‘Nothing will work unless you do’ - your startup fix to start the week

Inspiration abounds in the world; and nowhere more so than in the words of American writer, civil rights activist and academic Maya Angelou. Born Marguerite Annie Johnson, Maya died at the age of 86 in 2014 and left behind a prolific body of work, including seven volumes of autobiography, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and a list of plays, movies, and TV shows.

But what she’s most remembered for are her quotes that never fail to inspire and motivate.

Sample this: “If you're always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”

Or this: "Nothing will work unless you do."

Maya Angelou, who was awarded her the US’ highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, had mastered French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and the West African language Fanti. But what sprang out in all languages were her words. “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour and some style.” She sure did that!

Be it students or entrepreneurs, everyone can find lasting inspiration in Maya Angelou’s words: “You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.”

If that isn’t inspiration enough to kick-start your Monday, we – but of course - have a steady stream of startup stories.

What happens when a few innovative IIT-BHU students take a shine to drone technology? A startup is born. Here's the story of how a few IIT-BHU alumni are using drone data to transform the infrastructure sector. Their Blockchain-powered startup Indshine offers a cloud-based drone platform, Felix, and enterprise drone solutions for various industries.

When everything is digital, why are medical records still living a paper life? This one question led Sohit Kapoor and Harsh Parikh, alumni of IIM-B, to launch DRiefcase. The startup, officially launched in May 2016, is aiming to disrupt the personal healthcare space with doorstep digitisation of medical records. It provides patients with single-point, easy-to-use access to their medical data through a mobile app.

InifiniChains works as SaaS-based scalable platform for stakeholders in a supply chain, capturing data from existing systems on to the Blockchain with the help of set business rules, making it tamperproof. The platform also wants to allow consumers to track the lifetime of the product, from the origination to the time it hits stores.

If there's one thing you should never stop doing that, it's upskilling. And if you're looking to upskill staff and make them more productive, Disprz offers personalised learning management for employees. Founded by Subramanian Viswanath and Kuljit Chadha, the startup has a multilingual app that helps onboard and engage employees, increase their productivity, and continuously learn online.

The Northeast may not come to mind first thing when you think startup, but times are changing. Reason enough for this Manipur-based entrepreneur to bring healthcare to people’s doorsteps in the Northeast. Lian Thangvung founded Thangvung Privilege Services and offers a privilege card with financial assistance for medical emergencies at zero percent EMI and 24X7 doorstep medicine delivery.

Space exploration has long been the preserve of government agencies across the world. But gaining inspiration from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, some Indian companies are now focusing on the niche area of space technology. Enter Bengaluru-based Bellatrix Aerospace, which is cutting the cost of putting satellites in space, and making them last longer.

Founded by IIT alumni Vivek Gera and Abhishek Jha, biotech startup LeucineTech could be a cure for the pharma industry's compliance issues. The Bengaluru-based company offers a compliance software solution that automates the entire cleaning validation lifecycle, including design, qualification, and monitoring, for the pharma industry.

Delhi-based startup boAt forced the likes of JBL to cut prices in India. Here's the story of how boAt tripled its revenues in a year and now sells 4 products every minute. Founded by Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta, the startup has created a community of over 800,000 “boAtheads” and is on track to becoming a Rs 500-crore consumer electronics company by 2024.

How many of us, biting into plum cake over Christmas, promised to lose the fat and become fit in 2019 but failed? Karan Murada wanted to address this attitude towards fitness. To help busy people who have not yet made fitness a natural part of their lives make a commitment to take care of themselves, Karan, with his friend Aditya Srivastava, started Fitato in 2016.

Do you know where your clothes come from? Or what is it made of, and if it is environment-friendly? NorthMist was launched by Smrity Gupta (26) and Arijit Mazumdar (29) in March 2018 as an eco-friendly brand that manufactures sustainable and ethical menswear from pesticide-free organic cotton. The founders say that its products - from seed to stitch - are Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certified.

Every parent wants to ensure that their child was learning everything they needed to and this could only be solved when they owned the entire learning experience by combining online learning with classroom learning. To make this happen, in 2016, Maneesh Dhooper and Kunal Malik decided to set up Planet Spark, which essentially transforms traditional KG to Class 8 tuitions, by combining physical teaching with mobile technology.

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