#11 Honoured With National Entrepreneurship Awards The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) has honoured seven winners who are first generation entrepreneurs below the age of 30 years

The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) has honoured seven winners who are first generation entrepreneurs below the age of 30 years and given recognition to four ecosystem builders with National Entrepreneurship Awards to encourage a culture of youth entrepreneurship across the country.

(This article was first published in the February issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here)

Sector: Agri-food Winner: Wow Momo Foods Private Ltd

Branding the Road-Side Delicacy

After completing his graduation from St Xavier's college, Sagar Jagdish Daryani invested Rs 35,000 to start Wow Momos in March 2015, which bootstrapped profits to scale up to 43 stores within few days. "We faced immense challenges in getting store locations in good malls and prominent places. This was because international brands like Domino's Pizza, KFC, McDonald's, etc., found preference over any Indian start up.

However we managed to somehow grow and enter the malls via shopin- shop formats through Spencer's and Big Bazaar," says Daryani. According to him, an entrepreneur should have perseverance, consistency, and dedication at all times.

Sector: Chemicals, Pharma, Bio and other processed material Winner: Saral Design Solutions Private Limited

In a 'Swachh' Mission
Saral has developed India's first and only indigenously designed automatic machine for producing ultra-thin sanitary napkins. They have sold more than 1 million of the affordable pads produced
through their machine in less than a year's time. Their work was awarded by the Department of Science & Technology with a sum of Rs 10 lakh in 2016.

88 per cent of women in India currently do not use sanitary napkins. Seeing this gap, Saral's founders designed an automatic machine which could make premium pads at a small scale, enabling reduction in distribution costs by 30 per cent. The founders developed machine prototypes using their own capital, and borrowed furniture and interns for a while.

Sector: E-commerce Winner: JetSetGo

Reaching For the Sky
Kanika Tekriwal's JetSetGo was started with the mission to redefine private aviation as a transparent, ease, and economical business. "Initially the world laughed at us and said who is going to book a Rs 5 lakh private jet on a phone? Not ready to give up, we moved on and got our first customer at a loss of a few lakhs and no money in the bank," says Tekriwal.

From there, she built the business step by step into the largest private jet company in India today. "There were months when on 28th of every month, we would think how we would pay the salaries. And, suddenly some debtor would make their payments," she adds. Now, JetSetGo is planning to launch in Middle East and Africa.

Sector: Engineering Services Winner: Swadha Energies

Designing for a Better India
Chennai-based Swadha Energies is a Rural Technology and Business Incubator (IIT-Madras)
incubated company. It mainly aims at developing products and services which ensures a power
saving technology. It clenches the industrial, residential, commercial and agricultural sectors, accelerating the conservation of energy through their products.

"We have now walked through a long path developing a wide range of energy efficient products, ensuring lesser power consumption and hence, reduced bills," says the three founders.
"The entire journey of R&D and product development was not easy. There were lots of failure during this stage, but perseverance, and positive thinking made us cross all our hurdles and made all its system working perfectly fine," the trio adds.

Sector: IT and ITes Winner: Lucideus Tech Private Limited

A Password to Security
Incubated out of IIT-Bombay, Saket Modi, Vidit Baxi and Rahul Tyagi started cyber security training company, Lucideus Tech Private Limited, in 2012. In 2013, they started their services business with the objective to quantify digital risk such that a risk becomes an informed decision leading to minimal disruptions to businesses and lives.

"Since then, we have served more than a hundred of the Fortune 500 companies in India and abroad. In 2016, in support of Digital India, we started a campaign called "Secure Digital India", where we yearn to train more than 10,000 students across more than 50 colleges spanning in more than 30 cities," says Modi.

Sector: SC/ST Winner: Jeev Anksh Eco Products Private Limited

Serving 'Organic' on the Table

Gunajit Brahma and Rohit Bajaj, two IIM-Indore graduates, launched their e-commerce marketplace, Jeev Anksh, in 2012 and from our office in Mumbai. "In 2014, we shifted our focus to organic food, as our customers were enquiring about it," the duo says.

Most of the B2B organic food customers wanted to source food from the Northeast, following this, they have been extensively working with over 200 trained tribal farmers, working on about 200 hectares of certified organic farmland that they have leased out from the state government. "I want to see my company as one of the major organic brands of India in the next five years," says Brahma.

Sector: Woman Winner: S V Engineering and Consultancy Services

Designing a Perfect Home
Ashwini Kadam with the help of her husband, Manoj Kadam, chemical engineer by profession, started their design and consultancy company with an aim to contribute to the society.
"Manoj already had a job and it was a hard decision to make," says Ashwini. Ignoring such facts, the couple started their own venture, with the concept of 'one point solution for all design need', with Manoj looking after the design side and Ashwini taking care of the management side. Within three years, the company has completed more than 20 projects and seven are still ongoing.

Sector: Entrepreneurship Education Winner: National Centre for Excellence of RUDSETI

Going Beyond Education
The Rural Development & Self Employment Training Institute (RUDSETI) under Ministry of Rural Development has given entrepreneurship training by working to identify, orient, train, and assist
rural youth to take up self-employment.

The impact has been immense due to multiplier effect
of trainees giving jobs to others with over 21 lakh youth trained and 13 lakh successfully settled.
Highest settlement is the hallmark of this Institute. The award is presented to Sri. K N Janardhana,
National Director of RUDSETI.

Sector: Institutes/ Organizations providing incubation Winner: TREC-STEP

Creativity Requires Incubation
TREC-STEP, in recognition of its incubation excellence, had won the International Champion for Business Incubation Award from UK Business Incubation in 2006. Its spectrum of incubation services address every phase of start-ups, from idea to global performance. A 75-member strong international mentor network is maintained to support ventures.

TREC-STEP has mentored many incubators in the country and abroad. TREC-STEP has promoted 214 innovative, high growth and hi-tech ventures so far. Most of them are exemplary success stories of inspiration. They have won 20 start-up awards till now.

Individual: Mentor (Private) Winner: Pradeep Gupta

Going Beyond Mentorship
Educationist, mentor, and consultant, Pradeep Gupta, have rendered significant services
in entrepreneurial development in India. The Chairman of CyberMedia Group, Gupta has media brands including Dataquest, PCQuest, Voice&Data, and DARE.

CyberMedia is executing India's first electropreneur park, an incubation centre for electronics start-ups funded by the government of India. Gupta, who chairs the alumni trust, sponsor of IvyCap Ventures with a corpus of $140 million for Series A, has mentored over 150 start-ups till now. He has received Distinguished Alumni Award, IIT Delhi and Helen Keller Award for working in disability sector.

Individual: Mentor (Govt) Winner: Harkesh Kumar Mittal

Mentoring Guarantees Someone Cares
Harkesh Kumar Mittal, an alumni of IIM-Ahmedabad, has been instrumental in giving a new vibrancy to promoting the innovation and entrepreneurial acumen among a wide section of
Indian entrepreneurs ranging from simple rural industries to high end technological enterprises. His two-and-a-half decades long association with the government has coincided with the beginning of India's economic liberalization initiatives.

With his untiring efforts and personal initiative, he has not only mentored and guided over 2,000 start-ups but has also helped create an ecosystem for promoting entrepreneurship.