IIT students venture into T-shirt biz

The students in Kharagpur have successfully launched a business venture that is breaking new ground. In just one month their initiative has begun to fetch returns.Students of the Vinod Gupta School of Management at IIT Kharagpur are busy tweaking a strategy for their new venture.Ashutosh, Santosh, Amit, Nishank and Dharamveer have got together and cashed in on the fad of personalised T-shirts.Customers here can design and buy their own creations over the Internet.''The five of us wanted to do something different and creative. That's why we decided to do this and the reach of the Internet gave us the right platform.''We figured we could cash in on the bond the young generation has with the T-shirt,'' said Nishank Agarwal, co-founder, Webvastra.

Personalised T-shirtsTheir website offers a variety of personalised T-shirts made by a Tamil Nadu company. One month into the business the average daily order is ten T-shirts.''Since we operate via Internet we have to be even more cautious in ensuring quality at a reasonable price. ''We have kept our price range between Rs 259 and Rs 285. And in the last month we have noticed that our customers are returning for more orders,'' said Dharamveer Arora, co-founder, Webvastra.Professors at the institute are happy at the initiative shown by their students. ''We are very proud of our students and happy for them .It also goes to show the exposure and training they are getting here,'' said P K Gupta, Dean, Vinod Gupta School of Management.Hopefully this success will inspire Indian youth to put their business skills to profitable use even while still in school and college.