In Bengaluru, Mohammad Harris and Anoop KC spent their 20s working for big companies but always wanted to start one of their own. Their wish came true when both of them quit their jobs and came to Kozhikode.
But what would their company be about? They wondered.
In 2010, they registered a company and roped in three more employees – Deepak KC, Monish Mohan and Ijas Ali. At first, their brainstorming sessions were filled with the usual ideas of setting up an average startup. Later, they decided they would develop software for other companies.
However, they felt that they weren’t addressing the real issue in the business world.
In an interview with Edex Live, Deepak KC said, “There were no skills or endurable resources in sight. The Malabar region has a huge pool of talent, but they all find work abroad, leaving the local industry dry of any creativity. We realised that starting a company would mean adding to this dysfunctional system. So we decided to address it.”
They inaugurated their office in 2011 and called it Baabtra.
Students fresh out of college don’t get the opportunity to work for big or small companies as they lack the necessary skills.
Deepak explains, “The solution is not to source talent from outside, but to provide students with a platform where they can access the information that can help them succeed in their various fields. This is what Baabtra does.”
Today, about 100 students are accepted for a three-month-long training programme at their office in in HiLITE Business Park, where Baabtra teaches them basic coding and programming that is useful to any organisation, reports Edex Live.
The idea is to prep these undergraduate students for engineering jobs with the help of professional engineers. These are skills they aren’t taught in schools, so a short-term programme like Baabtra’s helps them prepare for their jobs ahead.
While India certainly churns out engineers at an alarming pace, it is nice to see someone take time out and give them skills they actually need in the real world.