“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
The entire world runs on internet but the Northeast India is still prone to an average internet connection. What is most challenging for these young creative entrepreneurs is to find a proper start-up plan that would give wings to their dreams and give them a blueprint to work towards the conceptualization of their ideas. This is where the contribution of 24-year-old- Riddhinil Roy from Assam plays a key role and is always driven by creativity, technology and science-fiction. He believes in team work and strong connection with people and believes these two qualities helped him realize his dreams. He is constantly striving to surpass all the obstacles in a way to be worthy of his own approval. This 24-yr-old CEO from Assam became the founder and CEO at Connec8ive+, an integrated campus dashboard that brings in feeds and happenings across the campus, even before he completed his college degree.
In conversation with Riddhinil Roy :
1) Please tell us something about your background and yourself.
I am Riddhinil Roy, a 24 year old guy from Assam. My father works in the government service sector and my mother is a school teacher. I have completed my Bachelor’s in Engineering (Bio-tech). I was born and brought up in Guwahati and was already the CEO and founder of NE8x, an integrated campus dashboard that brought in feeds across campus-life, by the time I had completed BE second year (Biotech) from Dayanada Sagar College of Engineering in Bengaluru.
2) What is your start-up “NE8x”all about ?
We are a regional start-up accelerator platform for Northeast India called “NE8x”. It is exclusively first of it’s kind in the region and is been named after the eight states of the northeast. We aim at supporting/ assisting start-ups from our region and help them to upgrade their current technology to match with the global levels, refining their ideas and helping them to connect with required resources.
3) How did you come up with the idea ?
It has been almost a year since we had started. I was supposed to judge a Hackathon at Smart India event held in Shivamogga, Karnataka, but couldn’t attend it. This made me ponder that while I was being invited to judge a Hackathon, only few people from my region were aware that there are some platforms which caters to the regional start-ups. This particular question was the initial idea and inspiration behind this start-up.
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4) What was the initial investment ?
Honestly, we started off with Rs. 4500 with our panel of servers, attached websites and apps to come up with the services for the region. Rest of the expenses were taken care personally bootstrapping with subscription models from our NE8x platforms and client projects. With the contacts and base that Connec8ive+ had given me, me along with Aman Bajaj and Swapnanil Talukdar, who had previous and ongoing experience in the startup domain, decided to assist startups from the northeast that wither away due to lack of patronage. Thus was born NE8x. While Aman has a domain expertise in the rental segment as he heads Jiffy Rooms as CEO and his company is raising series-a funding soon, Swapnanil Talukdar represents more than six start-ups from the North East region and has experience in working with government funded projects in the past.
5) Tell us about various accolades the team of NE8x has won ?
We have been awarded “Best Start-up Accelerator of 2016” by All Assam entrepreneurs Association. Earlier this year, we were awarded with “Best IoT accelerator for Assam” at Assam Tech Summit held at Guwahati. We have been asked to represent NE8x at various seminars including the one at EMERGE 2016( IIM, Shillong), UDGAM 2017( IIT Guwahati) and PAARBON 2017( NIT Silchar).
6) What are your plans for the next two or three years ?
We are aiming to bootstrap some more initiatives under our banner to help and market the local talent. We are planning to diversify the logistics and supply chain for the start up community. At this pace, we are trying our best to make northeast one of the biggest startup hub of India and also an important center for southeast Asia economy. We want to encourage startups from energy, artificial intelligence, biotech, healthcare, financial tech, security, media analytics, food and packaging among the ones in demand in the recent time. The team has already signed over 52 mentors from different parts of the country and has over 22 campus ambassadors in the north east India
7) Any inspirational words for the youth of the country ?
The mindset has to change. We have to shed the backward tag. The potential in the north east is immense. We are fostering the basic elements required for a start-up ecosystem. Entrepreneurs belonging to the North East India also organize regular meet ups at Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru and these meetups should be promoted on various media platforms.
Connect with RIDDHINIL ROY here :