About Us
Karunya Innovation and Incubation Centre (KIIC) was set up to foster innovation, research and entrepreneurial activities in technology related areas. The goal of the Karunya Innovation and Incubation Center (KIIC) is to promote technology based entrepreneurship and thereby facilitate practical application of knowledge for societal needs. KIIC facilitates the creation of ideas and inventions that solves the problems of the humanity. In order to achieve its objectives, KIIC has adopted an Incubation procedure and policy to provide guidance and management structure for creating the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Upon admission to KIIC, the following facilities will be offered to the incubated companies on an individual basis:
- Office space.
- Computers - Up to ONE on rental basis. More than ONE can be availed at market rates.
- Internet connection.
- Intercom connection - Each company will pay the rentals and bills.
- Standard Furniture as decided by KIIC.
- One Accommodation to Director/Promoter of the incubating company, depending upon the availability. (The company has to pay the bills)
ABHIREPAIR
Repairing a Mobile phone in India can become a daunting painful exercise for a person as most of the mobile phones are brought online these days. First pain point is that it’s very difficult to find genuine service providers projecting the right repair cost. The other pain points of the customer are the varying repair cost projected by different service providers as well as there is no fixed time of repair and delivery. This leaves with very few opting for repair and most of them discard their mobile phones to get a new one thus adding to already existing massive amount of e-waste. Mr. Abhinav dixit a 3rd Year B.Tech(Mechanical Engineering) student in Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences faced a similar challenge when he broke his mobile phone. When he approached a service provider in Coimbatore city he projected very high cost for repair and Mr.Abhinav looked for other service providers and found that everyone gave very varying repair cost estimation and finally he decided to get his phone repaired by the least cost projected service provider. He was asked to come after a week to collect the same. After a week when he went to the service provider to collect his phone, the service provider had not done the job yet and asked for one more week time. Very disappointed by this exercise Mr.Abhinav came and discussed his problem to two of his friends Mr.Abhishek and Mr.Ashish. During their discussion on the problem they figured out that this was a common problem faced by many of their college mates and they were also equally frustrated and disappointed by the repair which mostly was done in an haphazard manner and with duplicate parts. Thus a deep conviction to solve this problem was born in the hearts of Mr.Abhishek, Mr.Ashish and Mr.Abhinav. When they validated further that getting repair service in their University was a common problem faced by many an Opportunistic Idea was birthed in their heart. And thus the trio started to experiment their Campus Venture then called ABHIREPAIR. With a tagline Repair Anything, Anywhere, Anytime they started targeting more than 8,400 residential students and close to 1200 staff community in the campus. The initial business model was very simple, if anybody has a repair to e done within the campus they will raise a request to the team ABHIREPAIR who will take their gadget/Phone or any device from their doorstep and get it repaired by the best service centers in the Coimbatore city and return the product the same day as much as possible. The ABHIREPAIR team tied up with trusted service centers in the city any promised bulk orders to repair against timely delivery and small profit margin on each repair. The initial days were tough as there was need for a change in process of the entire repair process. They waited for almost a month to get their first repair request and slowly built to around 12 orders a week on an average. Around the same time the Karunya Innovation and Incubation Cell was also formed and invited applications for Pre-Incubatees and Incubatees. This was an opportunity for ABHIREPAIR to get their Venture registered and operate in a professional manner under the Umbrella of Karunya Innovation and Incubation Cell with Entrepreneurial Education and mentoring support. Abhi repair registered in 25 september 2017.The University also provided required space and facilities with valuable permission to spread the word through marketing within the campus. This boosted the service request being made and a wide scope of service request started to be raised within campus by students and faculties in the form of mobile phone repair, Laptop repair, Ac repair, washing machine, and refurbished mobile and laptop etc. The student and staff quickly realized the ABHIREPAIR team provided excellent quality and timely service which was impossible for them to get from individual service providers. All the pains incurred in travelling to service centers, finding genuine parts, waiting time etc were addressed. The increased demand in repair requests made the initial trio of Mr.Abhishek, Mr.Ashish and Mr.Abhinav to look at expanding the team by adding another 5 members to team to support them in daily operations. Mr.Ashish Noble, Mr.Jinu, Mr.Srujan, Mr.Sheshi and Mr.Venkatesh joined the team just believing the vision of the founding members.
Immediately after they passed out of their campus, now the team of 8 members did not look for any campus placement opportunity but made their campus venture into a fully functional unit by leasing out a space in Ganapathy, Coimbatore. This was challenging task as the operation cost and supporting a staff of 8 people and increased demands now flowing in from different part of the city became very burdensome. The team targeted mainly the IT Parks and surround spaces. With very less capital for working on daily basis the team started looking for investors and found their first investor in December 2018. Subsequently additional investments and funds flowed in and thus paved the way for the team to set up a Physical store in the financial capital of India, Mumbai in February 2019. One more Physical outlet was opened in the city of Coimbatore on 8th July 2019 and we were blessed to have Karunya Deemed University Chancellor and International Education leader and World renown Evangelist Dr.Paul Dhinakaran.
Today ABHIREPAIR has expanded their operation providing Repair, Refurbish and Recycle services. ABHIREPAIR proudly state their vision statement to “Convert e-old to e-gold”. ABHIREPAIR has received various recognition at the National level for their novel initiative. They were recognized as among top 3000 startups in Asia by a survey done by IIM Calcutta. ABHIREPAIR was awarded the best startup award in South India by SISA (South India Start-up Award). Today ABHIREPAIR has more than 10,000 customers from Mumbai and Coimbatore and their mission for the year is to establish the same business model in 8 cities. Their Journey teaches us an important lesson: “Do not underestimate the humble beginnings”.