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This IIT Kharagpur Duo Dropped Out Of College & Created A Company Now Valued At INR 250 Crore!

Getting a degree from a top engineering college like IIT Kharagpur is a dream that remains unfulfilled for many students. However, for some, the dream is worth giving up on when there is enough impetus to pursue something bigger and better.

When two boys from Madhya Pradesh- Ayush Agarwal and Harshit Srivastava, decided to leave IIT Kharagpur and enter the market with a product they created, startups and entrepreneurship were yet to become buzzwords. At present, the value of their startup Intugine has clocked at INR 250 Crores.

IIT Kharagpur startup Intugine Technologies adds another laurel to its kitty. They are the winners of the TiE... http://t.co/nBoSeBs6ha
— Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT KGP (@ecelliitkgp) February 8, 2014

"If starting up is your thing, there is, of course, no need to drop out immediately. While you are in college, let the idea brew and take off as far as it can. If college starts to become a major bottleneck, do not hesitate to take a call," the duo told The Indian Express.

The Story Of Two Friends

Ayush and Harshit met for the first time in Kota, Rajasthan when they were preparing for the IIT entrance exam. After that, both of them got into IIT Kharagpur as Harshit joined the Mechanical Engineering dual degree while Ayush took up the five-year Mathematics and Computing degree.

By the end of his first year at college Harshit was working on a wearable device with gesture recognition features. Once the prototype was ready and tested, it started receiving attention from startups and the business potential of the product was clear.

At this moment, Harshit was sure that he wanted to drop out of college and embark on an entrepreneurship journey.

“It was an exciting time for wearable gesture technology, and I felt that it was high time that I dropped out of college to scale this up,” Harshit explained.

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For Ayush, however, the decision to drop out was full of uncertainty and hesitation. Even though he was a student of IIT Kharagpur he had very little idea of career paths after IIT. On top of that, he found it difficult to like the subject he was studying.

“In my first two years, I clearly understood that software engineering was not my cup of tea. Meanwhile, I joined the college fest’s organizing committee, where I met people from varied backgrounds, ranging from CEOs, HRs to college administrators. I realized that I really got a kick from being on the front, talking to people,” Ayush said.

The Initial Skepticism Before Success

Harshit and Ayush had already embarked on the journey of entrepreneurship while they were still students at IIT Kharagpur. They named their product Nimble- a wearable gesture recognition device, and it garnered enough interest from the market for the duo to continue exploring it.

The fruit of our hard work has started bearing as Osmanabad becomes CORONA FREE using our solution to ensure social distancing using geo-fencing technology. Article link below:https://t.co/bv1MKBwh8x
#COVID19 #intugine #supplychain #logistics #coronavirus
— Intugine (@Intugine) May 1, 2020

Thanks to the tradition in IITs of regularly cultivating entrepreneurs, the duo was exempted from the demands of their academic curriculum through the Semester Withdrawal Program: a special provision for entrepreneur students to take a sabbatical from studies and move forward with their startups.

Working on the startup demanded so much effort and time that the duo barely had any time to devote to studies. Eventually, when it became nearly impossible to balance both, they decided to drop out of IIT Kharagpur in 2014 and pursue the startup idea full-time.

It was a moment of reckoning and with their startup still at a nascent stage, the duo found it difficult to explain their decision to others. Ayush, especially, had to deal with a lot of skepticism from his parents as they were confused about what dropping out even meant.

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“Ideally, when a student joins IIT, there’s a set path. Undergo internships; get a placement offer with more than a decent package at the tender age of 22. Dropping out receives a lot of scepticism from all around us,” Harshit reflected.

Building A 250 Cr Company

As the duo entered the market and started looking for use cases for wearable gesture recognition technology, they found a good demand for it in the logistics and supply chain sector. To start with, they collaborated on multiple projects with four to five companies and realized the true demand for their product.

“While working with these companies, we discovered that the largest manufacturers and e-commerce companies have little or no visibility of trucks plying for them. Unlike in the B2C space, where customers get a minute-by-minute tracking of the Swiggy delivery boys, there is no real-time tracking of trucks carrying products worth crores,” they said.

In order to address the demand, the duo developed a multi-modal visibility platform that covered shipments moving through road, sea, air, and rail. It was a comprehensive product that could address the tracking needs of big companies moving products worth hundreds of crores every day.

Within a short span of four years, they had acquired several clients who are big names in the industry, such as Phillips, Flipkart, Diageo, Mahindra Logistics, Instamart, and Bridgestone. What started off as an experiment in college had become a company worth INR 250 Crore!

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