TRI Technosolutions : A Success Story from IIT Bombay

“One really needs to be obsessed to pursue a start-up which is a continuation of what one learns as a student. And after starting a venture, the obsession needs to be preserved so as to go through painful and uncertain processes to continue as an entrepreneur. This is what we have been going through at ThinkLABs,” says Gagan Goyal, who along with Abhishek Biswal, both alumni of IIT Bombay, co-founded TRI Technosolutions Pvt. Ltd., in October 2006. ThinkLABs is a flagship division of the company focusing on training and education in robotics and embedded systems aimed at students and workforce for the industry. The company has been incubated at Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) at IIT Bombay, which manages a business incubator to promote technology start-ups at IIT Bombay.

Gagan and Abhishek have had a keen interest in robotics ever since their engineering days, and had participated in several international contests. The young team chose entrepreneurship over industry jobs. Their academic learning coupled with the experience and exposure in various contests sowed the seeds of a ‘start-up’, with SINE playing the role of facilitator.

ThinkLABs aims to make scientific and technical education more effective for students. It provides them with requisite resources through interactive content, a wide variety of robotic kits, software based programming tools, and basic and advanced level training programs and web based learning resources. The company has trained over 30,000 students in 35 cities across the country. It has also started customized training programs in embedded systems for industries in accordance with their needs. The company is presently tying up with various corporates in the embedded space. A blend of hardware and software in both robotics and embedded systems gives the company a competitive advantage in. Besides, the company also supplies individual robotic kits and robo-lab kits to educational institutions.

Since incubation at SINE, the company went through a transition from an unstructured business into a scaleable professionally driven business entity. At present the company has over 70 employees on its rolls. To deal with the scale of the business, the company is currently exploring the possibilities of adopting a franchisee model wherein the company would train other training institutes to conduct ThinkLABs’ training programs. The company has also raised equity investments from a leading venture capital firm in India.

ThinkLABs and its founders have already won several accolades. The company was placed second in the ET Wharton Business Plan competition in November 2006. Gagan Goyal was nominated among the top 25 young entrepreneurs in Asia by Business Week in Dec 2007. The company also won an ISBA (Indian STEPs and Business Incubators Association) award for the year 2008.

Website: www.thinklabs.in,  www.robo.in