When Sahil Khan met Sunil Kumar and PlanMyWorkshop Happened

Sahil and Sunil always shared similar opinions. So when Sahil approached Sunil in the first week of January (2012) with an idea in his head, well, what do you think happened?

Sunil took it right in! The basic idea was to take the advantage of being IITians to another level. “We, as IITians, are exposed to opportunities both technical and otherwise that students of other colleges are probably not. We wanted to use the knowledge we have received for the benefit of others and so we began to list down areas or potential ways we could do that,” says Sahil. While they were at it, they met their third co-founder, Nishanth Kottapalli. Nishanth was really into making Games for Android and PC platforms. Around the same time, they also met executives of the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) IIT-Bombay, and looked towards them for some advice. With some brainstorming and following suggestions from SINE, they decided to build on Nishanth’s expertise and focus on 3-D modelling, animations and the game & android app development space.

The PlanMyWorkshop team essentially does 4 things:

• Organizes Workshops in 3-D Modelling and animations, Game Development, Android App Development in colleges and college fests

• Not only teaches students the technical aspects, but also helps students build a career in this field by providing Internships and Job Opportunities. For this, they have partnered with LetsIntern, who provides internships to the best participants in their Workshops and Training Programs

• Develops games on Android and PC via Lazy 8 Games which they launched 3 months ago. They develop their own games and make games for other companies as well.

• Provides paid projects in these fields to the students with Lazy 8 Games

A 2 day workshop with PlanMyWorkshop is charged at Rs. 800 per person and a fully fledged 14 day Summer Training Program is charged at Rs. 4,000 per person.

“We diversify our workshops slowly. Also, we have partnered with some good training companies in the market so that we can organize workshops together. It is because of the trust of students on IITians that we got 80 registrations in just 5 days without any significant publicity. Both our initiatives support each other. With Lazy 8 Games, we provide internships and job opportunities to students participating in Plan My Workshop and Plan My Workshop helps in providing technical support to Lazy 8 Games by providing some outstanding students in the team and also marketing our games and apps in workshops and training sessions,” says Sahil.

The team consists of the 3 co-founders Sahil, Sunil and Nishanth in addition to 6 interns from IIT-B and 6 campus ambassadors from other colleges.

[caption id="attachment_337" align="alignleft" width="164" caption="Sahil Khan"]

[/caption][caption id="attachment_338" align="alignleft" width="164" caption="Nishanth Kotapalli"]

[/caption][caption id="attachment_339" align="alignleft" width="164" caption="Sunil Kumar"]

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“The best thing about being a student entrepreneur is that you can use your network at college very well. As a student, you can give time to your company by experimenting as there’s no pressure. The challenge for me was balancing entrepreneurship with academics and other things like projects, exams, quizzes. But I learned many things during my journey. I’ve had meetings with many entrepreneurs, have done some serious ground work and learned a lot from them,” says Sahil.

Plan My Workshop is being mentored by the Society for innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIT-Bombay) at every step. Akash Agarwal, an IIT-B alumnus, has also been mentoring them from the last 5 months. They have not been funded so far but are looking to raise funds to expand their team and infrastructure.

PMW is right now conducting summer training and internship programs in Mumbai. Next year, they are confident of having centers in 10 cities. As far as Lazy 8 Games is concerned, they plan to launch their first Android game next week and two PC games will follow.

The team at StudentStory wishes them good luck! We hope to track their success at every step. For more on PlanMyWorkshop, visit their website here and Lazy 8 Games, .