If it were up to me, and I did not have a runny nose, I would have ice cream after every meal. Also, of course, if it was healthy. But if the team members of Flobal get to implement their idea of making healthier ice cream, my wish might finally come true. A six-member team, Flobal, were the runners-up at the tenth edition of TiE Hyderabad's TYE (TiE Young Entrepreneurs) challenge. Really eager to understand the idea behind healthy ice cream, we reached out to team members Amogh Peddireddy and Aditya M Krishna for the details and here's what they had to share.
Before the challenge, students who signed up to participate were enrolled in a two month-long session conducted every Sunday. After this, they were given a month for working on their idea including, presentation, summarising the product and so on. The grand finale was held last month for which 36 students from 23 schools formed seven teams and competed in three different competitions. Flobal came second in the B-Plan Category, losing out to Findr, a LinkedIn-like portal for blue-collared jobs.
When we get in touch with Amog, he informs us that when the team brainstormed, they came up with two ideas, an automatic bed-maker and healthy ice cream. "We conducted a door-to-door survey in our respective areas to find which invention people would prefer and ice cream won!" exclaims Amog, who studies in CHIREC International School. He highlights how many people don't eat ice cream because of the high sugar content and artificial flavours so they came up with alternative ingredients — they use organic jaggery instead of sugar and use flower-infused flavours like mint, lavender and rose. "We extensively researched flowers and discovered how lavender helps with blemishes and has a calming effect, rose is loaded with antioxidants and so on," says Aditya who studies in Gitanjali Devshala.
And with the added advantage that the ice cream has no preservatives, this clearly is the healthiest ice cream in the world. But along with this, the process of coming up with it taught these students many lessons. "Working with strangers to build this product was a great experience. We understood that entrepreneurs need to take care of a lot more than innovation," shares Amogh and Aditya says, "The exposure we had was awesome. We learnt so much in the days leading up to the competition."
Team Flobal comprised of:
- Hitha N from The Future Kid's School
- Swapan from CHIREC International School
- Shrilekha J from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Public School
- Hesham Babukhan from The International School of Hyderabad
- Aditya M Krishna from Gitanjali Devshala
- Amogh Peddireddy from CHIREC International School
