A call centre for Internet

Hyderabad: These students from Hyderabad have a plan to achieve what our Prime Minister Narendra Modi is sincerely hoping for bridging the digital divide in India as according to a study, 84.7 per cent of Indians don’t have access to Internet.

On Sunday, Keshav Agarwal, Neha Acharya, Rishi Reddy and Yagna Agarwal of Oakridge International School, Khajaguda, and Zayaan Babukhan of Indus International School pitched one such plan to a panel of investors at the TiE Young Entrepreneurs (TyE) Hyderabad Business Plan Competition. The team has now been selected to make the final presentation at its global finale in Atlanta, Georgia, in June for a cash prize of $10,000.

Here’s what they pitched A call centre for the Internet. People who don’t have access to the Net can dial a toll-free number and request information to be Googled. Just about any information would be relayed for free.

The jury was also impressed with the revenue model, as the youngest member of the team, Class IX student Rishi explains: “If Flipkart sells products through us, it would pay us as we brought it customers that it otherwise had no access to.”

The ABCD of Entrepreneurship

These students talk business with as much ease as they talk about football and video games. That’s because before they teamed up for the competition in October 2014, they were attending a crash course in entrepreneurship, meeting industry experts, learning about jugaad and teamwork.

Their duties were also well defined Yagna as the CEO, Neha as the CFO, Rishi looked after the business operations, Keshav handled the marketing and Zayaan oversaw the PR.  

While Class X student Neha joined the course to “try something different” and took inputs from her entrepreneur mom, others in the group have entrepreneurial dreams.

Class XII student Keshav calls himself a “fifth generation entrepreneur” as his family is into paper manufacturing and packaging. Zayaan, a Class XI student, also takes interest in his dad’s real estate business and school. Class XII student Yagna’s family exports textiles, while Rishi’s parents work in an IT firm.