How many self made cars can you count?
A friend of mine was joking about a recent event that occurred to him on the streets of Delhi.
He decided to try the traditional and economical barbershop shaving for less than 50 cents and was soon to be me with an unusual surprise. The boy who was his caretaker that hour was impressed by the visit of the foreign visitor and decided to broadcast the entire shaving process with his Facebook friends.
What more proof do you want of the advent of digital India, he giggled
How about a car made by watching Youtube videos, I asked?
This was news I randomly found on one of my Whats’sapp group and got me pleasantly surprised
Prem Thakur a commerce student has built his own car. His arsenal of tools — second hand Honda engine owned by his family, and YouTube videos.
The entire machine cost him mere $3,500 and four months later the car even features side blinkers and a music system with a USB port. Will there even be a greater pleasure for a young student to listen to his favorite Mohit Chauhan rhymes inside his own self made creation?
This only speaks of the massive creative potential embedded all around Indian suburbs which the traditional Indian education system hasn’t done much to invigorate it these days.
In a culture that still treats makers and renegades as a treat and appreciates the good old alas nowadays endangered career paths, this comes as a signal a beautiful harbinger that makers unaware about their own limitations empowered by technology will bring forth the future India desires.
This is one of the reasons why I believe that programs such as I-Made under the flagship of Startup India initiative is so important.
It is set to empower students across 35,000 universities in building their own mobile driven solution to local problems and challenges by providing. The case with the young Prem perfectly fits the bill and the profile we intend to empower.
It doesn’t matter where the maker comes from, the urban city or the most remote village in Andra Pradesh. I-Made comes with it’s own deployment platform leaving the students and creatives to do whatsoever they deem with it just like Rachayta used it to build MySullabys app which is now widely used by the entire university.
Our goal is to foster the creation of the next million Indian startups give the tools they need to build solutions, be present as they incubate and be there to fund and grow the best ones.
If you think one million is too much of an ambition open up your daily India newspaper you are likely to find a Prem-like character every single day. Or take a shaving seance inside a random barbershop in Delhi, it will surely widen up your perspectives.
