TEC Institute – First day

It’s Saturday morning here. I’ve completed(successfully) my first week of my internship. I intend to write my experiences over a series of short posts. I work with the TEC (Technology Entrepreneurship & Commercialization) Institute at FCOB (Fisher College of Business).
Day1: I was asked to head down to Mason Hall at 11.30AM on Monday (15th July). I had not yet familiarized myself with OSU campus and was advised to start by 10.30 itself tor each there on time. I was getting ready when the airport authorities called saying that they’ve found my missing luggage and they’ll come around 10.45 AM. I was worried since I didn’t want to be late on my first day. But one thing I came to know later on is that people here make no compromises on punctuality and credibility. Baggage reached on time, I made a run for it and somehow managed to reach room 256, Madison Hall by 11.27AM. #phew

Dr.Michel Camp, Executive Director, TEC Institute and Erica Waite, Program Director, TEC Institute were in the room. I went in (heart beats pumping). They were very friendly – we had a very interesting discussion. I figured that the people here have a hard time figuring out how to pronounce my first name (Rahul) and mostly give up on my second name even before trying (Raveendranath). We talked about my profile, academic background, interest in entrepreneurship, the general technology & entrepreneurial landscape of Kerala (which is of course being defined by Startup Village) & of India. They made me sign an agreement similar to an NDA and one which entitles TEC ownership of any ideas I may conceive during my tenure here. Then they explained the idea behind and functioning of TEC.

They are TEC Institute and TEC Academy. TEC Academy has various academic courses related to entrepreneurship – syllabus mostly designed by Dr.Camp himself. TEC Institute is where I work – it’s sort of a consulting service that provide expert analytic services (market survey, competitive analysis etc) for startups in various stages. Also, Dr. Camp is very resourceful and his networking assistance is also an added highlight. So TEC works on a lot of proprietary and confidential data which is why I had to sign the NDA. Erica also explained to me that I’ll be working on multiple projects over my internship. Since I had an IT background, they also asked me whether I’d me interested in working on a project on symantic web and ontologies – which I was very glad to do. I was handed me over a lot of resources to read through for my first assignment (an IT one) – to figure out usability improvements for a custom made project management solution for TEC.

One of the interesting questions Dr.Camp asked me was regarding my future plans in case I chose to pursue entrepreneurship – whether I’ll be interested in entrepreneurship opportunities in the US or back in India. I expressed my interest in exploring the opportunities back in India. I said that I feel there are large gaps in the socio-economic conditions of India (wrt western countries) – gaps which can be filled to an extend by leveraging technology properly; and that I feel I have a personal obligation to give back to my country & community – contribute to its economic development as much as I can. The fact that my high school education(Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya) and college education(CET) was mostly funded by the government could be a reason I guess.

Afterwards, Erica showed me around the office and assigned a workspace & desktop for working. There were two other analysts working with TEC this summer – Karthik and Ajlouni, Burouj (from Jordan). I interacted with them. The rest of the first day was spend going through the documents I was given. I left the office at around 6PM. I’ve some photos of the office.

Office

A view from office window

Conference hall

FCOB

TEC Institute

Kitchen attached to office

Waterholes on every floor

Fisher COB

Bike parking and bus stop in front of FCOB

In front of Fisher

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My experience with Startup Village

I’d missed sharing this in my blog. so here it goes.

Note: The link seems to be broken after Startup Village migrated their blog to a new website. I’m posting below a draft copy of the article I had with me.

Since its inception in April 2012, I’ve been to Startup Village many times. Each visit has been equally memorable and inspiring and probably has impacted my life more than anything else so far.

I got my first real taste of coding and hacker culture during my SV funded visit to Bangalore for 55444 hackathon in July 2012. The first time I visited SV was with 8 of my college friends for a week long android training workshop, during our onam vacations of 2012. The excellent training by Mr. Zacharias (our dear Zac) and helped us start off on our mobile app development trail. Our stay was provisioned at Kerala Institute for Entrepreneurship Development (KIED).

The week-long stint at SV was marked by another memorable incident. The initial pitch for my first college startup happened then. Our startup ‘Hedcet’ was at its infancy then. I remember entering Sijo’s room with my laptop to demo the initial prototype of our product ‘campusLAN’, a campus ERP solution. The few minutes of talk was thought provoking and insightful. Sijo immediately connected us with many of his contacts exploring the same domain as ours. An important lesson learned that day was that its not just the quality of the product that matters, but making our customers aware of the need for such a product was equally if not more important. We got virtually incubated at SV then. Presently. our the team of 5 has expanded to 14, we launched campusLAN as ‘Beehive’ at Oracle-SV MoU signing event. HedCet got listed among the top 5 student startups in SV. We even got the opportunity to meet and discuss our project ideas with Kris Gopalakrishnan (Chief of Advisory Board), who mentors startups at SV. He has agreed to be the first customer for our next product ‘TinyMail’ which is under development.

Since the 55444 Hackathon, I’ve never missed a hackathon if possible. Even more importantly, I’ve never missed a chance to visit SV whenever I am at Ernakulam. We readied our next major product ‘Medicol’, an appointment scheduling system for doctors by pulling an all nighter at SV. Another project by myself and my classmates, ‘SMS based vehicle locating system’ got virtually incubated at SV. We were also able to start a commercial venture called DialBlood (http://dialblood.com/) around another project ‘Automated Bloodbank management system’ with the guidance from Sijo as well as technical support from Mobme (the inspirational student startup from CET).

One other key take away from my visits to SV is the chance to interact with the startups incubated there. It is easy for anyone to come up with startup ideas. But these people there have actually taken the bold decision to pursue their dreams and make their ideas a reality. Talks with founders of Wowmakers, Verbicio, Exam Voice, Mashinga, RHL Vision, DhaneW Research, Profoundis, MindTree etc not to mention Mobme has helped me realize how it actually feels to work in a startup environment. Conversations are filled with gems of advice that only first hand experience can give. This itself makes the trip to SV worthwhile.

As much as I realise that my journey has just begun and that there is a lot more to be seen, explored and experienced, I cannot even imagine how my life would have been if it were not for SV. I consider myself lucky that Startup Village came into being at the same time as my college tenure. SV has numerous programs for students interested in startups. The recent SVSquare program and Fisher Collge of Business Internship program etc are a few examples of the initiatives that are offered. The 20% attendance scheme for student entrepreneurs pioneered by SV is also a huge relief for many students in Kerala. A chance for them to pursue their dreams.

Looking forward to lots of further fruitful associations with SV.

The internship with Fisher College of Business

Things happened really quick. I’ll try to quickly setup the background.

I am presently in Columbus, Ohio, USA for a 2 month internship with Fisher College Of Business, Ohio State University. All thanks to Startup Village & Labx foundation. My internship here is a part of their novel initiative to give exposure to latest developments in business/research areas to students from Indian colleges (ones which are not as lucky as IITs/NITs in terms of exposure). I got this opportunity after going through a series of online interviews (google Hangouts) conducted by Lab-X and a final discussion with Dr. Michel Camp, the Executive Director at Centre for Entrepreneurship, Fisher COB. The support and guidance given by team Lab-X – Mr. Ketan Dande, Miss. Sampreeti, Chris Gary for my interview preparations was really great. They even found time to do two rounds of mock interviews for me before the final one with Dr.Camp. I really hope to make the most of this opportunity. I plan to take back a lot of experiences to share with my friends and hope to encourage more fellow students to step up and take initiatives.

Everything fell into place as destiny would have it. My internship with Amazon ended on July 5th. I had my 6th semester lab exams on 11th & 12th of July. I started for Columbus on 13th July morning 4 am. The journey was memorable. It took around 30 hours in total. I met a lot of knowledgeable people during the flight and at the airports. It was a connecting flight from Etihad airlines via Abu Dhabi till New York. From there, I had to manually recheck my luggage and board an American Airlines flight to Columbus.

I reached Columbus by around 10PM on 13th July US time. Speaking of which, USA has 5 timezones. The one here lags the Indian time by around 9.30 hours. First surprise here – my luggage didn’t come through. Luckily, I had all my money and documents in my backpack. Not so luckily, I had none of my clothes or other essentials with me. I immediately registered a complaint with the Baggage Customer Service. They said it might probably be held up in Customs check @New York and that I can expect it in the next couple of days. Lesson learned – always carry your essentials and a pair of clothing on your backpack. Siddharth Mulay, a friend of Ketan and a PhD. student at OSU in Control Systems came to pick me up. He lives with another PhD. student and a software engineer. I too am presently living with them.

After reaching home, Siddharth took me out for dinner. Then we went straight down to Walmart – the biggest retailer chain here. Its open 24×7. I had to buy some basic clothing. We finished around 1.30 AM. I was asked to get a proper sleep so as to reset my biological clock. The next day was also mostly relaxing and getting acclimatized. Sid took me for a walk around the campus – or at-least a portion of it. The OSU campus is very big. It has a lot of world class amenities too – including the largest campus gym in the US and a very extensive library.

I’ll let some photos I took do the rest of the talking.