Twitter
Advertisement

ANCHOR Management and engineering students show their entrepreneurial side

Latest News
article-main
FacebookTwitterWhatsappLinkedin

While some students are inventing keyboard applications in different mother tongues on mobile phones, others are attempting to bring different varieties of items from different states of India.

The IIT-Bombay faculty and students from the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) department have come up with keyboard applications for Android phones that will enable people to type in their mother tongues.

They are particularly interested in helping people who do not usually type in English. The name of the application available on Play store of Android phones is known as 'Swarachakra'.

The work is completely non-commercial, developed through voluntary contribution from faculty and students of IIT-Bombay in terms of efforts, and open source.

Professor Anirudha Joshi, IIT-Bombay, said: "Anyone wishing to contribute to Swarachakra is most welcome. We already have about 60 contributors who have helped us in different capacities, and more keep joining in all the time. Our group has been working on the area of text input since 2001. We launched Swarachakra Hindi on the Play store in 2013 and have been releasing other languages since. Currently, it is available in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil, Odiya, Punjabi, Bengali and Konkani."

The response is overwhelming, it recently crossed 1,50,000 cumulative downloads. Currently, about 800+ people download Swarachakra daily and type more than 10 lakh words every month using the app.
While the IITians are helping Indians in this way, the NITIE students are running the same race. Two NITIE students have developed a website called Lal10.com. The uniqueness of this website is that the products are not just from any brand, but the specialties of several states from the original vendor.

There, local art from 10 different states can be bought on a single platform. Be it rasgulla from West Bengal, authentic dry flower art of Himachal Pradesh, or the toys from Channapatna, these new age entrepreneurs can be trusted with its delivery.

They have also ensured originality of the products by tying up with various NGOs who protect the rights of craftsmen. With a base of 78 vendors from 10 states, the product catalogue is expansive with 800 niche products including food, handicraft, shoes, and fabrics, among others. The design graduates aim to capture works of authentic local artisans' and NGO products, and present them in the international market to improve the livelihood and lifestyle of artisans.

Maneet Gohil, an electronics and communication engineer pursuing an MBA in general management from NITIE, is the founder of Lal10. He said: "Right now, there are 30 interns working under me. Our team does market research for us. We make sure the vendors are authentic and not give any duplicate product. Of the market, 60% is from abroad and 40% from India. We will begin exporting the products only from January. In a recent business plan competition at IIM-Ahmedabad, Lal10 won the first place among 400 participants."

Antriksh Kumar, creative lead of Lal10, and an MBA student at NITIE said: "The website was launched on October 16 this year, and Kolhapuri chappals were our first order, from a customer in Telangana. Gohil is the one who visits several states to have tie-ups with different vendors to get their product available on our website."

Find your daily dose of news & explainers in your WhatsApp. Stay updated, Stay informed-  Follow DNA on WhatsApp.
Advertisement

Live tv

Advertisement
Advertisement