‘Students should have knowledge on market’

Vijayawada: Balaji Kummari, a 3rd year student at VR Siddhartha Engineering College, came up with an idea to design a tool for tailors for operational efficiency.

With the help of his friend, a costume designer, he started a business but with little success. He enrolled for i2E boot camp and was selected.

“Now, I understand that my tool was not adding any value to the customers,” Kummari said. He went to customers and tailors to find out his market segment. Reaching out to them is exactly what many young aspiring entrepreneurs miss these days,” said Krish Nangegadda.

The engineering students are so immersed in the details that they ignore to know the viability of their products or software applications, he added.

“The first step we ask students to do is to go to customers and talk to them. Many students drop their ideas after speaking to their customers. They realize that their ideas were not viable in the market segments,” he said.

“I was also made to think about scalability and the cost of running a business in a big way,” Kummari said.

He added that the i2E programme has changed his perspective on how to build and run a start-up successfully.