College students have many great ideas, and also opportunities to bring those ideas to fruition. Here are some students who are making waves.
Being Dilliwaala
In their first year, Ishita Pasricha and Rohan Kumar, students of English (Hons.) and Business Economics respectively, co-founders of ‘Being Dilliwaala’, started mapping through Delhi and realised that they needed to share the city’s unseen heritage, culture, and food. They started their blog first on Facebook. With 3,000 ‘likes’ in two days, they started a blog and worked hard to make sure that it had all the information that a traveller would need. When this was done, they moved on to having heritage and food walks and started off with Mehrauli Archaeological Park. They have expanded their team of writers, and frequently blog about food and places of cultural importance. The response has been amazing, with photographers and travel, history and food enthusiasts engaging with them through online mediums and joining the startup. They plan to get more student members on board, to have a more comprehensive blog.
Baked Beauty
When Sanya Sarguru started baking, as a teenager, her friends appreciated her skills and asked her to teach them. Thus began her culinary journey. One of her friends wanted her to bake a cake for his sister's birthday, which was her first order at Baked Beauty, her startup. This gave her courage and she started baking. Gradually, her popularity spread. Now, with a proper workshop, she is operating all over Delhi and NCR as an online bakery. She also came up with interesting menus — Masala Chai Cake or Gulab Jamun Cake — to blend in with the Indian culture too. She provides courses, too. She completed her bachelor’s in Business Administration and is currently pursuing MBA. She will soon be starting her own factory where the production will take place on a higher scale.
Veggiepaaji
Veggiepaaji entered the digital world on August, 26, this year. After years of sharing his love for food on social media, Tanmay Sharma, an Economics (Hons.) student and founder of Veggiepaaji, decided to explore the field in greater depths. Initially, he wanted to organise all of his food photographs in the digital space to ensure tat they reached a large audience. But now, he is experimenting with different ideas to ensure Veggiepaaji’s growth into a food community. Sometimes, the process from clicking pictures, putting them out in public, to adding logos and more was cumbersome, but people seemed to love it. Building and retaining an existence in the digital world was tough, but the support from people keeps the blog going. Tanmay plans to have a strong digital footprint and launch a blog where everything related to vegetarian food can be organised.
Tanmay Sharma, an Economics (Hons.) student, is the Founder of Veggiepaaji.
Slip of Tongue
‘Slip of tongue: Things to do with words’ is performance poetry group. It was co-founded by Diksha Bijlani, Cheryl Mukherji, Ishaan Chawdhary, Somesh Thapliyal, Shrey Maurya, Prateek Pandey,
Zahra Husaini, who are students of Applied Psychology, Class XII, master’s in biology, graphic designing, English(Hons.) and Philosophy (Hons.) respectively.
They are a collective of poetry enthusiasts who liberate themselves through spoken word poetry. It is centred primarily around the art of performance poetry. The poets in ‘Slip of Tongue’ were already friends and were performing at various venues and events. One of them got a call for an event in Gurgaon, and the organisers said they would need more poets. The girl instantly thought of her friends from the poetry group. Then decided to come together officially, call it a collective, and formed the startup after buckets of Blackforest McFlurry.
Slip of Tongue received a great response. Its official launch had 50-60 attendees and the second event saw almost 200 people. Given that both these events were on weekdays, it was overwhelming. Their focus is on building on existing slam poetry culture.
Spoon University- DU Chapter
This is part of a larger network of chapters across campuses all over the world with headquarters in New York. It is primarily a food publication, with an active social media presence. Kritika Narula, a student of B.Com (Hons.), started it in 2015 during her second year.
People had to sign an online petition and once they had a reasonable number of signatures, they went ahead with recruitments for the main positions. They also organise numerous events and outreach campaigns to interact with students. The goal is to get foodies from the campus on team and hone their skills.
Their signature events are ‘Spoon Scouts’, a foodie treasure hunt and ‘Spoon Summit’, where the aim is to bring together people from the Food and Beverage industry to trigger important discourses on food wastage, hunger and malnutrition. Last year, they collaborated with Delhi Food Banking Network to generate awareness about food donation. Partnering and collaborating with more than 100 brands/organisations so far has been the highlight of the publication. This They also won the ‘Food and Wine’ grant for one of their events.
