By the time engineering students pass out of college, they will be ready to start up their business ventures, as they get valuable tips in entrepreneurship at their institute itself

Posted On Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 11:22:47 PM

Instead of becoming job seekers, engineering students in the city are dreaming to become job creators. National Entrepreneurship Network is guiding them to start their own business ventures.

Recently, an Entrepreneurship Awareness Camp, supported and sponsored by Department of Science & Technology (DST) and Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI), was organised by Maharashtra Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (MCED) at the Pimpri-Chinchwad College of Engineering (PCCOE).

Seventeen first-year engineering students of PCCOE are currently working as eLeaders (entrepreneurship leaders) and creating awareness among students about entrepreneurship. They also organised an eWeek at their college.

Rohan Dighe, a 24-year-old engineer and director of the start-up Social Web Factory, is a role model for students aspiring to be job creators. He had initially started a service-based company. Now, along with providing services, his venture is also developing web products.

Dighe spoke to Mirror  on his business venture.  “I passed out of college in 2007. When I was a student, we hardly thought of entrepreneurship.

But after the recession, the efforts of MCED and EDI are more noticed. Initially, I worked for six months in a company and earned some money to start  a small venture. Within a year, we earned a profit of Rs 15 lakh.

Then I even employed six people to work with me. We got few international clients too. Initially my company was into web applications for community social games on networking sites. Now we are also into product development.”

Diwakar Keskar, Regional Head of MCED said, “We want to promote entrepreneurship among students  through such events. We also arrange industrial visits for students to know the processes in business. We also invite industrialists to talk about their experience and encourage students.”

Prof Shitalkumar Rawandale of PCCOE who is co-ordinating the entrepreneurship programme, said “We have to create more opportunities and a conducive environment for fresh engineers who want to opt for a career in entrepreneurship.

The students who want to become entrepreneurs after working for a couple of years, should consider jobs in small-scale industries where they will get exposure to work  in all areas like finance, marketing, operations, HR etc.”

Name: Rohan Suhas Dighe
Age: 24
Education: BE Computer Engineering, 2007
Company Name: Social Web Factory
Founded: 1st Feb 2008

Company Description/What does your company do?
Social web factory is a Pune based company focusing on delivering strategy and solutions for the emerging social application platforms. We provide our clients with a complete end-to-end solution from strategy formation to design, development, monetization and launch. Social Web Factory’s service offerings allows our clients to engage their brand/ideas with an ever increasing audience who are increasing on Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, LinkedIn as means to be in touch with friends, families and colleagues.

Short Description:
We build applications on social platforms like (orkut, facebook, myspace,iphone etc.)

Write the good news about your company. As in how well your company is doing, your better experiences with being a part of business, if you are hiring. If you have just begun, write about how exciting (or unexciting) it is…

We had 2 success stories in the lifetime of the company.
1)We worked for our client company on a project which won the “Best Social Application in Asia” for a competition organized by MySpace. Some of the other competitors were Korea, Japan, China.

2)Another success story is our own product called Housie on Orkut which we managed to bootstrap which has a traction of more than 11k users in less than 5months.

Also, we expanded our company from 1 person (just me working) to 8 people, moved to a bigger office and managed to get more 15 Top Indian clients in the very first year.

We have had all this bad news economically (the downturn here and recession in the west) it was said that startups would suffer the most. Tell us how has your company tackled the downturn. What are you doing differently and how. Do you feel dispirited, do you sometimes regret taking up entreprenuership so early in life. Or is it just another challenge that you have to deal with.

Well, the economic downturn was sudden and since our work depends totally on marketing budgets of client companies it was really difficult at start but the fact that indian people have a tendency to save money in case anything happens in the future and that is what saved us. We have not just managed to run the company but have implemented expansion plans during recession since the labour costs were cut down and we could hire more people.

The only thing we have observed during this phase “the economic slowdown” is sometimes the indian clients get too overprotective and too concerned about their budgets even if they are not necessarily affected by it.

Another strategy that i am using is “cut down all costs by 10% and all corrective measures will happen” – this line was said by Kishore Biyani in one of his interviews. I guess an idea in this stage to be competitive and to “sell your goods at 10% less amount”, if everyone starts to do this we will see the economy automatically correcting.

If you are just starting off as an entrepreneur, explain the thoughtprocess behind starting off during these times.
For a young entrepreneur who is starting now i would say “There is no correct time to start your business, jump in and things should fall in place, do not worry about recession since you are not the only one who is going through it”

Help from the city:

Well, i would like to mention Pune Open Coffee Club here who’s role has been quite influential in connecting startups like ours with experienced/seasoned entrepreneurs and giving us a platform to allow collaboration between companies in Pune.

A brief about me & my startup,

I am Rohan Dighe, Founder & CEO, Social Web Factory. We are a part service-part product based company. My startup is still in a very early stage (5 month old) still operating from a “garage” office. Team size 6.

Please find answers to your questions as below: -

1. Do power cuts affect startups more than larger companies?
Yes, the fact that during the pre-funding stage all financials are generally organic in nature, hence the cash flow is limited. Larger companies have larger budgets and hence can choose to opt for external backup methods thus avoiding power cut issues totally.
Also, during startup many can choose to operate at less margins (to get more business) thereby neglecting costs to buy/rent backup systems.

Also larger companies have the option to be located in technology parks which in cases may guarantee uninterrupted power supplies whose costs can be shared across all the companies in the park all of which is not available to essentially “garage” based start ups. with 5-10 employees.

2. How is your company handling the power cuts?
Initially when the duration of load shedding was small (approx 3hrs) we decided to got for an inverter based backup but then the problem got worse and the load shedding increased to (6+ hours) and that too at prime working times (9:30 to 1:30) & (4:30 to 7:30), so we realized that no backup would work for so long. We evaluated several options.

Diesel Generator – Left out because of diesel shortage, also initial cost too high.
Gas Generator – Cheaper than a diesel one but even gas is a limited resource and we would have ended up using a cylinder every 3 days.

So, finally the only choice left with us was to work night shifts to cope up with the issues of power cut in our area.

It was really difficult convincing employees since during a startup the salary offered is also less as compared to the big companies and it is very difficult to keep them motivated. We had to give each one a salary rise to convince them. Luckily we did not have any female employees but now the power cuts are keeping us away from hiring any.

3. Do you think that if the power cuts were to continue you would consider moving your business to a different city?
Yes, absolutely without a thought, if this problem gets worst we are out of here. A lot of our clients have suggested and are giving us a helping hand by inviting us to operate out of their offices. (This would mean we would have to cut costs but there is not other option)

Moving to a different city (where the problem is less severe) is an option but then as the business grows costs would be considerably higher. Also, the fact that it would again mean hiring for new talent and setting up base where operating costs could be much higher than current scenarios.

4. Do you think that a start-up especially could become less competitive if it does not access to public power?
Yes, this is very true, because power is such an issue that just cannot be coped up with, especially for service-based startup it could mean delayed deliveries thereby loosing very important business very crucial for startup.

Clients could just walk off by saying “we are surprised to hear that you have issues which you cannot solve” – and we have lost clients due to this recently. The client’s side on this is absolutely correct because they could choose from other options who could deliver on time and who don’t have these issues.

Furthermore , loss of electricity is not a problem international clients are accustomed too. so the reason that work could not be completed on time because of a power cut is completely unacceptable and makes us look unprofessional.

5. Would you pay more for unrestricted power access?
I would say No – why should one have to pay for unrestricted access its a basic public service necessity and duty of the government to ensure proper planning is in place to provide electricity, it is like saying would you pay more to have water 24 hours or would you pay more to have all roads paved or would you pay more to have the phone lines working all the time – absolutely not. If the cost of the electricity rises as a whole for everyone its fine but no one should be expected to be charged more for the privilege of getting unrestricted power access. Electricity, Water, Internet is a public necessity its not a privilege.

Thank you!