India Maritime Awards Acknowledges Tilak Mehta, For Learning Mumbai As The Youngest Entrepreneur
Student of Garodia Centre for Learning Mumbai marks his entrepreneurial journey with his Startup at an young age of 13 years
Mumbai : At a tender age when most students are just caught juggling between their routine of school life and studies some students manage to stand out from the crowd as prodigies and craft a niche for others in the world to emulate. Like any other teenager, 13 years old Tilak Mehta, an 8th Grade student of a leading International School- Garodia International Centre for Learning Mumbai recently made it to the headlines by winning the Youngest Entrepreneur in the Logistics Sector at India Maritime Awards- 3rd Edition for his start up Papers N Parcels launched in July, 2018.
A budding entrepreneur Tilak wanted to ease the bottlenecks he himself faced when he wanted to get his books couriered within the city the same day. The challenges he faced were either on the delivery front where the charges were too high or they fell short on the same day commitment for delivery. Pondering upon this, helped him come up with an idea of initiating something that would carry small parcels and papers within the megapolis for assured intra-day delivery of goods. It paved the way for the beginning of Papers N Parcels (PNP) from thereon.
Tilak decided to ‘uberise’ the courier service by using mobile based software to leverage a network of 5000 dabbawalas. This meant that the deliveries could be made for prices as low as Rs.40 to a maximum of Rs.180. Any customer can log on to the app and place an order for the consignment.
At the recently held Forbes Leadership Awards 2018, Tilak was one of the panellists of entrepreneurs to be interviewed by Indian entrepreneur and philanthropist Ronnie Screwvala, who saw an extraordinary spark in the teenager to make a difference. Thereafter he also recognized the effort he put behind his idea which took shape in PNP.
“The idea to become an entrepreneur was engrained into me thanks to my education at Garodia International Centre for Learning Mumbai which taught me the art of entrepreneurship at an early age through exposure to the world-class education curriculum, we are taught in. I owe most of it to my school which has been grooming me to take upon the challenges of life and come up with innovative solutions to deal with real life situations, a need of the hour” stated Tilak Mehta, Founder Papers N Parcels.
“We are very happy to see Tilak address such a pertinent issue most of us face on a day to day basis and also generate an additional source of income for the dabbawalas. He also strikes a balance between his schooling and business, while he devotes the week towards school academics and activities and the weekends to his business. He has also shared his experience of managing his work on a day to day basis and sought our advice as well on the same” commented Mr Nishant Garodia, Director, Garodia Centre for Learning Mumbai
Currently PNP has 300 registered dabbawalas working as part of the delivery team, besides 180 of their own team. The start-up is completely bootstrapped by Tilak’s father’s company Rushabh Sealink, a parent company of PNP. The company is currently handling 1,200 deliveries a day. The business model depends on dabbawalas making deliveries post their usual food delivery shifts. The business model for the company is B2B, B2C and C2C all of which they aim to foray into. The company is currently targeting 1 lakh deliveries per day by the end of 2019 and plan to employ around 2000 people.
We hope that Tilak’s efforts will inspire other students to come up with equally socially important and clever innovations that make a difference to society.
