The Black Lives Matter movement has sparked conversations within corporations and universities about systematic racism. While these conversations serve as a starting point, how can communities grow toward productive activism in a sustainable way? This summer, Advaith Bantval (Cohort 34) participated in the Shell Makeathon to address this issue. His team’s project, Verse, won first place in the Social Impact category.

Over the course of three weeks, Advaith’s team designed and developed a prototype for their project. “We built the basic framework for a service called Verse,” Advaith said. “We weren’t expecting to win, but the competition was motivation to work on a cool project we were passionate about. The goal is to facilitate better dialogue between people of different backgrounds, primarily placing an emphasis on minority voices that may not be heard in a professional or university setting.”

Verse has three pillars: learn, serve, and engage. The Learn tab would be populated by experts and professors from the point of view of those in communities. The Serve tab shows users opportunities to support community organizations through donations or volunteering. The Engage tab allows users to interact with each other and have conversations.

The inspiration for Verse came from conversations about diversity occurring throughout UMD. “We were inspired at the time by the town halls being facilitated by university departments,” Advaith explained. The team reached out to stakeholders, such as UMD’s Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, to gain insight into what could be drastically improved about D&I in the workplace. “This really gave us a basic grounding of what we needed to do in our service as a whole.”

Advaith believes Verse’s achievement can be attributed to incorporating the voice of the customer into the design. “I think one of the reasons why we were successful is because we didn’t dive right into the development of the product based on the first idea that came into our minds. We wanted to understand the perspectives of the people this product would be rolled out to. Before I had taken [QUEST course] 190H, I wouldn’t have thought to interview different people or send out surveys to understand the voice of the customer.”

After the successful development of Verse during the makeathon, the team plans to officially launch by the end of this semester. “We want to deploy Verse as a pilot to see how it would work in an actual setting. We want to have people populate the website to see the impact,” Advaith said. “Hopefully, we will run it through a university department, maybe a living and learning community. We’ve been meeting consistently over the last few weeks to get on track and hopefully roll it out by the end of the year.”

Visit verse.umd.edu to check out the prototype for Verse!

A global pandemic disrupting normal life obviously isn’t ideal, but Hrithik Bansal from Cohort 34 was able to use the disruption as an opportunity to make a difference. He set up a business-to-business mask manufacturing venture called All Time Protection (https://alltimeprotection.com) in India this summer. All Time Protection has supplied over 3,500 masks to businesses around New Delhi since its inception in summer of 2020. They offer 100% cotton-based fabric masks, which are sustainable thanks to their ability to withstand multiple washes and be used. They are not only good for the environment but are far more comfortable to wear than the commonly available non-woven surgical masks.

All of this started in May, when Hrithik had to go home to New Delhi, India during the initial coronavirus outbreak. His internship plans had fallen through, unfortunately, because of the pandemic. He decided to start this venture as a way to get some experience. Initially, the motivation for him was to start an entrepreneurial venture that would help him sharpen his skills, specifically in the real-world business environment. However, as he explained, “When I started narrowing down the niche I was going to be focusing on, i.e. masks, and the way I was going to be doing it, i.e. empowering rural women, it became more than just a business opportunity. The biggest incentive for me became the fact that the work I was doing was actually benefiting a community of society, a community which is largely underrepresented, not only in India but also all over the world.”

Given the pandemic was at a peak, and the market validation for masks was positively present, he decided to dive into the world of masks. Initially, the idea was to produce reusable masks and sell directly to consumers. However, after briefly entering the retail space, Hrithik realized it would take a significant investment of time and resources to break through the noise and compete with the pre-established name brands. He instead decided to go with a B2B model, where he would offer customized and reusable cotton masks to businesses directly. The unique value proposition is that instead of having a big manufacturing unit that would take excess amount of monetary resources to set up, his team outsourced it to small units with a handful of tailors all over the national capital region of New Delhi, India.

To actually bring this into execution, he tapped into his network and found a connection who was involved with setting up cottage industries, specifically independent women tailors working from their homes in remote areas to support their families. This gave him access to a spread out web of ‘mini-manufacturing’ plants, or ‘captive-units,’ to get masks manufactured on a per piece basis.

There were a fair share of challenging moments. Initially, due to excess supply in the market, getting through all the noise and actually establishing a name in the market was tough. The competition was fierce as Hrithik was “competing with other industry leaders who were able to offer rock-bottom prices, with their large, independently owned manufacturing units.” Another challenge he faced was educating the customer about the masks as well as dealing with myths and misconceptions about their effectiveness, as there was a lot of misinformation circulating about them.

Hrithik has had a lot of fun being able to “learn by doing” this summer, as he’s dived into dealing with a lot of people, managing resources, and empathizing with clients. In his own words, “Realizing that what I’m doing is not only helping society by providing sustainable masks, but also empowering a community of people who may have been hit financially by the pandemic the most, gives me a sense of great pleasure and expresses my gratitude towards the hard working humans of society.”

Hrithik was able to leverage the skills he picked up in QUEST course 190H effectively. The class gave him a host of tools which proved very useful as he went about the planning of this venture. Market and financial analysis helped him gauge the market, identify the potential target demographic, and see whether it would actually be financially viable. The presentation tips also helped him a great deal in making the pitch decks of his masks for potential clients.

As for the future, Hrithik thinks this business wouldn’t be feasible for longer than a couple of months until a brand established its majority presence in the market. While there is an opportunity for All Time Protection to do that, Hrithik himself wouldn’t be as heavily involved due to his academic obligations. He’s handed over control to his associates for now. As he says, “For the future, although I don’t see myself manufacturing masks specifically, I’m always happy to keep my options open and welcome any opportunities that may come my way!”