Chapter 1: The Beginning
Engineering
I think Engineering is the most overrated professional course in India. The country churns out more than 1.5 million engineers every year from over 6000 institutions across the country. And, after going through engineering myself, I don’t disagree with this fact. I feel the course is fundamentally flawed the way it’s taught, there is an immense amount of trust in the traditional and outdated teaching system and books and everyone likes to believe engineering should be the first choice for a professional course. What makes it worse is, practical knowledge is not considered important at all.
Huzaifa and I have been friends since the first year of college, met each other at the college hostel as room mates. Never had we thought then, 4 years later we would go on to start Calamus together!
Formula SAE
I faced the standard engineering problem during the first year of college, less actual learning and more theoretical nonsense. This was when I was very lucky to be introduced to FSAE by a friend of mine, it was the turning point in my career, well not technically career, but you get the point. I have been ardent about cars since I was three or four. I always dreamt of making an Indian high-performance car someday (I still hold that dream very very close to my heart even today), FSAE was my door to exactly that. And when FSAE came knocking to my door, life made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
For those of you who don’t know what FSAE is, it’s a competition run by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) where international college teams compete against each other by designing and fabricating Formula prototype race-cars. The competition happens multiple times all around the world during the course of the year. Sounds exciting right? I went bonkers when I heard about this. It even somewhat follows the Formula 1 calendar, almost.
Formula SAE Italy 2014
Areion Motorsports — The team I started my FSAE career with. When I joined them, the team was participating in the 2014 FSAE Italy as their second event. The team had performed fairly well in the first year of inception when they competed at FSAE Lincoln, USA the previous year, 2013. They had then become the first Indian team to qualify for the race in Lincoln, not a bad achievement for a first year team. And after this successful performance, the team now was determined to do better by building a much higher performance car.
They were looking for passionate individuals from college that could help them achieve their dream. Imagine getting selected to be a part of a team that was going to not only design and build but also race the car on a track in Italy, a dream come true moment to say the least.
FSAE soon became my passion, my college life. I stopped attending classes; I stopped wasting time anywhere else. Every morning the first place I went to was the FSAE workshop. We went to Italy the first year, when I was just learning and getting my head around things. We did pretty well for a second year team.
Huzaifa was busy with his love affair of computers in college. He did freelancing work of designing software code and hardware. He was making more money than an average engineers yearly pay then. We didn’t even know this until he told us during the last few months of college life, we used to all wonder why he would play games online all day!
Formula SAE Italy, 2015
My second year with the team was when I actually started understanding things and getting into engineering design & development at a basic level. I was good at networking, so I headed the sponsorship team then. We were going to Italy again this year (2015), so we wanted to make the car lighter, faster, better. The team was now called STES racing
This was when the team and I also for the first time got exposed to Carbon Fiber, the wonder material. We ended up making hundreds of errors but finally did end up making the lightest FSAE body ever. We didn’t end up doing too well at the event when it came to dynamics but ended up winning the Cost event, and became the first Indian team to ever win an event at a Formula SAE competition, but we weren’t happy. It was a sad moment for all of us considering the amount of effort we put in, we went a step down from our previous event instead of going a step up. But there was a spark in all of this, Carbon Fiber.
Carbon Fiber is simply amazing. When you compare it with traditional materials, steel has a tensile modulus of about 29 million psi (200 million KPa). Thus, the strongest carbon fibers are ten times stronger than steel and eight times that of aluminium, not to mention much lighter than both materials, 5 and 1.5 times respectively.
Formula SAE Japan 2016
I didn’t completely realize then, but it was going to become an important part of my life soon! My final year in college was when I was handed over the Captaincy of the team that would be competing at the 2016 FSAE Japan. I was scared, excited but more importantly motivated to do better, make a better team, make a better car and perform respectably. Yes, I did not have the aim of taking the team to the podium because it wasn’t realistic. What we wanted to do was make a well designed and engineered car and give a strong performance by not repeating older mistakes.
The importance and respect of FSAE was inexistent in the college we were in. There was practically no support other than a workspace which we fought for every year to work at, most teachers didn’t really understand what they were teaching. It was always us trying to understand and learn on our own. Not that I am complaining, but I really wish we had more support and direction for what we were doing, we would have really performed well.
We had to build a team that would successfully build a kick-ass car. But the problem was, we did not have funds, and finding sponsors for a team that had not performed well in the last 2 years for an event with such low presence in India, it was nearly impossible. We had to hire students that could bring in funds to support the team. Doesn’t sound right, does it? We had no choice, if we had to continue, we had to do this. It was a mistake, a big mistake. That’s when our problems started. The wheel assembly was also my final year project, again minimal inputs from my teammates of the group project.
While captaining the team, I was also the Wheel assembly design and advanced composites head. It was stupid of me to take up so many things for one vehicle, but I couldn’t let go of any of them, I had the most amount of experience for all. The team and I were working 20–22 hour days trying to finish the vehicle. It was a disaster, we gave the worst performance in the last 3 years. It was a terrible feeling, the feeling of your team giving its worst performance under your leadership is the worst feeling in the world. What made things worse was I wouldn’t have another chance. I don’t think I am still over it.
But FSAE Japan taught me a lot of important things:
- Team is the most important part of the competition.
- Always follow Murphy’s Law
- Never underestimate development time of something you are building, pace it better.
- Never try to do too many things at once. Divide the workload and manage it better.
- Move on to manufacturing only after the design is perfected on paper and CAD.
- Everyone is wired differently, accept that and work with them with that in mind.
- Work with a team which has members as passionate as you are.
12C Composites
One of the reasons I didn’t give it my best for the event in the beginning stages was because I had to support my family then. And I along with my seniors from the previous year’s team decided to start an advanced composites consultancy and manufacturing company. A company doing these things was nearly unknown at that time, and we thought we should take advantage of this. It was 4 of us, I was the only one still in college. So, now I was juggling between FSAE, college and 12C Composites. That’s what we were calling our small start-up.
For the next 4 months, I was working with 12C Composites, I don’t recall sleeping more than 4 hours a night on average. I was crazy, I was going crazy. We did some great projects, for a BAJA racing team, a big windmill project for one of the country’s premier engineering institutes, IIT. We also built a filament winding machine to make carbon fiber tubes and pipes. But I had to choose between FSAE and 12C Composites then, and I chose FSAE because it was closer to my heart.
But my first startup taught me some very important things too:
- Do not try to do too many things at one point, focus on one or at max two things to start with
- Do not start a venture without a plan.
- Do not start a venture when you know you will not be able to give your 100%.
- Unless you are ready to face the tide for the next few years without any results
- Don’t start something you are not passionate about
One thing’s for sure, I regret none of the decisions I made during my college life. FSAE & College life has without a doubt been the pillars of understanding for engineering, product development and leadership. There is a reason why all engineers that Ather energy(Indian company making one of the best electric scooters in the world) have been part of an FSAE team in college.
Thank you for reading and stay tuned for future posts!
