The KTU Startup Journey

So it all started with a phone call from one of my friends.

She asked, “So there’s this Idea competition I’m applying to, Can you be my teammate?”. And I said yes. At the time, I didn’t think how much of an impact it would have on my college life.

Phase 1: Idea Pitching at Mascot Hotel

So she submits the idea and then I forget about it. A week later, she called me again, saying we got shortlisted out of 300 ideas and would be having to present our Idea, next month, at an event in Mascot Hotel, Thiruvananthapuram.

We had exams, just on the day of the event. But we managed to reach the venue after the exams for our pitch. And our idea was:

An ecommerce platform that provides Hydroponics sets and provide complete analytics on the plants.

We planned on tracking carbon footprint, growth, watering, and upscaling the generated plant waste, striving for a circular economy.

We pitched and were appreciated for our creative pitch. The feedback was that Hydroponics can’t be that profitable and it’s not cost-effective.

To counter this, we introduced a business model that took subsidies from the government and targeted schools and communities rather than individuals.

Our pitch was over, we thought we did okay. Later in the event, it was announced that some selected participants would be undergoing a boot camp at Startup Mission, Kochi.

We were excited but didn’t expect anything.

Phase 2: Bootcamp at KSUM, Kochi

And we got in! We were one of the 19 teams out of 22.

We had packed schedules for the upcoming 3 days. The BootCamp had lessons about Marketing, Design Thinking, and Mindset. We met a lot of founders, notably Mr. Najeeb Bin Shereef, Founder of Zaara BioTech.

We also attended a session with Mr. Bibu Punnooran, Director at Medivision.

We were pumped by all their talks and the guidance we received from the mentors who were on board. After the sessions, we modified our idea to

An ecommerce platform to sell Indoor Plants and a complete monitoring system driven by tech.

At the end of the first day, we had to pitch again. From the feedback we got, we iterated the idea to something a little more technically complicated:

A self watering Pot for Indoor Plants.

The second day had sessions from some of the Top Industry Leaders and we were given exercises and cheatsheets to analyze our Start-Up Idea.

After some more analysis, we decided to pivot our pitch into:

An Automatic Irrigation System for Bananas.

At the end of the Third day, we did a Market and Competitor Analysis and some research.

We pitched and the judges appreciated us for the progress we made throughout our journey.

Later, we were intimated that some of us would be granted funds for the Prototype Demonstration. We had tea and called it an end to some of the most remarkable days of my college life.

Phase 3- Prototype Demonstration at CET

So now, we were set on developing a prototype. Armed with the knowledge gained from the Bootcamp, we interviewed Farmers, Engineers, and Scientists to further dig into our project.

We faced various obstacles regarding implementation in scale, and the need for such precision for an ‘ordinary crop’.

Regardless, we decided to go ahead with the project. We built out a Machine Learning Model that predicts the amount of water to be dispersed on the basis of growth, soil moisture, humidity, temperature, and Sunlight. We also wanted to add a measure of N, P, and K. Due to the expenses of the sensor, it was decided to put it on hold for some time.

Here’s what we built:

I know it looks messy (the process was also messy lol) but we demoed the prototype successfully to the judges. The model was predicting the right amount of water and it was being dispersed through a water tube using pumps and IOT systems.

We were granted a total of Rs.25000 for the prototype Development.🥳

And that was the end of something awesome, I met a lot of cool people, did a lot of cool things, and learned a lot of things.

I am gonna make a note to myself about the things that I learned:

1. Last-minute work will never equate to consistent efforts and research.

2. Always build an initial version and test it out, rather than depending on theoretical research.

3. The team is important. The primary focus should be keeping them motivated and communicating with them efficiently.

4. Using Data in presentations will boost your credibility.

5. Use Thingspeak API to connect an ML model and IOT hehe.

6. Solve problems that you understand and experience.

Soo, that’s the end of it.😁

I am glad I did this.

See you in the next one!