Anubhav Pratap Singh and Aaditya Goyal, Founders, Orangified - Online Marketing and Information Technology

That a lot happens on the youth circuit at college level is well known. With an individual struggling to keep track of festivals, competitions, summits, events and much more, nothing is as pleasing as knowing that there is now a place that captures all such information in an organized way and can be accessed on a web portal on a national scale.

Orangified.Com, an offering by final year IIT Kharagpur students Anubhav Pratap Singh and Aaditya Goyal, is aimed at providing youth centric information on everything college – festivals, university events, conferences and more from across the nation with the aim of spreading awareness and promoting young talent. Says Anubhav, “The word orange signifies youth, vibrance and energy. Being student ourselves we realized the awareness gap between the youth and platform providers who organize quality events. On one hand, there are college festivals, competitions, conferences and summits which can achieve international stature through seeding in new events, collaborations and youth-interests and on the other the talent that needs to be taken to such platforms.”

Working on the simple business model of help others strive for more to create more, Orangified not only helps the youth to explore all such opportunities and characterize them eventually but also works to create leads for our partner fests through online media marketing and resource mobilization.

All of this is aimed at eventually creating a devoted pool of talent across the nation targeted to develop potential not only concentrated towards college events but also international festivals something that no international organization is doing.

“Our aim by 2015, is to create a hierarchy of festivals ending at an international arena across 20 countries, searching talents from the grass-root level and projecting them internationally. We’re moving towards it by first aiming to capture the entire Indian Market. By the end of 2009, we’ll try to partner as online media support for atleast 50 Indian fests, thrive to cover 5000 Fests, Events, Conferences and other allied activities on our website and also launch on the web-portal the hosting of individual profiles highlighting their talent”, shares Aaditya.

Having started with personal savings and the support of the E-Cell of IITKGP, the two know that to realize this vision, they need to work hard to overcome the challenges that appear from time to time from the business community doubting their capabilities as college students to studies leaving them with little time for business trips. Time management, utmost devotion, enthusiasm to work hard and belief in self are the tools being used by them to stay on course.

Interestingly, the two found their calling in entrepreneurship in a quote by Steve Forbes, ‘The real source of wealth and capital in this new era is not material things; it is the human mind, the human spirit, the human imagination, and our faith in the future.’ “We realized that a regular job would give us the material things but never the satisfaction we want. God gave us minds to innovate and innovation is what has made the world so smooth today. Even the screen you are looking into currently is a result of some person quitting a 9-5 job. The mere zeal to innovate, to strive for bigger things, to help others live a better life and to take risks, made us choose this adventurous journey.”

An adventurous beginning for sure, the founders of Orangified are already counting successes starting with their first big collaboration with ROBOCUP 2009, organized for the first time in India.

They’re quick to inform that achievements haven’t come without their share of mistakes and learnings. “We tried to do things from the top. However, it was taking a very long-time, for each sheet to fit into the other. We did not initially recognize the fundamentals of reverse engineering. However, being engineering students, we now understand how important reverse engineering is, and how it can simplify things a lot.”

On that note, the two also impart some valued advice for those who dream of working on their own. “Entrepreneurship, as we see it, is not exactly taking risks and managing people. Its about believing in oneself and sticking to it with all your mind, energy and zeal. Apply all concepts you have learned since your childhood and just strive to be the best.”