I want to share an incident where I had believed in myself and shown perseverance over time to finally achieve what I wanted to.
This started during my college's second year. I was fascinated by machines and wanted to make some robot, but I didn’t know how to make it, what are the components required and what will be the investment required. I tried on my own but was not able to achieve anything substantial. To learn through participation, I took part in national level robotics competition NIYANTRA which is organised by National Instruments, India.I became part of our college's team for this competition but soon everyone discontinued with it after first round. So, I approached my college friends to assist me in this.
For Niyantra, we decided to make a quadcopter as it was a buzz at that time. We started out by learning through internet as motor and batteries used in quadcopter are quite different from normal motors. Then we pooled in ten thousand rupees to buy components for it. We started making it and completed it in about 60 days. Though it was taking flights, but we were not able to solve any real-life problem efficiently. We participated in the competition, reached the finals but were not able to win because as judges said, "No real problem was solved”. This loss gave me an important lesson which is "Make something that people want".
We came back and decided that we will not leave this in between and will participate again next year. When the competition started next year, we decided to first find a problem and then solve it instead of first making something and look for its applications. After searching for problems and their solutions we finally put our eyes on making a movable dustbin as Delhi was designated as the most polluted city in the world at that time and we engineers can do something for it. Idea was scalable, but it had a major problem. Its cost was around 20,000 INR which was too high compared to normal dustbins which costs around 500-1000 INR. This was a major issue, but we soon found its solution by adding an advertisement screen in front of it so that money earned from advertisement can justify its cost.
So, we were high on confidence this time, but funding was a factor which was coming in our way. We approached our college for funding and they said yes but due to some issue they could not allocate it to us on time. We were supposed to submit a video of working prototype on 23rd October and on 8th October we came to know that fund allocation will not happen on time and we were already running behind schedule. So, then we decided that we will make it on our own. We left for Delhi (from Ghaziabad where our college was) on that very same day to buy second hand motors and electronics to start the work. One person stayed back to take permission from college to work in college lab 24*7 from the next day. Next morning, we had both permission and components to work on the project and we started the work. We skipped some classes and a few parties to finally complete first working prototype on 23rd October and submitted video of working prototype on time. Based on that video, they judged our project and called us for national finals. For finals we reached Bangalore and showcased our project in front of eminent persons from National Instruments. They highly appreciated it and finally announced us as the winners of competition the very next day.
Though we won the competition, but one thing was there, we really did not believe that we can win this competition as it was one of the most coveted in robotics competition. We just moved on because we believed in our idea and in the thought that our hard work will eventually pay off. It also gave me enough confidence to believe in myself and my ideas more. One more take I took from this is the importance of perseverance which is essential for nearly everything we do be it personal or professional. I finally filed a patent for it and tried to start my own company for these dustbins (though the company could not survive).
Thank You