Innovation is the mantra for this engineer trio

Nagpur: Still in their early 20s, Ritu, her brother Pratik Malhotra and their neighbour Pratik Harde made headlines with their innovations this year. All three are engineers and have been developing ideas and creating products that make significant impact on day to day life.
Holding patents for 21 designs, the trio has already received awards from organizations like Hewlett Packard, Reinvent Maharashtra and CII for developing a digital aquarium and digital planters. “Our purpose is to make life easy for people,” says 26-year-old Harde whose first brush with innovation was six years back when he made a safe and simple injection needle for infants.

“A broker of a multi-national pharmaceutical company purchased the design at a hefty price. That set the ball rolling for the three of us,” he says. “Right since childhood, the three of us have been working on what is usually termed as Jugaad. Our mothers too encouraged us to innovate,” says Harde who, like Ritu and Pratik, also lost his father when in Class X.

The threesome has named their company ‘Design It Ezy’ which complements the products. The digital aquarium and digital planters have made it easy for people to take holidays or stay away from home without worrying about who would feed the fish or water the plants. The newly launched product, Ezyspit is a disposable glass and Ezyvomit a bag, packed with macro molecular pulp that coagulates spit and vomit and releases a fragrance making carrying and disposing of it easy.

“These products focus on patients suffering with contagious diseases like TB so their spit does not contaminate the environment. While the vomit bags can be useful on board an aircraft or boats,” Harde explains. “The liquid, once it drops into the bag or glass, becomes germ free so it does not contaminate the environment,” he informs.

The products have been an instant hit and the company’s turnover in the first year of production crossed Rs 3 crore. “We want India to be known for its innovations and that these products should find markets abroad,” says Pratik Malhotra. The planters, aquarium and Ezyspit have found markets in Dubai, Singapore and Australia. “Ezyspit is garnering attention in Russia where spitting is a problem. Hospitals in US too have shown interest in the product,” Malhotra says.

Attributing their success also to timing, Ritu who recently received the Women Entrepreneur award from CII says, “Today people are tech-friendly. The government is giving the right push to start-ups and this is the era of Digital India. All this is working for us. With so much stress on Swachh Bharat, NGOs and corporates too are clamouring to tie up with our Ezyspit for CSR activities,” she adds.