Indore: Mozarts of people centric start-ups

Indore: Bagging second runner’s up position in an entrepreneurship competition, student entrepreneurs Dikshant Mahant and Mayank Gandhe won Rs 5,000 for presentation of their idea recently. Their entrepreneur journey has stories of start-ups that worked and tasted success eventually.

Discussing their journey, Mayank said, “Our first venture together is Rentoversity, a platform where people can rent used clothes and give their clothes on rent. Our first start-up bagged the second position in ‘Pitch Premier’ at IIT Kanpur early in the year 2017.” “We had been working on it together for quite some time,” Mayank said. While he concentrated on their project, Dikshant tried his skills on other projects as well.

“Identifying a burning issue that impeded women’s life in villages, we had come up with a project for making sanitary pads,” Dikshant said. Their idea received appreciation and awards. “I was working on that project with some other people and of course, unable to give time to my first project that time,” Dikshant said. While the idea succeeded well, his friends found it convenient to remove him from the team to reduce sharing.

“At the moment, when my teammates claimed that I was not in their team, it hurt me,” Dikshant said. He was heartbroken but with the help of Free Press clipping, he was able to prove it otherwise. “Coming back to work on our first project and even developing new ideas, we resumed working together,” Mayank said. Turning things around to feel positive and hopeful again, they came up with a new idea.

“We went to villages nearby and found that most children wanted digital education and access to computers,” Mayank said. They decided to come up with something for them, but it seemed difficult to find cost effective computers. “We made a computer that would consume less power, cheaper and meant for basic education,” Mayank said. Testing their idea, the duo visited Ratwa village near Dhar to show computer.

“Students were amazed and happy to be able to see and study the computer,” Mayank said. Their project is still in initial stage, but their story receives appreciation. “We have learned that failure is just a step towards success and we are okay with failing another couple of times, until we find our success in a way to serve the society,” the duo quoted.