There have been many cases of individuals who become hugely successful in their field without even graduating from their respective schools and they have paved the way for what we hope these three students of Neerja Modi School in Jaipur will end up doing.
We are talking about Mragank Gurjar, Utsav Jain and Chetanya Colechha who have received a Rs 3 crores investment from a university for their product “Infusion Beverages”. From the time they created this drink their lives have taken a new trajectory, especially when they took part last year of April in an entrepreneurship Fest which was held in their school. They didn’t get very far in the competition, but their fates changed when an investor got scent of their product and decide to give them the required capital to set up shop.
Here’s what Chaitanya said:
“We took part in the competition, but we could not get very far as we were kicked out of it in the first round as we failed to impress the judge. Though we got kicked out of the competition within the hour we got an order for 150 bottles of our flavored water bottles.”
They were happy about the order, but they decided to work harder on getting their product option market specification, they wanted to create flavored water but without preservative. Mragank Gurjar told,
“We carried out intensive research on Google to prepare a healthy drink without sugar and soda. But soon we realized that turning an idea into reality is not easy when you are a minor. Procuring the license, necessary permissions from the food department and approval from FSSAI, are a Herculean task. As we were minors our parents sought the permission on our behalf.”
They took part in other entrepreneurship competitions in various accredited institutions such as IIM-Indore or IIT-Kanpur and got applause but their lives took a turn when they got a letter from Malviya National Institute of Technology and they were given a chance to nurture their idea and were given assistance in getting the appropriate patent.
8,000 bottles of various flavors have been sold in a B2B fashion until January this year. However, when they were checking other avenues to make it big, they got a call from an investor based in Indore who wanted to meet them in January, Utsav told.
“The meeting was successful in the first hour. They decided to fund the project Rs 3 crores. Under the agreement, we have the responsibility of marketing and research. The plant will be based in Indore.”
They were also very keen on keeping their project going, saying that losing some fun of childhood was not important for them, and that they thought people who waited till they graduated or did a post-graduation to work were lazy. They wanted to stay ahead of the pack and they did with this project.
