TYBcom students of HR college have assembled a mobile cover with an in-built charger to help you charge your phone in transit and ensure that you never run out of coverage
In 2010, two FYBcom students of HR College were busy conceptualising and assembling the ‘covergizer’ — a mobile cover with an in-built charger to cater to a pan-Indian market. Two years later, 20 year-old Jehan Madan and 21 year-old Pratik Hinduja are ready to launch their product.
Madan, who also works with a social media company, says, “My friends who owned high-end smartphones like the Blackberry, iPhones and those from the Samsung Galaxy range would run out of battery quite often due to the heavy use of apps. After the phone had run out of juice, if they couldn’t find a power outlet, they would have to do without the phone. That’s when the idea of a portable mobile cover with an in-built charger struck me.”
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HR students Pratik Hinduja and Jehan Madan with the ‘covergizer’. Pics/ Bipin Kokate
At the time, however, Jehan had not planned to implement the idea commercially. It was only when they were asked to select a product and plan a media planning module for it as a part of ab advertising project in college that it occured to him.
“All other groups selected products that were already present in the market. I realised I could use the covergizer as a fictitious product. It would be interesting to work on its target audience and the marketing techniques needed to sell a high utility product like this.”
Madan then discussed this idea with his friend Hinduja. “I instantly liked the idea. In a country with an ever-increasing number of mobile users, the covergizer would work,” says Hinduja.
Their effort won them the award for the best media planning group. “Our project co-ordinator Dr. Rajeshwari Ravi and principal Indu Shahani asked us to assemble such a product,” recalls Hinduja.
“The professors thought that we were sitting on a great idea and motivated us to turn it into reality,” agrees Madan.
Ravi says, “The jury and the audience response to the concept of a covergizer was very good. Such a device can be of great help to a person in an emergency situation, when he/she is unable to find an outlet to charge the phone.”
“Our first step was to register a trademark for the brandname, which we obtained in January 2011. Next, we conducted a Freedom to operate (FTO) search to determine the competition this product had,” explains Madan.
“To our surprise, no one else in India was manufacturing such a product,” says Hinduja.
Happy with the FTO search results, the duo floated a partnership firm named Falcon Synergy in July 2011 to manufacture and market their ambitious product. Since they came from a commerce background, they did not have in-depth scientific knowledge to actually assemble such a product and decided to consult their science tutors back in school to see it through.
“Though both of us had basic knowledge of the laws of physics, we decided to consult our science tutors on how we could actually implement what we had conceptualised on paper. After consulting them we got a technical team in place to execute our plans,” said Hinduja.
The duo have currently assembled a covergizer for an iPhone and are in the process of testing the covergizers they have manufactured for Blackberry phones and Samsung Galaxy Note, S2 and S3 .
“You only need to charge the covergizer once in the morning, the way you charge your phone. When your phone’s battery runs out, you just need to slip on the cover,” explains Hinduja.
“The covergizer has an on/off button. It can be charged using the same charger for your Blackberry and Samsung phones. However, for an iPhone, a USB cord will be provided. We will also have an after sales service unit in place,” informs Hinduja.
So how much will the wonder charger cost? After some prodding, Hinduja reveals, “It will cost approximately Rs 1,000, which is easily within the reach of the common man.”
“We hope to garner a large number of users for our product, given the dependency people have on mobile-phones these days,” signs off Madan. u00a0
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