Deepak Ravindran, Abhinav Sree, Nath and Ashwin Hisamuddin Mohammad-Judges were back at the LBS College of Engineering, Kerala.
She graduated in 2009 and instead of choosing the beaten track to get an MBA or a comfortable job with a multinational company, these 20 and many decided to start their own business, Innoz Tech, which deals in mobile and web applications.
“I think if one wants to be an entrepreneur, it is best to start early. While we had the advantage of experience, we were lucky, as we are good at every step tutorial,” says Deepak Ravindran, the CEO of 22-year-old company, which was created in August 2008.
Starting early has other advantages too. ”We can completely focus on our business and take risks without having to think of other commitments,” he jokes.
Of course, convincing the members of his family was hard at first, but after that initial hiccup, things pretty much fell into place. Being a top ranker in TATA-NEN hottest start-ups in 2008 and to have represented India in a global business competition in the U.S. in 2009 convinced the family to support their vision.
“Even then people will not take us seriously as we were young,” says Ravindran. But young entrepreneurs brought together an initial capital of R 2 lakh (Rs 200,000) and started with its flagship product SMSGyan.
“SMSGyan was our university project, he decided to commercialize it. As its name suggests, it is to receive the newsletter via SMS on various topics such as gadget prices, cricket scores, movie / book reviews etc. It’s like an encyclopedia that responds to user queries over a SMS with up to 500 characters, “says Ravindran.
The application works with all phones, GPRS does not require and is free for the current 1 million users.
“Although we see a number of other applications based on the same concept, what makes us special is that we deliver the information through a single channel,” says Ravindran.
The enthusiastic technophiles also went on to launch your business for iAccelerator program, an initiative of the Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship in IIM-Ahmedabad and have selected. ”We were the only students selected from 100 applicants and received our first round of program funds,” boasts Ravindran.
With 3G on the horizon, Innoz Tranz trusts his second, which took six months to develop with the help of the iAccelerator. Tranz is a file sharing application for transferring photos, videos and music with friends of the agenda.
“Mobile phones are not simple devices only to call friends. It is a PC, camera, MP3 player and more” details Ravindran. The application can be accessed through a mobile internet and now has about 10,000 registered users, add an average of 100 users per day.
This 13-employee company has seen the participation of active investors as well. ”Our investors include Silicon Valley veterans as well as multinational companies like Intel, Microsoft and Sun, who gave us technical support,” Ravindran lists.
For now, Ravindran and his friends are game for a major expansion of its small business and believe they can clock a turnover of R 24 lakh (Rs 2.4 million) this year.
Tranz Innoz expected to be as popular social networking sites like Facebook for mobile users is on the Internet. ”We have an eye on the acceleration of our user base for the two products. Our target group is the age group between 18 and 25 years and we plan to collaborate with cultural festivals in schools to make our brand more visible. Being between Technopark companies is undoubtedly an advantage and we intend to take full advantage of it, “says Ravindran.