Empowering the Spirit of Student Entrepreneurs

By Itishree Singh Rathaur, Rourkela: The National Institute of Technology Rourkela has seen many successful entrepreneurs since the Foundation for Technology Business Incubation (FTBI) was set up to encourage innovation, incubation, and entrepreneurship. FTBI conducts events like business plan, product development, case studies where the students get to present their start-up ideas and showcase their problem-solving skills. They also get proper guidance from renowned professionals from the business and start-up world. So here are some start-ups of NIT Rourkela that have earned many accolades.
Fastech fashions
Established in 2017, Ovotees by Fastech Fashions quickly gained popularity with people from schools and colleges looking for personalized t-shirts and hoodies. In a few weeks of being in the business, Fastech Fashion’s clientele grew from small local businesses to huge companies, both in India abroad. In no time, Fastech became the go-to brand for everyone’s needs. From trendy to tacky one-liner t-shirts and hoodies, Fastech Fashions caters to everyone’s clothing needs. In this matter, one of the co-founders of Ovotess Abhijit Sahoo says, ‘’We deal with t-shirts and hoodies. We also provide printing solutions to graphic designers looking for printing their own clothing. While it began with just two engineering students from NIT Rourkela, the team now has dozens of employees’’. He says, ‘’ We are planning to launch an Ink manufacturing device to control air pollution. We plan to attach this in the t-shirts too’’ he adds.
Phoenix Robotics
Phoenix Robotics Private Limited is a fast developing start-up incubated in NIT Rourkela and gaining exponential momentum and growth. It is a dedicated technological start-up purely based on Internet of Things (IoT) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). The team consists of the founder Amiya Kumar Samantray, Co-founder Akanksha, Kishan, Natraj and Asish. About the start-up Akanksha says, ‘’ We envision to make the surrounding environment understandable and predictable by creating a wide network of IoT based air quality monitoring systems and an early flood detection system Aurassure. It is a highly cost-effective device, ‘’ says the co-founder. She further adds, ‘’The journey of the start-up was very challenging but great experts and mentors like Professor Kamalakanta Mohapatra and Professor Rajeev Panda, we overcame all the barriers. We aspire to become the Google of sustainability. We believe we will create technologies which will help to improve resilience and response from a single platform, ‘’.
Estinno Energy
As a Consumer Electronics start-up, Estinno Energy is dedicated to designing, manufacturing, and marketing of innovative need-based products for people. The main objective of the company is to change people’s lives for the better by developing the most cutting-edge technological products possible. Estinno Energy is currently working on its e-bike, which will be more than just an e-bike started by Anurag Sharma and Mrityunjay Sharma, the students of NIT Rourkela. Today Estinno Energy has a turn-over of 5 Crore. Anurag says, ‘’ Persistence and hard work that goes behind being an entrepreneur. You can’t think of yourself as a CEO, you are the first employee of the company and you need to oversee everything ‘’.
Clavictor Academy
Clavictor Academy is a team of young and dynamic alumni from NITR. The members of Clavimate develop online content for the students in Odia. They run a youtube channel called ‘Clavimate.com’’. The CEO of the Clavictor, Deepak Moharana says, ‘’ Many state board students cannot attend quality ectures from the best teachers due to monetary constraints. Hence, Clavictor Academy is a sincere effort to extend such facilities to the state board students so that they can also take the advantage of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) using computers and mobile apps to improve their understanding of the subjects. In this way they can perform better in their upcoming board exams,’’ he says.
Another Co-founder Chandan Mohanty says, ‘’For the academic year 2019-2020, Clavictor Academy is providing online education to the class 10th & 12th students of Odisha board. Experienced teachers have been taken on board to avail the best possible education for the students. The video classes have been provided to students, which can be watched anytime using smartphones and computers as per the convenience of the students’’.
The Professor-in-Charge of Foundation For Technology Business Incubation (FTBI) of NIT Rourkela, says, ‘’ Foundation for Technology Business Incubation (FTBI) is an endeavour for inculcating the enthusiasm among Incubates to tap innovations and technologies for enterprise creation. It offers expertise and infrastructure to new enterprises that require an enabling environment. At present it has housed 23 start-up companies and 26 plus teams in its pre-incubation, most of them are either alumni or our present students involved in the vast range of activities from innovation, the creation of green tech solutions, manufacturing to engineering to e-commerce businesses. To further the initiative of inclusive innovation and to celebrate the culture of innovation FTBI organizes “Innovation Carnival” every year to provide a platform for budding entrepreneurs to realize their start-up dream,’’ tells Professor Panda.