HYDERABAD: Shunning lucrative job offers and keeping away from campus interviews, a band of four Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (IIT-H) students have embarked on the path of business and launched a start-up.
Ankit Mishra, Mudit Tanwani, Sanyam Kapoor and Chinmay Jindal have set up Storyxpress. A brand video which costs as less as five US dollars is what Storyxpress, a software application developed by them, offers. Started two years ago when Ankit and Mudit were in their third year and Sanyam Kapoor and Chinmay Jindal in the first year, Storyxpress evolved from a college startup idea to a full-fledged software application today. Storyxpress has won an award for student innovation among start-ups from the Hyderabad Software Enterprises Association (HYSEA).
“We have made all efforts on Storyxpress in the past two years and are delighted that finally our efforts are getting rewarded. As all of us are students, ours is a bootstrapped start-up and we did not hire anyone or paid salaries to anyone. Even we did not earn any money. Whatever money we earned till now was again invested to better the stroyexpress application,” said Chinmay Jindal, a computer science and engineering student. Being student entrepreneurs has helped these guys as they themselves have developed the application out of interest and taken up its marketing. Wi-Fi connection on the campus made their work easy.
“Though we have to face challenges at every point to come up with a successful startup, it has been never easier than now, as the situation is quite conducive for youngsters to try new things and start something on their own. A lot of mentors and investors are chipping in to help student entrepreneurs and even corporates are coming forward to lend support. The environment in Hyderabad is very encouraging for start-ups right now,” said Ankit Mishra, who is working full time on storyxpress.
But is shunning lucrative placements and launching a start-up such an easy and cool thing to do? “Scores of small and medium business owners who want to present their products in the best possible way but are unable to afford it due to huge costs involved in making brand videos traditionally. We want to help these people by creating an automated software application. One can create a brand video through ‘do-it-yourself’ model by using storyxpress application,” said Chinmay.