When dreams take flight

FLYING A HOVERCRAFT MADE OUT OF THERMOCOL OVER MUMBAI'S POWAI LAKE LED TO A COMPANY WHICH NOW HAS A 50% SHARE OF THE INDIAN DRONES MARKET

- S SHANTHI

ANKIT MEHTA, CO-FOUNDER and CEO of ideaForge, gives all credit for his success to IIT Bombay where he studied for five years (integrated BTech and MTech in mechanical engineering). The institution gave him everything — the required expertise, friends, some of whom are co-founders of the company, and seed capital to many of his early ventures. More importantly, it gave wings to his dreams.

Just after getting into IIT in 2000, Mehta, who belongs to Jodhpur, started converting his ideas into prototypes and projects. By the end of his course, he had done over 20 hardware projects and even filed a patent for one. He took an active part in IIT Bombay's innovation cell, which funded innovative ideas of students.

Rahul Singh, currently co-founder and VP of engineering, ideaForge, had approached him with an idea to make a hovercraft and fly it over Powai Lake, adjoining the IIT Bombay campus. Both built a few hovercraft prototypes out of thermocol and within months, successfully flew one. This was, in a way, the beginning of what is today called ideaForge.

Mehta and Singh then reached out to Ashish Bhat, also a student at IIT Bombay, and now co-founder and VP R&D, ideaForge, who was an electronics wizard to help them build it further. Once all of them realised they were able to easily build something at lab scale, there has been no stopping.