Students turn entrepreneurs
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Four students of the LBS College of Engineering, Kasaragod, have launched a company, which focuses on mobile and web applications.
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Deepak Ravindran, Abhinav Sree, Ashwin Nath and Mohammed Hisamuddin are passionate entrepreneurs determined to make a mark. These students of the LBS College of Engineering, Kasaragod, decided to take forward ‘Swades Solutions,’ started by Deepak in the summer of 2005. Thus, Innoz Technologies was launched in August 2008.
The journey was not simple. They faced a lot of challenges. “It has been a zigzag journey for us, mixed with success and failure. But it has been exciting all the way. We enjoyed doing what we liked to do during our college days itself, including holding board meetings inside hostel rooms and raising money during times of economic slowdown,” says Deepak, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Innoz Technologies.
“First of all, we were faced with the difficulty of combining study and business. Secondly, when we started, global recession has also started. Funds were very difficult to come by.”
“I had no idea if we were actually going to succeed. But I had been fully committed to something I care about. In the first few months, we raised around Rs.2 lakh doing web and software development and this was our initial investment,” says Deepak.
Fortunately for them, the Technopark Technology Business Incubator (TBI) extended all help to the new company. Their start-up received investments from UpStart.in, a Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist (VC), and CIIE Initiatives, the investment arm of the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).
Another difficulty, according to Deepak, was the lack of experience. “There were a lot of things that we could not understand. We overcame this by seeking advice from experts,” says Deepak.
The last difficulty they faced was getting their parents to understand the idea of starting a new enterprise.
Their initial product, SMSGYAN, an innovative text messaging interface for trivia or definitions over SMS, has been well received they say. Their biggest breakthrough is their entry into iAccelerator—a Silicon Valley style mentoring programme at IIM-A. So, what are their tips to aspiring entrepreneurs? This recession period is the best time to start companies, says Deepak. Another thing is the mobile industry is growing very fast even in this recession period.
The students have an advantage in starting new enterprises. We always thought it is not easy to mix student life with business, but it is definitely not impossible. Students will get support from all quarters, he says
J.S. BABLU
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