing, business plan preparation, pitching, financials etc and it spans over 6 months and one of the few competitions, which grooms entrepreneurs. Abhay went through this process, won a Rs 50,000/- prize and importantly pruned his business skills. Then came the design thinking training offered by Stanford University and sponsored by Google in (September 2016). Abhay is one of the three students selected for Stanford UIF and went through the training through Google’s US$ 4000 scholarship. This enabled Abhay to identify pain points in his venture and went on to procure equipment to make vegan products at his home. He made his mother as partner and registered a company called Veganarke Private Limited and started scouting for funds for expansion. He got valuation done for company at about 2.5 Crores and explored options from commercial papers to equity selling to debuntures. Abhay struggled for about 8 months and during which came to know about startup funding and ecosystem. This was the period when software and mobile app funding is profound in India and Abhay was advised to explore outside India funding. Abhay got into Wharton entrepreneurship program at boulder, Colorado, USA with scholarship and at the same time secured equity selling deal at US$ 4,00,000 (Rs 2.5 Cr) for 15% of his venture. He also launched Vegan products like milk, curd and grabbed the most of Bangalore market through word of mouth, good will and 'believing in what he is doing'. He also went for online marketing through webpage and due to his over 80% margin model, Abhay could launch his product. During the Colorado training, he was featured in "Forbes Magazine" as one of the few budding entrepreneurs and a future game changer. A telecommunications engineer (TCE) going from vegan activist to vegan product developer to equity selling to foreign investor to featuring in Forbes speaks about what CMRIT students are 'capable of' and what the appropriate training can contribute to a student’s dream of becoming an entrepreneur.
The story of Abhay tells that 'one man army' still exists and doing societal activities like 'vegan movement' is may be his passion from his school days. But eventually he did something to take forward the vegan movement through his products. His pricing of vegan products is so simple that even non-vegans would love to use them! The one thing we all proud in his story is that his first business partner is his Mother! A Richard Branson in making:)
Mohsin Ali Khan & Gowtham Reddy: Civil, CO3 Structural Systems
Mohsin Ali Khan & Gowtham Reddy: Civil, CO3 Structural Systems
Mohsin & Gowtham are civil engineering students, and during their 4th year of engineering, they came across CO2 enabled concrete structures. For this project, they needed beyond civil knowledge and scouted for an appropriate chemistry input. By January 2017, they could create a new and novel geopolymer formulation, which generates CO2 in situ during curing of the structures. Patents were filed for their technology and the project moved to a level where a venture called CO3 Structural Systems is created. The Mohsin and Gowtham team continued R&D in the Geopolymer structures space and built the pipeline of paver blocks, solid blocks, mud blocks, light weight blocks etc. They soon entered a non- exclusive license agreement for their patents and also received an Elevate 100 award from Government of Karnataka. The Elevate 100 is a premier entrepreneurship support from Government of Karnataka and they setup a commercial venture near Bagluru of Bangalore.
Mohsin and Gowtham story is inspiring in many ways. They are year-back students representing that a setback in academics is always temporary and entrepreneurship offers a chance of bounce back for all students. Secondly, a 4th year project has matured into a product and an enterprise indicating that of the students pursued projects can make it big. A middle east enterprise's interest in licensing of patent suggests that creation of intellectual property even at an engineering college has 'demand' from international community.
Avinash Reddy: Mechanical, Bleave Hospitality Pvt. Ltd.
Avinash Reddy: Mechanical, Bleave Hospitality Pvt. Ltd.
Avinash Reddy is a mechanical engineering student from CMRIT and graduated in 2016. He is from first generation entrepreneurial family and during the 2016 Cultura, he has managed a beverage shop stand also raised significant amount of money during Cultura, Kannada Rajyosthava and Srishti events held 2016. He is the “go to man” for society oriented and community interactive activities and this is when his entrepreneurial skills were pruned by Mechanical department faculty and Avinash entered the restaurant and hospitality segment. His first venture was “Plaintain Leaf” at Indiranagar, Bangalore, an multicuisine restaurant.
Avinash also started a Dubai venture called Krishna restaurant and both ventures have been profit making. He also ventured in to fire safety equipment in Middle east (Dubai). Avinash is a thinking entrepreneur and has realized that the success of restaurant business is directly dependent on the trained manpower. For example, he paid to get a group of people to get trained in “Hyderabad Biriyani” and the same have left his organization with in 2 months of post training. Hospitality and restaurant has significant attrition rate often above 80% and Avinash is signing an MOU with CMRIT where in he will fund certain amount to CMRIT to make his business “Expertise Independent” or increase the productivity of his personnel by 3-5 fold. He is funding R&D in exploring the slimming powder of natural origin, to venture into delivering value to customer through packaged products. Avinash has under went turbulence in business and learned to survive in the same through hard work, innovation and 'out of box thinking'. Avinash is a model for CMRIT students because of his ability to stand his ground where the business segment is known to run with razor thin margins and fierce competition. The slimming market that he is venturing into has about 80% manufacturing margins and Avinash has proven that a student entrepreneur can differentiate himself where innovation and patenting is non-existent. His story is also inspiring that engineering is a 'skill learning' course and the learned knowledge can be used in any branch of business!
Ravichand Lavu: Serial Entrepreneur Environmentally sustainable Technology Segment
Ravichand Lavu: Serial Entrepreneur Environmentally sustainable Technology Segment
Ravichand Lavu is a Mechanical engineering student graduated in 2013. He was always passionate about entering the segment of environmentally conscious products. This enabled him to start an LED solution manufacturing and supply segment. In the year 2014, he has started a company called Greenhood Technologies and had a profitable venture operating till 2017. In the year 2016, he has approached CMRIT and entered an MOU to nurture, mentor CMRIT student/ faculty ideas generated through design thinking. This kind of investment in futuristic technology is unique and that too with uncertainty around output of typical engineering college students and faculty. Ravichand’s investment of 1.2 lakh has paid off and in the year 2018, one patent for 'recycling of flex banners via in situ polymer composite generation during sealing' is filed. His 'out of box' thinking has contributed to realizing water atomizer, which was a problem statement discussed during design thinking sponsored by Greenhood. This problem statement received a Grand Challenges Karnataka grant and a product 'in making' with a startup creation 'in sight'. Ravichand is a very interesting entrepreneur and while being the same, he took interest in supporting budding entrepreneurs at CMRIT. This model of alumni giving lending hand to juniors through small, yet high risk funding, is rare and probably exists only in IITs and IIMs. Ravichand also forayed into providing unified Eco lighting solutions to large scale apartment complexes through variety in product and innovative pricing. Ravichand is a classic entrepreneur example of entrepreneur surviving through difficult external ecosystem, yet investing certain amount of revenue in R&D through MOU at CMRIT. He has built about 2000 Sq. Ft. R&D at Whitefield in food packing domain and looks to set for a next level of entrepreneurship journey.
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