Teenprenuers to incubate startups in Kerala

KOCHI: Age is just a state of mind. It is talent that counts, the uniqueness that makes you special. Delhi-based twin teenpreneurs Yashraj and Yuvraj Bhardwaj are the best example of this. The twins, who carved a niche of themselves in research at the tender age of 12 years, are on a mission: To incubate talent and promote innovation.

The duo is not shy to declare they dream of bagging a Nobel in science for India. They have established Workolab, a co-working space with a research facility in Delhi to help novice innovators. They arrived in Kochi the other day with a mission to establish a high profile research lab where researchers, even undergraduates can accomplish their research dreams and come up with innovative technologies.
Sharing their dream of bringing a change in the society, Yashraj and Yuvraj told ‘Express’ they want to find solutions to the problems faced by the state by promoting innovation.

“We will identify talent at the schools and colleges, provide training to find solutions, get their investments together and facilitate them to launch startups. We will promote research innovation technology based companies that really have something to offer. We plan to reach out to even remote locations in Kerala, including tribal areas and offer solutions to the problems they face,” said Yashraj.

Workolab will join hands with InQ Innovation, a global open innovation curator headquartered in Sydney, Australia with a presence in Kochi. InQ Innovation, which works with other ecosystem partners to bridge and scale across individual ecosystems is planning to expand to Bengaluru, Mumbai and Dubai. Workolab, a unit of Zenith Vipers Solutions Private Limited, established by the teenpreneurs, signed an MoU with InQ Innovations to leverage co-working space for establishment of a research hub in Kochi, which will be curated jointly.

“We are looking forward to working in association with the state government and district administrations to establish sub units and research training centres across Kerala so that we can reach out to more researchers. Within three years we will be able to come up with innovative solutions to the problems faced by the state,” said Yuvraj.

Summarising their progress as researchers, Yuvraj said they invent products and implement it through Workolab.”We have around 40 researchers working at our facility and 90 per cent of them are undergraduates. But they invent something and have submitted patent applications. We have established four working spaces to support startups. Workolab has set up research labs in schools and colleges to promote talent,” he said.

On their journey from class VII students to researchers, Yashraj said they started developing innovative ideas at when they were 12.

“We used to read science fiction. That was what ignited curiosity in our minds. We did a self-analysis and started reading science journals and research papers. As we were not rich enough to buy research papers, we urged our school alumni to download the papers through the internet facility at the University library. We related the science fiction with the real research works and tried to figure out the development in the next five years. Our first research project was the Bajra water purifier, which can remove the heavy metals in water. There is no purifier in India which can do this.

“Though the technology is available in foreign countries, it is costly. We could introduce a cheap model. But it was difficult to convince the researchers,” Yashraj said.