Three Class X students in Jaipur – Chetanya Golechha, Mrigank Gujjar and Utsav Jain – have received a funding of as much as Rs 3 crore for their start-up ‘Infusion Beverages’.
The trio – students of Jaipur’s Neerja Modi School – participated in the entrepreneurship fest of their school in April last year, which changed their fate, says a Times of India report.
The journey of success of the three started from framing an idea, finding an investor to seeing their product/service turn into a reality in less than a year.
“Our presentation of the product failed to impress the judges in the fest. We were kicked out in the first round. Though we were out of the competition in the first hour but got the order of delivering 150 flavoured water bottles,” Times of India quoted Golechha as saying.
Grabbing the opportunity, the three went on to deliver 150 bottles, and never looked back since then. ‘Infusion Beverages’ is based on the theme of making flavoured water without adding any preservatives.
Mrigank said that they carried out extensive research on Google to find a way to make flavoured water without adding sugar and soda.
He said that as they are minors, their parents helped them with procurement of licence, permissions from the food department and got approval from FSSAI on their behalf.
The trio then participated in the entrepreneurship competitions at IIT-Kanpur and IIM-Indore and received wide appreciation. The major boost came after Malviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT) decided to incubate their idea.
By January, they had sold 8,000 bottles of flavoured water – kewra, rose and bel flavours through business to business mode.
While they were looking for a big breakthrough in their business, an investor called them to Indore for a meeting in January.
“The meeting was successful in the first hour. They decided to fund Rs 3 crore. Under the agreement, we have the responsibility of marketing and research. The plant will be based in Indore,” said Jain.
