St. Kabir’s Dhruv & team win Ist prize for VR-based school education business model

Kritika Kanwar

Chandigarh, June 5

A Class X student explains his business idea revolving around cryptocurrency, while a Class XI girl confidently explains her business plan to make furniture out of tetra packs with the cool confidence of a seasoned entrepreneur and there is another student whose business model makes a jury member promise an investment of Rs 10 lakh immediately. Meet the young breed of entrepreneurs who draw detailed market strategies and business plans and work out cost-benefit analysis with elan.

At an age when the students are expected to remain restricted to their books, the 80 odd high school students taking part in the Young Founders Summit took the idea of entrepreneurship at the school level a notch higher.

The three-day summit, held in Chandigarh, that concluded today, witnessed some mind-boggling pitches, from not just the tricity students, but also from some of them from Bihar and as far as Nepal. From creating a software related to Virtual Reality (VR) to coming up with a smart plug that will help you switch on your geyser through your phone, the students at the summit dispelled several myths related to school education.

Proud prize winners

Dhruv Kapoor of St Kabir School, Chandigarh, and his Team Eduwiz won the first prize (with a cash prize of Rs 12,000) at the summit. Talking about his ambitious plan, he said, “We want to implement the concept of Virtual Reality into education. We are creating a software company which will be integrated into the school education. We will have our own animators. We will create our own VR into education. We will release the VRs in the school. Our company will make training modules for school curriculum. Our revenue will come from the courses. Our revenue will come from the releasing of ideas in the school. Talking about challenges in the path of success, he said, “Customer acquisition will be difficult in the beginning, as school budgets are really tight and but we expect that once a couple of schools start joining in, many others will also do. Like they started investing in the idea of smart school and smart boards. Our target is classes VIII to X.”

The second prize winner (with a cash prize of Rs 8000) had the audience in awe with her unique idea ‘Rocket T SAT’ where T stands for Tetra and SAT stands for ‘Sasta and Tikau’ with the team members Hargunn, Jhinuk, Amya, Nidhi, Sahna , Gauri, Umika, Pearl. Talking about this, she said, the company aims to reduce the piling of the landfills by recycling tetra packs and making something sustainable out of it like the trays , dustbins and coasters and much more. We have thought of tetra because nobody works on recycling of this. We aim at providing employment to rural women.”

Adhiraj Jain, a Class XII student of St Kabir School, Chandigarh and his team ‘Crypto path’ won the third prize (got a cash prize of Rs 4,000). Throwing light on his pet project on crypto currency, he said, “The idea behind my project is to introduce the concept of mutual funds in the crypto market through which we can reduce the risk of business. We will develop an R and D team which will be a team of the experts who know the market through and through. Through this team, we will help people invest in the stock market. Our revenue will be just 1 pc of it.”

Brainchild of 21-year-old Navya Mehta, a graduate from the Kelley School of Business, one of the top 10 business schools in the US, the summit provided a platform to school kids to share their start up ideas with industry mavens. The 10-member jury, included renowned names like the CEO of Lahori Jeera, Saurabh Munjal, Executive Director of Tynor Group of companies and Sameer Walia, Director of Chitkara University who adjudged the participants.

Pitch of the day

Adarsh, who came all the way from Bihar to take part in the summit, succeeded in wooing the investors with his team ‘Skillzo’ and won an on the spot investment of whopping Rs 10 lakh from an investor Rahul Narvekar. “My plan is to create a platform for high school students where they can take courses related to Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality and the blockchain technology. We are using a technology prescriptive analytics on the basis of which we decide where a student is lagging. Our AI-based system will suggest them improvement changes and on the basis of this, we will provide them personalised mentors according to their level. We will provide a platform to provide solutions to students lagging behind in various courses. We will also arrange experts for them,” he said.