What happens when four college students want to be able to go on more holidays together? A business initiative, apparently, at least in the case of Apsara V, Vivek Kumar, Adithtya P C, and Ashwin Asher Kosaraju.
According to Vivek Kumar, it all started on a trip to Kodaikanal. "Ashwin, Apsara, and I had gone there," he says, "and we wanted to be able to make more trips like that happen."
Their solution was to start a small business and earn their own travel money. "Apsara started selling customised posters in her college (Mount Carmel College) as part of a project, and we just kept it going. We make Photoshop edits of images from famous movies, TV shows, etc, and we custom-design some of the posters from scratch, before getting them all printed. At first it was just the three of us, and Adithya joined three months later."
Their company, Mushywall was launched on September 27, 2013 and they set up their first official stall at New Horizon College Of Engineering during the fest 'Sargam'. "We had a problem of capital at the beginning since we were all students," he recalls, "but after our first event, it all went smoothly."
Since then, they've set up stalls at several fests, including St Josephs, Mount Carmel, CMRIT, and MS Ramiah colleges. "Our best experience was at St Josephs where we got an awesome response from students ranging from Class 3 to 12. It was great."
They started off designing and selling just posters, in five categories - movies, TV shows, music, comics and cartoons, and video games. "Now we're planning to launch a line of t-shirts, very soon," Vivek shares.
Surprisingly, they don't seem to find it difficult to handle an increasingly successful business alongside college. "We just handle our time well," says Vivek with a shrug.
"There's four of us - we plan our timetable well, to cover as many events as we can. We make time for planning and designing - it's easy once you get used to it. Besides, we've had help at times from our friends."