The entrepreneurial instincts overcame the vast working experience with renowned IT firms like HP and Digit (a consumer technology magazine) for couple of years, and Mr Vishal Kansagra decided to make a difference with his confidence in innovation and hard work. Started his career as an IT professional with a renowned company and gaining experience working with a tech magazine, it was an uneasy decision for him to try something which was out of the league. But being a frequent traveller and having an experience in marketing and product development made him do an extensive research in the construction industry before starting his own venture. Being a patriotic person by heart, he thought of none other name than AAC India. Promoting manufacturing of Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) products inIndiais a unique initiative taken by Mr Kansagra which avails many benefits and is already being used in China.
The USP of AAC lies in the use of fly ash. The primary raw material used in manufacturing AAC is fly ash – an industrial waste – and thermal power plants struggle to dispose huge quantities of fly ash generated every day. AAC blocks provide sustainable, eco-friendly and faster material for construction industry. AAC offers a diverse range of products and AAC blocks are used instead of clay bricks for construction purpose.
With the business idea in place, this project started in March 2009 with equity of Rs 10 Lakh which he managed to use from his savings. Before zeroing in on AAC project, Mr Kansagra did a lot of research and consulted all kinds of professionals and businessman involved with construction, production and other related industries. Moreover most of the seed capital was spent on travelling so as to bag the client projects and also some of it was spent on marketing effort as well. But whatever he earned, he reinvested in his business as this was the only way to grow the business and educate people about eco-friendly idea of using AAC blocks. The major challenge was to convince the builders to switch to an expensive product which was not an easy task for him. But by explaining them the detailed benefits of the product and relating it with the cleaner future and financial profits made it little easier to get accepted in the market and thus the journey began where he managed to bag his first client in July 2010. They were convinced by innovative product and superior product quality. Right now I have signed agreement with 3 domestic clients and discussions are going on with couple of domestic as well as foreign clients. His potential customers are those who are either into construction material business, or those who want to diversify into ‘green’ products and by ‘Green” he means both in terms of bottom line and in terms of environment. Currently he is in the process of bagging projects from few domestic and international clients.
Without the support of his parents and friends, Mr Kansagra would have never started this venture as his parents were the ones who encouraged him to do something creative, rather than sticking to the family business of construction which might not have been so exciting. Being a passionate writer, he is inspired from our ex President Mr APJ Abdul Kalam and Mr Narayan Murthy, Ex Chairman of Infosys and follows the line which says “Indiahas good engineers, but what we need now is good entrepreneurs”. Mr Kansagra believes in hard work and is willing to learn a new thing in every phase of life and feels that every person who enters in our lives teaches us something and we should grab it. His advice to other start ups would be to forget about everything and everyone for a certain period of time, during planning and execution phase of any venture. A complete dedication and efforts towards your business can take it to the next level of innovation and growth.
