The World’s Longest-Running Experiment Started in 1879 and Will End in 2100

Since the late 19th century, botanists at the Michigan State University have been collaborating on a single seed-germination experiment. Now in its 137th year, it is turning out to be the world’s longest recurrently monitored scientific study. It will end in the year 2100, which means most of us won’t even be around for the final result.

The world’s longest-running experiment started out in the fall of 1879, when Dr. William James Beal, a botanist, set-out to find a conclusive answer to the one question that farmers have been asking for centuries: How many times do you have to pull out weeds before they entirely stop growing back? Beal realised that to answer the question, he needed to work it out for real – by finding out exactly how long seeds could remain dormant in soil while still remaining viable.

So he devised an experiment that would, in centuries, provide the answer he was looking for. He put together a collection of seeds of 23 different plant types and decided to leave them dormant for years, before checking if they would still germinate. He placed 50 seeds of each variety in each of 20 narrow-necked glass bottles filled with moist sand, and buried them in a secret spot on the university campus.

Kurt Stepnitz/Michigan State University

According to Beal’s own writings, each bottle was “left uncorked and placed with the mouth slanting downward so that water could not accumulate about the seeds.” He also wrote that “these bottles were buried on a sandy knoll in a row running east and west.” His plan was to take out one bottle every five years and see which seeds would grow.

Beal managed to open six bottles before he retired, passing on the experiment to a younger colleague, Henry Darlington, who then passed it on to other scientists including Robert Bandurski and Jan Zeevaart. It is currently being managed by Frank Telewski, who is also the curator of the university’s botanical garden named after Dr. WJ Beal.

Dr. William James Beal/Photo: Internet Archive

Under Beal’s original plan, the experiment should have been completed in 100 years, in 1979. But a decade after his retirement, in 1920, his successor realised that the experiment seemed to be stabilizing, with the same seeds sprouting each time. So he decided to wait a decade between excavations, and his successor extended that to two decades. The latest bottle was opened by Telewski in the spring of 2000, at night, trying not to draw attention to the spot that to this day, remains a secret.

“We don’t advertise where they’re buried because we don’t want anybody poking around and digging up souvenirs,” Telewski said, speaking to Atlas Obscura. “I’m always a little nervous when there’s construction on campus. You know: ‘Don’t put a building up there!’ ‘Why not?’ ‘I can’t tell you, just don’t!’”

Dr. Telewski/ Photo: Frank Telewski

From the bottle that Telewski unearthed, only two plant species out of 23 sprouted successfully. And out of the 15 bottles removed so far, the winning species has been Verbascum blattaria, or moth mullein, a common weed in the US. 23 of its 50 seeds from Telewski’s bottle germinated, which he considers a “phenomenal” result. The other plant – Malva rotundifolia, was nowhere close, with only one sprouted seed.

While the experiment was definitely relevant in Beal’s time, when farmers didn’t have herbicides and had to resort to manual weeding, the results may not be commercially ground-breaking any more, given that modern farmers have access to several anti-weed tools. But conservationists are still interested in what the experiment has to reveal. “Many species of plants that are locally extinct may actually still be viable in the soils of those particular environments that have been disturbed,” Telewski explained. So these sleeping seeds could indeed restart populations that have been extinct for decades.

Verbascum blattaria/Photo: Arria Belli

If everything goes according to plan, the last bottle will be unearthed in 2100, but Telewski thinks it might be stretched even further. “We don’t want to lose continuity where people might forget about the study,” he said. “There’s that living memory thing that’s really important.” For now, he’s gearing up for the next excavation in 2020, only four years away, which might be the year that nothing germinates. Or, something that hasn’t germinated in the past 30 or 40 years could sprout all of a sudden. Either way, he’s excited about the possibilities.

“In 1980, I was a graduate student in plant physiology, and we learned about the experiment,” he said. “I had absolutely no idea that I would ever be the person to dig up the next bottle. And lo and behold, 20 years later, there I was… I have this wonderful opportunity to continue this historically important and significant experiment.” Meanwhile, he’s also picked out the person who could potentially inherit the experiment from him when he retires. “There’s one particular person I’ve been speaking with, and I think she’s going to be very excited to pick it up,” he told National Public Radio.

Dr. William James Beal/Photo: Michigan State University

Telewski often thinks of Beal, and other great scientists who have inspired him – Charles Darwin, Asa Gray, and even the Native American corn hybridizers. “All of us basically stand on the shoulders of giants,” he said. “It is kind of neat to be a part of that history.”

“Isn’t it wonderful that somebody, somewhere, thought forward enough to say, ‘Let’s hold onto this, let’s keep this experiment going, let’s design this experiment to go on and see where it takes us.”

Reference:http://www.odditycentral.com/news/the-worlds-longest-running-experiment-started-in-1879-and-will-end-in-2100.html#more-50564

Thrill-Seekers Could Soon Ride the Clouds with This New Sky Surfing Board

‘Wingboarding’ is a new type of adventure sport that will soon be made available to thrill-mongers around the world. Developed by Wyp Aviation, a startup company trying to “take aviation to the next level”, the WingBoard provides riders with a stable platform that flies through the air rather than falling towards the ground.

It’s sort of a cross between skysurfing and wakeboarding and involves surfing through the sky on a board while being towed by a plane. The daredevil stunt is meant to emulate the comic book superhero Silver Surfer, who can travel through space on his surfboard-shaped craft. “The WingBoard is like a wakeboard, but instead of slicing through waves behind a boat, you’re being towed by a plane, carving through clouds,” said founder and lead engineer Aaron Wypyszynski.

31-year-old Aaron, a flight test engineer by profession, has been passionate about aviation since he started building lego aeroplanes at the age of four. He spends all his spare time in his workshop, trying to make all his aviation dreams come true and says that his inspiration to develop the WingBoard came from Talespin, a cartoon he used to watch as a kid. In the series, an animated bear named Kit Cloudkicker would jump out of his airborne plane and ride through the clouds.

For now, Aaron has built a scale model of the WingBoard, which “combines the ability of a wakeboard or a snowboard and brings it to three dimensions.” It works with a system of cables that allow it to be towed behind an aircraft, while remaining stable enough to withstand the weight of one person. Wheels at the bottom of the board will help it get airborne, and the rider would need a parachute to get back safely to the ground. The board will contain a separate parachute as well, to help it hit the Earth gently.

The mock-up version has successfully performed barrel rolls behind an aircraft in the test run, and Aaron is currently trying to raise funds ($275,000) to make the first prototype. If everything goes according to plan, he believes that Wingboarding may become a popular spectator sport in the future. “There has been no way to truly fly behind an aircraft,” he said. “You can strap on a snowboard to your feet and go surfing, but really what you are doing is falling.”

Reference:http://www.odditycentral.com/technology/thrill-seekers-could-soon-ride-the-clouds-with-this-new-sky-surfing-board.html#more-50113

Close to million downloads with Zitrr and a big partnership; the story of Rootwork’s early success

IITs and NITs are premier engineering colleges in India. A breeding ground for a lot of technology startups nowadays, one can expect to hear a lot more from them. One such story is brewing up at NIT Allahabad where six youngsters from various parts of India found a synergy together and started up Rootwork. They did give corporate life a chance but soon realised that their heart lay somewhere else.

A good mix of technology enthusiasts and photography lovers, they were fiddling with the ideas combining these two domains and landed on a rough idea for an app early in 2012 while still in college. They worked on various technologies but recognised mobile software as their space and started out by building apps on Android, iOS and Windows 8. “We also have a product studio (Zitrr) through which we publish our own app ideas, and market them under our banners (Rootwork and Zitrr), says Piyush Rawat, one of the six co-founders: Pratik Bhadkoliya, Ratnesh Neema,Nirmal Prasad, Mohit Nigam, Bharat Chudasama. Rootwork is currently a team of 15 based out of Bangalore and Baroda.

Success with Zitrr

Zitrr Camera is a photo editing app on the which got them huge success first up. “We decided to go with iOS as we knew the channel had a higher chance of monetization. We experimented with keeping it paid and making it free intermittently but once we were featured on some of the popular app platforms, we saw a flurry of downloads,” says Piyush. Zitrr Camera has crossed 800,000 downloads and will go beyond a million very soon at the current rate. Almost 65% of these downloads have been paid. The other apps in their portfolio include Slypy and BhakSala.

The Big Deal

Team Rootwork

Samsung Electronics Korea is building consumer apps on their platform Tizen and had invited a few select companies to develop these apps for them. Rootworks is probably the only Indian startup to have been selected and they are building two versions of Zitrr for Samsung. Rootworks will be getting $65,000 for the partnership and more projects down the line. This and other projects have enabled this young startup to setup their offices in Bangalore and Baroda.

“Most ITes companies would have a typical ‘give-and-take’ business model in the b2b space. We curated different models of engagement where we also work like associates with companies on consortium agreement, while entering into an association as a mobile technology partner with them,” says Piyush. They have around 4-5 collaboration going at the moment, with companies unrelated to mobile space.With the wind behind their back, the team is very positive about the prospects.

Talking about the drive and vision, Piyush says,

“When we started we had nothing in mind except the drive that we want to build a brand in mobile software space. A brand that people, and we ourselves, would like to work with. Like many other entrepreneurs, we’re not married to any of our ideas. We take pleasure in executing others’ ideas. We started bland, but over time, we got married to entrepreneur’s lifestyle. We like to see how our establishment is growing everyday, and the contentment we get everyday is already worth a million dollars. Everything else is on top of that.”

One of the promising new companies in the mobile software area, Rootwork has had a jump start on which they can propel themselves to push forward.

 

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2013/10/rootwork-zitrr-photography/

Startup enthusiasts, also a couple and now co-founders at Viral Curry

Garima Juneja and Gaurav Mishra are engineering graduates who got introduced to the startup world while in college. Garima had an inclination towards writing and marketing while Gaurav has been a part of a couple of technology product startups. “I was always interested in having my own business. I had been into commercial writing, SEO and SMO since I was in the third year of my college. Till I came to the fourth year, I had a team of freelance writers and 15+ clients from India and abroad,” says Garima. On the other hand, Gaurav had started up with his friends where a services wing helped to bring in the money while they worked on products.

Amidst the startup frenzy, Garima and Gaurav started dating each other. “Every time we were on a date, we used to talk about start-ups, ideas and what all can be done to create a dent in the universe. We were both in our own worlds and used to miss each other a lot during the weekdays. Once, while we were on a date and were really high, we decided to have a start-up as co-founders so that we could spend more time with each other. Hence, viralcurry (social media agency) was born,” says Garima.

Viral Curry has had a good start with companies like Cbazaar and Lenskart on their portfolio.“Cbazaar was our first gig. We made them viral on mother’s day on twitter. It was featured along with established brands as the ‘best 10 social campaigns on mother’s day‘,” says Garima. Getting off the mark with a couple of startups as clients, the word spread and they’ve had more than 15 clients till now. A team of five, as of now, Viral Curry works on a simple revenue model – retainer of minimum 3 months with a fixed monthly package.

Talking about their ideation process, Garima says, “We basically think about the brand’s present image and what we can relate it to while keeping the most important thing in mind – Things with which the audience can relate.” An interesting and growing area, Viral Curry is in a good space with an enthusiastic team behind it. We’re seeing more couples starting uptogether and the subject itself has been a topic of discussion for long. Co-founders married for 20 years have advised other couples: “Don’t try this at home” but the young duo at Viral Curry are up for the challenge.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2013/09/viral-curry-social-media-startup-couple/

Journey from IT to dairy farming: Santhosh D. Singh, Founder, Amrutha Dairy Farms

It is well past sunset, and the farm animals have begun their rest, except for a calf playing around. And, my guest for the evening telephonic interview, Santhosh D. Singh, is carrying on the conversation, even while attending to his agricultural duties. I can hear some ducks quacking, and it seems that the breeze from Haalenahalli in Doddaballapur is almost wafting through to Chennai. Well, you can be excused for getting into a fantasy land, when listening to Santhosh talk passionately about his journey from IT to dairy, from being an employee in multinational technology companies to founding Amrutha Dairy Farms.

The beginning

After completing my post-graduation from Bangalore, I spent the first decade of my work life in the information technology industry, working for IT majors like Dell, and America Online. Those were the heydays of IT in India, and I got an opportunity to travel the globe as part of work. These travels exposed me to various possibilities of making money while being engaged in an enterprise which would take me closer to nature not just on weekends but all through the week. Thus began my quest to venture into the dairy industry.

After getting my family on board about my decision to exit the corporate world, I immersed myself into conceptualising and giving shape to the dairy enterprise as it is today by leveraging my expertise around project management, process improvement, business intelligence, analytics, and resource management that i had accumulated over the years of professional life.

I decided to get into dairy farming, as this was a relatively stable and profitable business in the unpredictable world that is Indian agriculture sector. The switch from the confines of air-conditioned work spaces to the dairy farm exposed to the elements 24 X 7 has been a revealing and invigorating experience.

Since I had no background in farming, I enrolled for full term training at National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI). As part of my education, I stayed over in functioning dairy farms to get a first-hand feel of staying next to livestock and tending to them. These stays at farms and the training gave me the confidence that rearing cows was something I would love to do long term and is indeed a lucrative vocation.

Three cows, three acres

My dairy had its inception with the introduction of 3 cows into my three-acre farmland which was originally intended to serve as a weekend getaway from town. This was three years back. I commenced milk production and personally took care of feeding the cows, bathing them, milking and cleaning their sheds every day.

The original plan envisaged incrementally adding milch cows and stabilise at around 20 cows in the first year; with this in mind, I created an infrastructure for 20 cows. One of the NDRI trainers under whom I trained, on a visit to our farm, advised me to explore NABARD for technological support. My interaction with NABARD made me realise that, to fully leverage the resources being deployed, we need to scale up the operation to 100 heads of cattle; this would create a capacity for 1,500 lts of milk every day and was projected to have an annual turnover of over Rs 1 crore.

With the price of dairy products seeing year-on-year increase, over the past 5 years, the margins in the business are healthy. It was a great vote of confidence and an awesome confidence-booster when NABARD awarded Silver Medal for taking initiatives to get in to dairy farming. State Bank of Mysore came to fund this reworked project plan. With funding in place, I went full steam and installed the infrastructure to support 100 cows.

Drought, determination

Along the way, we had hiccups for which we had to find solutions. One of the unforeseen exigencies was the acute shortage of green fodder due to unseasonal rains leading to drought which lasted for 18 months; this led to an unprecedented, 10-fold raise, in the cost of green fodder. The impact was a significant dip in daily production, which in turn impacted our bottom line.

I had to exhaust my savings in order to tide over the disruption in cash flow and keep the operation going. In my quest to find the lasting solution I decided to set up arguably the first production unit of hydroponics which enables growing of 1 ton of green fodder / day in a controlled environment at significantly low cost in comparison to commercially procured green fodder

Thankfully, this year, rains have been bountiful, and coupled with hydroponics-produced fodder we are in a position to make up for lost ground by increasing the herd size and thereby upping the daily milk production. With the bank hesitating to extend further assistance, I am exploring other options to infuse rich capital to take my dairy enterprise to the next level.

Lessons that I learned could be a nice takeaway for new entrepreneurs. During the phase of drought (almost 18 months), many small-size dairy farms wound up operations by putting the blame on Mother Nature, and moved on with other interesting business ventures. But I was very determined to see and live the good times in dairy which were destined to happen, and I am happy today to see good rains all across the country. Staying focused with the objective always gives positive results.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2013/09/amrutha-dairy-farms-journey-it-to-dairy-farming-santhosh-d-singh/

Wajid Khan – the unsung artist who owns a patent and a Guinness record

Most kids love to make paper boats to play in rain water. But Wajid Khan dreamed bigger. He created a small ship that could float on water. At age 14, he invented the world’s smallest electric iron, which was later named in the Guinness Book of World Records. Today, this 34-year-old artist holds a patent in his name for (iron) nail art painting, has been named in five world record books and has 200 inventions to his credit.

Wajid Khan with his stone portrait

Like most artists and inventors around the world, Wajid Khan too had humble beginnings. But unlike many of them, he has mostly remained ‘unsung’ in his own country. Born and brought up in a small village called Songiri—11 km away from Mandsaur district—Wajid spent most of his childhood feeling inferior due to his low school grades. Yet, he continued his unique experiments with whatever material he could lay his hands on. He left school at Class V and then, eventually his house too.

Experimenting with art

“One of the most decisive moments of my life was the time my mother gave me a sum of Rs 1,300 and challenged me to leave home to pursue my hobby. She was the only person who believed I was meant for something remarkable,” shares Wajid. His actual struggle began when he had to earn his living while also keeping experiments alive as a 16 year old. Back then, technical robots caught his fancy. It was a matter of chance that, aided by his friends, Wajid started working for NIF Institute of Ahmedabad.

Wajid Khan’s art work with autoparts

“In 1998, I picked up thermocol. Eventually I got into experimenting with making portraits using iron nails. I came to Indore in 2004 hoping to learn more and experiment. I now have a base in both Indore and Mumbai,” Wajid says.

In 2005, Wajid finally finished making an iron nail portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. This portrait was created after three years of consistent work with 1.25 lakh iron nails. It was also the same year Wajid created what was possibly the world’s first 3D painting, using acrylic colours on canvas. Yet, recognition came much later when his first portrait sold at Rs 20 lakh in 2010. “Despite the bid for Gandhiji’s portrait being Rs 50 lakh, I never sold it. It will always be closest to my heart,” he adds. He has so far made several iron nail portraits of noted people such as Mother Teresa, Jesus Christ, Dhirubhai Ambani, among others. He uses a special base (imported sheet) on which he draws a pencil outline just to mark the points of the start and the end of the portrait. “I never draw a portrait beforehand on the sheet. My mind already has the picture and I follow that instinct,” Wajid explains.

Wajid Khan’s bullet art work

But he hasn’t limited himself to just iron nails. Wajid has made exceptional landscape and portrait art from discarded auto parts, medical equipment and black quarry stones. He created an artifact of a young crying girl using medical equipment as part of the Save the Girl Child campaign. But his bullet art works, without a doubt, attract the most attention.

“Bullet is a sign of violence and Gandhjii taught us non-violence. There could not be a better way to give out a message of non-violence than making his portrait using bullets, to show contradiction,” Wajid says. Interestingly, all his portraits have black as a predominant colour since Wajid believes black is the strongest colour.

Using recognition for artist welfare

Wajid acquired a patent for his iron nail art in 2009. Apart from Guinness, he has been included in Golden Book of World Records, Limca Book of World Records, India Book of World Records and Asia Book of World Records. He is on the verge of applying for patents for his 140 inventions and art works. On March 8, 2015, Wajid was invited to deliver a lecture at IIM Indore, where he spoke on innovation in management.

Artist Wajid Khan

“But I know fame and money don’t last. The Holy Quran says: ‘Live for others, not yourself.’ So, I am trying to equip the physically disabled and the less privileged people with art. I am fortunate that my wife Maryam is equally art-inclined and both of us conduct workshops in schools in cities like Mumbai and Indore and rural areas to find artists and teach them,” he says.

Wajid Khan has been commissioned to design a unique sculpture for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, to be held in Qatar. “I want to use my fame to help struggling artists and inventors get recognition across the world. I don’t want to open an NGO. I prefer working quietly to help the artists and making them self-dependent,” he adds.

Wajid, whose art work may feature in an upcoming Hollywood venture, wishes to continue experimenting and teaching art. In 2016, he has plans of delivering a lecture at Oxford University, London.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2016/01/wajid-khan/

From Coding Software to Selling PaniPuri: Prashant Kulkarni’s inspiring “Chatar Patar” Story

Our startup story today of Chatar Patar is an ambitious venture which plans to brand a product that India has been consuming since aeons, but never had a single brand name attached to it. When Prashant Kulkarni was working at Infosys, he ate roadside pani-puri and fell prey to food-poisoning and could not eat his favorite fast-food, for almost four months. This, he believes, is a very long time for any pani-puri aficionado. This incident spurred Prashant to research about pani-puri offerings in the country and he discovered there was no brand that was synonmous with the product. Prashant has now launched ‘Gapagap’, India’s first pani-puri brand.

Prashant Kulkarni realized very early on that taking up a job was not his cup of tea and he set out to “create his own universe” in October 2011. A strong believer in entrepreneurship, Prashant got his million dollar idea unfortunately

Prashant Kulkarni

 through the bad experience. Today along with his team members, Aarti Sirsat and Pallavi Kulkarni, he manages the Gapagap brand and other products like 80 types of bhel, 27 types of chaats, pohas, etc, under his venture Chatar Patar. Chatar Patar sells pani-puris in 112 different flavors. Some of the famous items include Maggi Gapagap: a combination of various tastes with the regular Maggi, Masala Fries: Indian street version of French fries, Chaatizza: Chaat+Pizza, Idli fries, idli chaat, and khakhra chat. Since launch, Chatar Patar has grown rapidly. It has now, tied-up with Big Bazaar shops across states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Rajasthan, and has franchisees across these regions. Chatar Patar’s latest outlet opened has opened in Ahmedabad.

Chatar Patar Bhel

But this was not as easy as it sounds. Prashant is still grappling with problems of logistics and supply chain that can smoothen transfers of goods like panipuri masala, the ingredients of bhel, from Indore to various cities. He has tried a couple of options but could not find the right partner who suits his needs. And who can work within the budgets that a startup can afford.

Chatar Patar Outlet

Talking about his ambition, Prashant says, “We are a bunch of dreamers, we want to make Chatar Patar to be an international brand. After penetrating the Indian market, we would love to go abroad.” He has already received some enquiries from Australia and London, but has put them on hold for some time so that he can strengthen his foothold in India before he goes abroad. And Prashant’s dreams are not unfounded.The quick service restaurant(QSR)segment is growing rapidly in India. As per latest reports, Indian QSR industry is currently pegged at $1.36 billion in 2011, growing at a CAGR of 35% and pegged to reach $4.5 billion by 2015. Lifestyle changes couple with increase in spending power has resulted in boom in this market.

Chatar Patar might appear a tad different from other ventures, but, Prashant comes from a family of businessmen. His family business is to manufacture tubes for automobiles. After his MBA, when Prashant planned to start Chatar Patar, people close to him thought he was out of his mind, but he managed to overcome all the hurdles and today has a successful venture running. But he has managed to silence nay-sayers and has sold over 150,000 pani-puris to date. So next time you want to eat pani-puris that don’t make you sick, check out a Chatar Patar outlet near you.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2013/02/from-coding-software-to-selling-panipuri-prashant-kulkarnis-inspiring-chatar-patar-story/

Two Ph.D drop outs fighting it out to make a killer product aiming for the moonshot

A few months ago, we had written about Memetic Lab’s Barometer which is a real time infographicfor top Indian brands. A fascinating tool in itself, I didn’t know much about about the people behind it at that time. But now, almost 8 months later, they’ve launched their first product for the market, Airwoot which is ready to come out of beta. I got in touch with them to know about the developments and what unearthed, was much more than just a product.

Prabhat Saraswat, Saurabh Arora

Saurabh

Saurabh Arora and Prabhat Saraswat are the folks behind Airwoot. The year was 2008 and Technical University of Denmark, the place. Two young men, Saurabh and Prabhat were pursuing their masters and PhD., exposing themselves to a lot of new perspectives. Here they met and became friends and found out that they shared some common interests. “We discovered art, music and much more importantly- the power of ideas, while we were studying here,” says Saurabh.

Prabhat

After the course, Prabhat continued his doctorate in Denmark while Saurabh went on to pursue his doctorate in cloud computing architectures, at Hasso-Plattner Institute in Berlin. They were in touch on and off, but in a strange turn of events, both dropped out of their PhD’s and returned to India.

It was 2011 by now and Saurabh was working for a digital media company (Fluid Digital) while Prabhat was backpacking all over India. Once again by chance they met each other and attended a few hackathons from November 2011 to February 2012. Brain jamming together, they set up Memetic Labs 

where they implemented a couple of ideas:

1) An android app which can listen to any live music and generate guitar tablatures

2) A social reading app which finds out who is reading what by listening to public twitter feeds

And then the idea evolved…

While playing around, the duo started algorithmically mining consumer buying intentions from Twitter — to predict the next money spent. “While, looking at the data, we realized more consumers were in fact complaining about the product than accepting and endorsing the product,” says Saurabh. They started tracking 35 most active international brands on Twitter, as a result of which Barometer (barometer.airwoot.com) was born.

Barometer is a realtime infographic to gauge a brand’s social customer care practices. Barometer listens to conversations between users and brands as they happen on Twitter and visualizes them in realtime. “We wanted to spread awareness of social customer care as a practice, that brands should follow as a defined business process,” says Saurabh about Barometer. This was also their platform for the launch of Airwoot — a social customer support helpdesk.

About Airwoot

Here’s what they’d write on the ‘About Us’ page: Airwoot is a New Delhi based social media listening and analytics startup that helps businesses to engage with their customers on social media and provide real-time customer support.

For the novice, Airwoot is for brands who’re having a tough time listening to what users are throwing at them on social media. There are appreciations, complains, rants, SOS calls by thousands of social media citizens! Manual sieving is not possible and this is where Airwoot intends to help by providing the brand with support so that it can prioritize and take the necessary action in real time.

Currently piloting with some of the top brands in India, they plan to come out of beta by late April. A knowledge-based product with the vision to change how customer support is done, the duo is aiming for a moonshot – a 10x gain.

The Fight

Aiming for the moonshot is all hunky dory but who’s paying their bills for the rocket fuel? “Raising funds is one of the most challenging parts to break into the entrepreneurial world. It is hard and there is no question about it,” shares Saurabh. Surviving on a shoestring budget, the duo hasn’t got it all on a plate. Looking for funding, they tried going the accelerator way and found home with The Morpheus – a Chandigarh based accelerator founded by husband-wife, Sameer and Nandini.The Morpheus is in it’s 9th batch currently and has more than 70 companies in their portfolio.

“We (At Morpheus) love the passion and craziness with which these guys have been working towards building a product that we believe will change the way brands interact with their customers, build public opinion about their brand or increase revenues for themselves,” says Nandini.

The Morpheus had put in Rs 5 lakhs which has given them more time to develop the product and undergo the beta test. Now, they’re in talks with investors to scale up the product and team. So far, it’s only been Saurabh and Prabhat who’ve been running the show along with a developer they hired.

So, will it be all worth the effort?

Going by the indications, social media is here to stay and the biggest brands have realized the potential social media holds. If you give them a product that’ll let them manage their social media real time, they’ll surely be interested. Airwoot hasn’t finalized the pricing as yet but it’ll be a SaaS product that can be bought as a package. For instance, a brand can buy a package that can be used by 4-5 agents for around $400 per month.

Brands have shown interest in the product and if Airwoot is able to tap the right channels, there is surely scope to achieve the moonshot. The journey might still have more obstacles but customer support is surely a problem that requires better solutions and with a passionate team shaping the company, Airwoot has a better chance at shooting for the stars.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2013/04/two-ph-d-drop-outs-fighting-it-out-to-make-a-killer-product-aiming-for-the-moonshot/

Oravel founder Ritesh Agarwal selected for the final round of “20 Under 20” Thiel Fellowship

19 year old Ritesh Agarwal has quite a story. Internet and technology doesn’t care for age and this youngster having found a penchant for how the web works, started working very early in his life, at a tender age of 13. And by 17, he had started his first company- Oravel. Oravel started as an Airbnb clone but the model has undergone a twist and post receiving a seed round from Venture Nursery, the company will be out with its new model soon.

This youngster has been selected for the “20 under 20” Thiel Fellowship which makes him one of the very few Indians to have been shortlisted. Currently amongst the top 1% of the candidates that applied, Ritesh will be making his journey to the States for a 20 day stint post which he’d come to know whether he has been selected amongst the 20.

The Thiel Fellowship is a two-year program wherein fellows receive $100,000 and mentorship from the foundation’s network of tech entrepreneurs, investors and scientists (this includes the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Elon Musk and obviously Peter Thiel).

The Fellowship was established by venture capitalist Peter Thiel to give people under age 20 an alternative to college for pursuing innovative ideas in science and business. In majority of cases this means dropping out of school but there are bigger things in store for these candidates. Ritesh went to college for a very short duration and never turned back; to be precise, he attended college for 2 days.

Ritesh has been selected after a rigorous process of 4 rounds – first screening, 2 rounds of applications, communications with the Foundation Jury and a long interview with a Thiel Foundation Mentor from a senior Management at Facebook.

As a company, Oravel has grown by leaps and currently lists 3,500+ Places on its marketplace from across the country. The site is currently under maintenance but will be launching around the 15thof April with an added inventory model and more.

Ritesh will be leaving for the US for a Thiel Foundation sponsored trip on the 10th of April’13 for a 3 week period which will help Oravel to make a lot more headway.

Read more about the Theil Fellowship and follow Student Story to keep up with all that is happening in the student entrepreneurship space in India.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2013/04/oravel-founder-ritesh-agarwal-selected-for-the-final-round-of-20-under-20-thiel-fellowship/

How does Failure Teaches Us To Win Battles of Life

teachings from failures are never forgoten and pays back in life

Failure as we call it, is nothing but the stepping stones to Success.

Converting the failures in your favor is something that if learned can make you successful in your life. Yes the real success is not the money or the frame or the last thing you want to do, it is the knowledge that you have after you have faced the failure.

Many people have the belief that a person who failed in his carrier is useless and cannot accomplish his goals. But they forget that now that very person knows that how can you avoid failing next time. He can teach a new person how to succeed in one attempt. While the person who didn’t fail have only limited knowledge since he didn’t worked the second time on the same subject.

Every person has to taste the harsh failure once in his life. It is upon him how he looks towards his goals and ambitions after that failure. He may choose to change the aim, may get depressed and may lose hope, or he may fight back with more efforts and knowledge. Failure is a way life teaches us the various important lessons that will help you survive in the near future when the others won’t be able to. There is always a reason why you fail. Find out that reason and nobody can stop you from winning the next time. No one is perfect so some fails at early stages while some at the later. It is fine to fail early and try harder to get success the next time, but if fails on a later stage it is difficult to recover. So never get disappointed and depressed with the fact that you failed. Start it over again with more thrust and energy and let the success reach you.

courage to start again is what you need to get success

The taste of success is sweeter when it is achieved after failure. The struggle you do to reach your goal and achieve the very prize you wanted is something that doubles your celebrations.

If the success was achieved in one go then surely the aim was not the correct aim. Yes it means you are meant for something bigger than this.

Imagine a life without failure. You asked for something and you got it in first attempt. Would you value such a possession? Would you celebrate it? NO because you knew you will achieve it. There is no point celebrating it. Moreover we value those things which are achieved with great difficulty and hard work.

Never bounce too much on success and never get too depressed with failure. With time everything changes. It is just a matter of time that you are on the other side of the bridge.

At some point of time in life you will realize that the failure that happened with you was for a reason and that very reason make you alive today.

Once failure has hit you hard, you can then make more firm decisions and lead a life more confidently because you know that at any moment of life you can start your carrier again and nothing can stop you since you have already tasted the failure and you know your week points which you won’t repeat again.

Failures shape you in some way or the other. Polishing your skills make you better and improves your intelligence.

Face your failures. Don’t try to run away from it. People start smoking, alcohol and many other addictions that soon destroy their entire life. Everyone goes through this phase of depression at some point of time in his life. Rather than going into depression for a long time start chasing your dreams again, even if you fail the first time. The value of diamond increases when it is better polished. Increase your value the same way.

Reference:http://www.quikrpost.com/3663/how-does-failure-teaches-us-to-win-battles-of-life/#.Vq7X6tJ97IU