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June 17, 2015
People

BUDDING THEM DREAMS : Young Entrepreneurs of Surat

June 17, 2015
People

BUDDING THEM DREAMS : Young Entrepreneurs of Surat

Every city has its own characteristics, the set of DNA, that makes it what it is. Its own perils, devils, beauty and sources of inspiration. Surat, since ages, has had this ‘being your own boss thing’ going about: the spirit of entrepreneurship. Over the years, from spices, jewellery, perfumes, food, and more recently, diamonds, textile, and construction, has made a lot of the city’s inhabitants, rich and successful.

The times today are changing. Young people, today, are trying to forge their own ways through the thick, starting up their own enterprises, shunning the ‘economic stability paradigm’, basically run on a fairly simple principle: ‘Do what you love to do.’

We at Digital Door Surat, decided to look for amongst the young folks of the city, who, against convention but with a lot of hope and passion, are trying to get the better of all the words so as to set up a sustainable economic plan, which they, in simple words, like.

 

 1. The Khadi Cult

 

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She’s bubbly, euphoric, brimming with laughter, and over flowing with emotions always, like she’s on a trampoline. He’s creative, sorted, drives a bullet and has an aura of being a total badass[that’s just his looks; he also has the kindest heart], and these two words together create the  subtle universe of Khadi Cult, which basically deals with twisting the overly bashed and chewed up ethnic world of Khadi, with a twist of digital printing.

Today, the first collection is ready to be rolled out, and Priyanshi and Devarsh are riding high on contentment.

 Where did it start ?

One day I was in class and started thinking of all handicrafts that make the city Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar what it is and suddenly Khadi came to mind. Started searching of available products in market and saw that they were too simple and unappealing to a younger generation. What the designers offered was more on the ethnic side. The idea was to revive this versatile fabric and give people something fun with an add on of bringing them back to their roots.

What works for you in the times of crisis?

We had a situation that a huge lot of fabric was not printed well and could not be used for garments. We already had met with a loss, even before we had started. And it was our favorite fabric. Nevertheless we did not lose hope and used the fabric for a different application. What really works in crisis is keeping your cool. There is always a solution to everything and if there isn’t, create one. Business will always be full of unpleasant surprises.

Why you are doing, what you are doing ?

We are doing this because we are trying to revive a fabric that was a heart of our country at a point and to let it die seems to be a waste. We want people to get back to basics and embrace khadi in their own chic way. Every product, every design , every garment has a concept and has a lot of involvement from both of us. It is like giving our potential customers a part of us.

2.  Element 8 Machines

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Element 8 is born out of immense, passionate love for the touch and feel of metal and steel, nuts and bolts, the grinding-cutting sounds, welding light shows and the joy of working with your own hands; trying to match the ultimate levels of accuracy and precision, in engineering. Siddhant Shah, the founder, is an engineer, and says, he always wanted to be one; ‘Kali ni Rani’ being that statement’s biggest proof.

Element 8 is head on cohesion between art and engineering, like a living breathing collaboration between metal and man.

Where did it start?

Element 8 started on May Day 2015. I kinda knew I wanted to be an engineer since like the early 2000s. I can say Legos and the Discovery Channel has been my two biggest influences to getting here.

Tell us about your brand 

We make motorcycles, electric vehicles; we 3D print, and we do all your design and fabricating solutions, but we have our own taste of art and culture that we intend to share.

Source of Inspiration for why you are doing, what you are doing.

My go to thing in the time of crisis is perseverance. A two hour shot of focused, no-nonsense work always pays out better than a day full of distractions. If nothing still works out, go to bed. Call it a day. Tomorrow never dying is a good thing.

If I was making money in life, I probably spend it on building motorcycles and stuff. You probably dont need a source of inspiration when you get paid for doing what you love. I am usually first one in, last one out of the garage. Make a business based around your hobbies and you wont need to find a reason why you are doing what you are doing.

3 .   Euphoria House

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Chakshu Khatsuria, Neel Doshi and Vivek Desai; three inseparable friends, who swimming against the current, decided to create a space, where they would do all that, which each of them loved, and decided to call it ‘Euphoria House’. Films and Interior design are the two major activities being undertaken under its umbrella.

Euphoria is a state of mind, the feeling of absolute freedom, extreme happiness and excitement, and when you are, all day long, doing what it is that gives you happiness, you’d definitely know what these folks are talking about.

Where did it start?

The journey started on a very filmy note where each one of us was trying to convince out parents to let us do, what we love to do. So the three of us, sharing the same passion, came together and started the Euphoria House in September

Tell us about your brand

Euphoria House is a group of companies, having vested interests, and excellence in film-making and Interior Designing. We love to play around and experiment, in more than one ways, and that’s what helps us to constantly keep on discovering new perspectives and ways of doing things

Why you are doing, what you are doing.

We feel that the inspiration of doing what we are doing comes from the strong interest and context to this wonderful and strange world which is full of stories. We are storytellers, and it’s a great feeling too use films as our medium of storytelling. Also, it gives us plenty of chances to live so many different lives, which I feel adds to our interests and eventually inspires us to do what we love to do.

4.  The Unsung Gypsies

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They love to travel, dance, paint, write draw; very aptly that they decided to call themselves ‘The Unsung Gypsies’. Tanvi Thakkar is an architect, both academically, and especially with colors and pencils. Gadru Musafir, otherwise a corporate man, has this lucid way of dealing with poetry, simple on words, humongous on expressions.
These folks decided to collaborate on their hobbies just as an experiment, which slowly and steadily has turned in to a consistent in flow of artworks, which they put up on their facebook page.

Where did it start ?

Since we possess specific yet abstract art skills of poetry writing and sketching, it all started with a curious and impulsive thought process of exploring a fusion by mixing both forms of art, poetry and painting, together which can complement each other and can create one artistic piece.

Tell us about your brand

Our brand name “Unsung Gypsies” offer various form of art work that we share with people at commercial and non-commercial purpose as well.

  • PROJECT LEMON CAKE–Which offers a complete art piece of Poetry and Painting that can be in form of posters, calendars or even post cards.
  • CRAFTING – We also explore and experiment with hand crafted artifacts such as Dream catchers, Door signs, etc. and have future plans to keep adding more products to our cart.
  • HELMET PAINTING – We have started customized helmet painting a while ago where we create a design by asking our customers about their expectation of design pattern and colors at first and then putting our efforts to come up with an exclusive and unique design and paint work for their helmets.
  • SUNDAY DOODLE – This project is to present and share our one liner every Sunday with our audience through social media to add a flavor to their holiday moods.

Why you are doing, what you are doing.

The primary source of inspiration belongs to our passion for Art and a strong desire to contribute our bits to the world of Art. Be it poetry writing, sketching and even crafts, we tend to show our creativity through them which comes out inspired by our different view of looking at things and redefining them through our work. Our inspiration can be anything from the Mother Nature, life experiences and even our own imaginations.

5.  Babynsmile.com

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This list would have been totally incomplete without the inclusion of a true-blue Surti idea, exploring, more or less, the art and craft of numbers and figures and economics and the ‘market’.

BabyNSmile.com is an online shopping website, selling baby products for the age group of 0-7. Krushna Ghevariya, Ishaan Kukadia and Apurva Joshi were young graduates when they had met in Pune, a few years ago. The seed of friendship has now taken the form of corporate collaboration, with the website coming into the picture.

Where did it start?

As it is said a big idea is always clicked from small problems and this concept also started with the same quote.

  • Found an idea through a discussion with a common friend for his parenting issues
  • Decided to change the trends of Indian Parenthood
  • Thought to bring market at the doorsteps of parents
  • Surveyed the market an understood whether there is a good scope for business exposure in the field.
  • Planned to start a website and a company and with this emerged BabynSmile.

Tell us about your brand

Babynsmile.com has been established as an online portal dedicatedly doing business only in baby products for the age group of 0-7 years age group. The company’s core ethics lies only in their desire to develop the baby products segment and making the products available at every door step where a newborn is spreading its smile. We as a company are basically investing in all the products which are to be required by a child for better growth and development.

Why you are doing, what you are doing.

As management graduates it has always been an inner desire to think something out of the box and to become successful in business and what can be better than to involve in a business for anewborn life’s care as their smile becomes more valuable than any profits. But keeping this thing apart all three of us belong to family of businessmen and the best inspiration for all three of us has been our parents who made us understand how to run a business.

6.  Nakhra Co

 

 

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Malvika Mehta is a model, Femina Miss Style Diva winner and  a certified Make-up Artist, and  Pooja Jariwala, a product and Fashion Photographer and travel enthusiast, and together they make up, the fully woman empowered ‘Nakhra Co.’.

What these girls do is conceptualized photo shoots, where when the camera shutter blinks, you are standing in front of it, looking like who or whatever you want to look like. This is the fun part of the company.

Apart from it, they have also worked with different brands, doing product shoots for them.

Where did it start?

Project Face Fest. We met over a cup of coffee to discuss Malvika’s travel plans, and it somehow lead to it. It was a photo project in which we portrayed different characters like Mermaid, Golden Goddess, Tribal Queen, Pop girl and Geisha, with help of makeup , lights and some props, in literally just a box full of a space ! By the time we were done with the images, we knew we were hungry for more.

Tell us about your brand

Just how plenty of times, all of us have grabbed and been glued to those international fashion/ beauty and filmy magazines’ Covers / Editorials, those international brands’ fancy and sexy advertisements ,the movie-stars’ promotional fancy posters and… inwardly , wish , to have looked  like that or brand our own products like that!

Well, that’s where the Idea of NAKHRA Company comes from.

Why you are doing, what you are doing.

 ‘Nakhra Co’ is a complementing and collaborative effort. What we try to bring to the table is very unlike each other, and that’s what keeps things interesting and running.

In city of Textiles and Diamonds, we wanted to make our own little contribution in beauty and fashion, but, in a ‘hatt ke‘ manner.