2016 Year of Change: Reaping success in homeland

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: At a time when the youth are fixated on lucrative overseas jobs after graduating from premier engineering or management institutions, a different set of youth is content chasing dreams back home. Mr Finaz Naha of Malappuram and Mr Gopikrishnan V of Palakkad graduated from IIM Bengaluru and are striking out on their own in the construction sector. They have combined their management and engineering skills to set up a startup offering A to Z construction materials online. They also offer IT solutions that help builders plan, estimate and optimize construction costs. About 30 people are working in their startup, BuildNext, which has offices in Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode.

"We are sure that India is going to shine and we could be part of this. Hence we opted to stay back in our homeland and tap opportunities instead of taking up jobs abroad," says Mr Gopikrishnan, a gold medalist in architecture from IIT, Kharagpur. Mr Naha, an engineering graduate from NIT, Kozhikode in 2008, got a placement with IBM Hyderabad. He quit the job after two years and pursued the management course at IIM, Bengaluru, where he met Mr Gopikrishnan, who had declined job offers in California and joined IIM.

"During IIM days, both of us shared a wish to stay back home and explore opportunities here. We used to discuss startup options quite early on," recollects Mr Naha. After IIM studies, Mr. Naha got a job with Amazon to handle its North American transportation network analytics. But his base was Hyderabad and he would go to US for two months every year. Later he got an offer from Amazon for fulltime service in the US. In the meantime, Mr Gopikirshnan had shifted to Mumbai.

But both Mr. Finaz and Mr. Gopikrishnan decided it was time for them to launch their startup firm, BuildNext, with the support of Kerala Startup Mission and Kerala State Industries Development Corporation in October 2015. The change came about in 2016. "Even during our IIM days we used to discuss an online platform offering building materials as well as IT solutions for construction sector. India, especially Kerala, where a lot of construction activities take place is indeed the ideal place to test our model," says Mr Naha.

BuildNext now has a network of 300 sellers offering everything required for building construction. A set of tools like estimate calculator is also offered to builders. The portal ‘buildnext.in’ helps anyone to make online purchase of building materials and get them delivered at construction site. Payments could be also made online. “Many of our customers are non-resident Indians. They purchase construction materials hassle-free for constructions back home. A saver is there are no middlemen,” says Mr. Naha. “IT tools being offered by us helps even small-scale builders professionalize their construction activities and optimize costs,” adds Mr Gopikrishnan.

While Mr. Naha’s experience with Amazon helped in managing online sales and delivery logistics, Mr Gopikrishnan’s architecture background helped in collating required building materials and developing construction aid tools. BuildNext, which is currently focusing on Kerala market, plans to expand operations to other markets in due course. "Already we have over 300 sellers, including top brands. Hence it is now easy for us to expand to more places with in the country," said Mr Naha. BuildNext would offer attractive prices and also offer different options of a product so that the customer could chose from a wide variety. "While some customers prefer quality materials, some may be more concerned about the cost  factors. All these  options are available on our portal," say the young entrepreneurs.