At the two ends of a bridge are educated young people who want to be employed and companies who would love to hire them. In between is the need of these youngsters to transition from being educated to being employable.
Bridging this gap between the people and company are startups like OpEx Accelerator Pvt. Ltd.
Here’s Sachin Kumbhoje, Founder & CEO, OpEx Accelerator sharing his story.
What is your vision behind your startup? Tell us how the idea came about.
OpEx StartUp Accelerator was started with the sole motto of creating awareness regarding StartUps, mostly among students and budding entrepreneurs. OpEx focuses on major directions for the Skill Development Framework, including increasing the capacity, synergy among existing academia. It seeks to address the lacunae in Entrepreneurship by steps like streamlining entrepreneurship in the education system, inventing business through mentorship, fostering social entrepreneurship, promoting inclusivity, improving the ease of doing business, and providing access to the Global market.
What services/products/solutions do you offer?
OpEx Accelerator Private Limited offers diversified StartUp & Skill Development services to
Institutions, Industries, Emerging StartUp’s, and Students. We support student startups and other startups irrespective of the business sector in Tier II and Tier III region, through organizing StartUp Events, Mentoring, handholding, funding assistance, business management, prototype generation, launching and scale-up of the business.
What were the challenges you came across during the inception of your startup and in COVID 19?
Starting back in 2016, it was a daunting task to set up an accelerator in South Maharashtra, especially in Kolhapur-region. People were not at all accustomed to entrepreneurship cells and startups. Institutions were quite reluctant to tying up as they had created a mindset of nonavailability of sufficient knowledge of startups. Creating massive awareness about startup and its ecosystem was the first big step to bring institutions, faculty, students, etc. into the mainstream of Startups.
CoVID-19 Pandemic was such a challenging time as institutions were closed and students had to leave their hostel and study center to their hometowns. Thus, providing the required support to already enrolled students and institutions was a big task. As a result, we came up with Online Sessions for students, faculty, and institutions regarding startups and what prerequisites can be used in setting it up.
As the founder/CEO, what is your opinion on the current landscape of startup culture in India?
StartUp and its ecosystem is still an evolving factor in tier 3 and small towns of India. But, I am very much optimistic about the future of Startups in India. Looking at the present loopholes that have been unearthed due to subsequent lockdown especially in the healthcare sector, massive funding and growth will be seen in this sector in the coming months. People are getting techsavvy and the youth of today are getting more involved in Tech Sector thus, this highlights and puts good sunshine in solving India’s pertinent problems of Public Service and Sustainable Development.
According to you, how important is it to be updated with technology as per your industry sector? And How do you strategise on scaling your company in the future?
Technology is the next big thing and in that data management and data mining will be again the next big thing. Looking at how Information Technology is evolving at current times and allinclusion of AI, ML, 3D Printing as well as other technologies such as Blockchain Tech. The StartUp is sure to incorporate in no time and thus, everyone will get to see the transformation in near future. Everyone uses Smart Devices these days and innovation in other products and thus making them smart, will eventually lead to people becoming smart in the coming months to years.
With the changing times and realization that awakened us with the current lockdown measures, we have employed Online Lecture Series, Virtual Meets and thus Virtual Competitions, LMS Programs for students, Online Consultation for entrepreneurs and budding enterpriser etc. are in pipeline.
