Manipal University students adopt entrepreneurship as a way of life.
Story of how two Manipal University students saw a 6x return on their pocket money by building a campus startup.
by Siddharth Ram & Deepankar Garg
One of the most rewarding things of being part of a mission like SV.CO are the almost ‘filmy’ stories of talented young blokes who have fought hardships, nurtured friendships, toiled, hacked and hustled their way to success.
I first met Deepankar Garg and Arihant Duggar in September 2016 during a visit to Manipal University, Jaipur, where we took our #StartInCollege campaign to encourage students to supplement their college education by working on meaningful startup projects that help them hone their engineering skills and get a taste of building their ideas into companies in real life.
They were handpicked to join the SV.CO program and are part of our Batch 3 where they have founded a delightful little company called Curis and have just been rewarded for their resourcefulness and determination.
Curis’s story is one of how a group of students challenged the routine of their college lives to do something different and how great teamwork and some strategic hustling has given them an experience they will cherish.
As a team, and I feel great saying this, Curis have executed all the key learnings from our program with great results.
But I’ll let Deepankar Garg, Founder of Curis tell the story himself:
“Curis, has some amazing news to share. But before the BIG announcement, we would like to shed some light on our journey so far.
My partner Arihant Dugar and I are students of Computer Science Engineering at Manipal University Jaipur. In September 2016 we had folks from Startup Village Collective (SV.CO) over at our campus. In an auditorium packed with about 100 students, Siddharth Ram spoke to us about entrepreneurship and innovation, and that was where our journey essentially began.
Our SV.CO Admission Experience :
A couple of weeks later we were handed two tasks that needed to be accomplished within a given time. We got down to it without further ado. Arihant built the application, and I and our other partner worked on the execution of the other tasks. To be honest we did have our share of struggles and fights, but the project was done to our satisfaction and submitted.
We wanted to desperately get into the SV.CO program and we rustled up a team of three. It was difficult for us to travel all the way from Jaipur to Bangalore for the personal and team interviews with the founders and we got it done in October via Skype.
Come November, the results were out and as expected we were selected for the program. But only one of our team was among the 30 co-founders eligible for a fully-funded entry to the SV.CO program.
It created some mixed feelings that not all of us were funded; there was still no way to afford the entry fee individually, it had to be a scholarship.
First Hurdle in our startup Journey : Co-Founder Left :(
Well, it so happened that the least compatible member of the team dropped out, so we just had to find the entry fee for one.
How we Hustled to get into SV.CO ?
We decided to approach our University to support us for the program. My first plea was rejected. And I hate to say this, but they had valid reasons to do so.
After a week, I gave it another go. This time, I was better prepared and the University agreed, in view of some of my past work, to give a partial funding of Rs 15,000. The remainder of the fee, Arihant and I split between us. We considered this our first investment towards the startup. We didn’t have so much money to buy shares, mutual funds or assets. All we could do was invest the money in our journey of life.
Our Startup Journey
We joined Batch 3 of SV.CO in January 2017 and it has been one heck of a learning curve! The first couple of months were slow. Arihant and I had come with an idea but it turned out to be unfeasible. We had to drop that and pick one of the many ideas provided by SV.CO. These ideas are provided by Tracxn after thorough industry research.
After our classwork, we start building our startup. Here is how ?
We spend the evenings discussing about the product and talk to students in our campus to take early feedback on the product. We have sessions from entrepreneurs across the world sharing their lessons, experiences which gives us great insights.
We sit in our hostels and spend time listening to SV.CO sessions, completing our targets, having product discussions and sometimes meetups to demo our not so fancy prototypes for early feedback.
Our task since then has been to build a really classy and useful product that can actually improve people’s lives. Arihant has been working on the website and application development and I have been networking, building strategies and interacting with as many people as possible.
My own dream is to be a Data Scientist and I’m trying to sharpen those skills. My role as a coder would come a little later in the product.
That is a bit about our journey with SV.CO so far.
Oh, shoot! I almost forgot. The BIG news!
What we learn at SV.CO is to continuously maintain relationships. Sanjay Vijayakumar personally takes a class on Building Business relationship which helped us a lot.
We kept on updating our college management on what we were learning and doing. So, after building the website and application, we approached our University to ask for funding. We had to give an elevator pitch, explain our product and the rest of the usual things to a review committee.
Thrilled to report: Manipal University has granted us Rs.87,000 for the project.
We have now been officially incubated, provided office space and funded by the University. And the best part is, they have agreed to help us with as much funds as we want, subject to the condition that our product scales and our demands are reasonable.
When I joined college, all I had in my mind was to get a job and graduate from this college. But the moment you challenge your status quo and push your boundaries “The Magic Happens”.
On a personal level, I would like to thank Arihant for building such a wonderful product, Startup Village Collective (SV.CO) for their constant support and invaluable guidance and to Manipal University Jaipur for believing in us.
Thank you!”
Know more about Curis
Journey: https://www.sv.co/startups/curis-yourcaretaker
Curis’s journey with SV.CO has been amazing. Sitting in Jaipur they have travelled quite a lot in their journey of life.
225 Timeline entries on SV.CO Learning platform. Read more about their journey here https://www.sv.co/startups/curis-yourcaretaker
4th Level startup at SV.CO : Customer Validation stage
5 Office Hours
Screenshot from one of their Office Hour:
Finally,
The story of Curis is an example to every student out there who wish to chase their dreams. Lack of Money is not an excuse but a driving force to do something lean and ambitious. Go Hustle everyday and see the Magic Happen. A Rs 15,000 investment on themselves is now worth a lakh in few months.” INVEST in YOURSELF.
Come join our collective of amazing students like Deepankar and Arihant. Visit www.sv.co/apply
