Learning by doing
In my gap year in 2018, I joined the first batch of the Enterprise Fellowship. It was very transformational for me. It was a 1 year entrepreneurship fellowship co created and mentored by Aditya Jhunjhunwala, Yusuf Hakim, Palak Krishnamurthy, and Nisha Chawla as a way for fellows to learn the art and science of entrepreneurship and business by actually doing it instead of only attending business classes. We learned by doing real life projects and ventures. We also had theory sessions delivered excellently by our mentors and ‘Lighthouse’ sessions by industry leaders where we got to listen to their stories, talk to them and ask questions in a small circle. I honed my skills in video editing, design, learned how to sell, practiced the art of storytelling, met amazing people, and most importantly made good friends.
letsenterprise.in · instagram.com/lets_enterprise
Catapult project
Reverse engineered an educational toy for kids, made our own version with many design changes. My work was to design the files on AutoCAD and brainstorm design changes with my team, source the materials in local markets and negotiate deals, and get the toy manufactured and packaged. I was a part of the core team. I made 7 failed prototypes of the product till I reached a working one. We ultimately sold around 200 units of this product. We also organized a first of its kind event around it, called the catapult fest where we had large catapults throw coconuts upto a 100 feet away. Watch the video.
During the project I learned how much precision matters because even a 0.2mm difference in my autocad drawing affected how loosely or firmly the parts fit during assembly and we wanted to provide a good experience and product to users.
Baccha Party
With the educational toys that we had come up with and manufactured, we decided to organize a small event where we set up some games and implemented our toys in them. The motive was to get our product out there, generate sales and marketing material, and most importantly, to make people spend quality time with their kids. I was a part of the organizing team, and helped people with things during the event, while recording footage. My main job was to edit the video of the event and upload it to YouTube. Here’s the video.
#KARO 1.0
We wanted to create an event where people wouldn’t just have fun, but where they would actually learn something concrete while spending quality time with their family and friends. We came with the idea of #KARO where we had 16 workshops running throughout the day in batches. The workshops included cookie icing, vegan desserts, resin art, making terrariums, basics of finance, logo design, solving a Rubik’s cube, and a few more. People attended them with their family and friends and took what they made with them. I was a part of the core team during the ideation process. I then lead the team which was responsible for making presentations and pitching the idea to mentors. I then led the team which was responsible for brainstorming and selecting workshops, and finding artists who could conduct these workshops. I also was responsible for editing pre-event marketing videos for each individual workshop. We had around 350 attendees at our event. Watch the video.
#KARO 2.0
We wanted to improvise on our previous event and do it on a bigger scale. This time too, I was part of the core team and worked closely with our mentors during both the ideation and execution phase. I was the Chief Product Officer and led the team which worked on organizing the workshops. My team was responsible for brainstorming workshops and finding people who could conduct them. This time, I had more than 60 meetings with various people who had a skill, and worked closely with them to help them organize a workshop. We got 36 workshop takers on board. This time was very stressful and I had to learn to work with the 3 other members in the core team and deal with disagreements. Watch the video.
More Than Coding
This was a collaboration with Build Something Different, a Hong Kong based startup that aims to make coding fun for young students. They provided us with their web platform and some basic guidelines for web development workshops. We conducted a workshop for Rehlat Zahabia, an organization which works to impart skills to female students of Aljamea-tus-Saifiyah, a Bohri Community School. We then also conducted a workshop across 2 weekends for students from the age of 10 - 18. Both these workshops were about web development, learning basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and implementing it in fun projects using the BSD portal.