Cuvette Tech - Sudhanshu Kumar Singh and Atul Singhal

Cuvette Tech is a startup by two IIT KGP graduates, Sudhanshu Kumar Singh & Atul Kumar Singhal, which emphasizes on connecting students with various companies for internships. The startup was named Cuvette after an object used in a spectroscopy machine designed to hold samples for spectroscopic measurements.

On being asked, how are they trying to make a difference in their field? One of the founders replied, In India, most college students spend their college lives doing the same thing like competitive coding, for 2-3 years. People focus very less on developing themselves & try to build something. They are unaware of what’s happening inside the industries where they’ll be working after a few years. When they get a job and start working, they realize that they don’t have much idea about product building and development; what they know is how to solve higher-level problems of data structures and algorithms, which is not much required there. It basically leaves a gap between college students & the corporate world. Cuvette is founded to fill this gap. Its main motive is that while studying in colleges, students get to work under different startups, which will help them in enhancing their skills & get appropriate industry exposure.

Atul & Sudhanshu have both known each other since the days they were preparing for JEE in Kota. They ended up getting the same branch and the same IIT, i.e., Electrical Engineering at IIT KGP. Atul being from a business background, always wanted to have his own company, even before getting into IIT. Both of them had a large inclination towards technology. They started exploring technology from their initial days at KGP. Most of the students try to change their department or getting into different societies during their initial days, but Atul & Sudhanshu had different ideas. They started working on many tech-related projects alongside seniors from whom they got to learn many a thing. Atul had a habit of exploring different places, which helped him meet a professor from the Department of Agricultural & Food Engineering, who helped him learn spectroscopy which helped Atul many a time & even during his internship.

While doing their internships, both Atul (in Europe) & Sudhanshu (in Canada) realized that there was quite a difference between the approach of students of foreign universities as compared to that of our universities. Students in foreign usually did many part-time jobs to earn money as well as to learn skills, while in our country, there is no such culture. Cuvette provides such a platform where college students can start work part-time/full-time with companies matching their skillset.

Talking about inducing diversification among undergrads, they said the more the diversification, the more is the chance of a problem being solved. Currently, there are 200+ companies that provide opportunities to students through their platform. By providing offers from various sectors, they aim to build engineering students such that the students are capable of working with various industries & have an understanding of at least software industries. They want to build people with mix understanding of everything like, for example, if one knows how to operate electronics, he should also know how to operate it using software & how to build the basic mechanics behind it.

Cuvette Tech recently raised $180,000 in a seed funding round. The fundraising was led by Titan Capital, Varun Alagh, co-founder and chief executive officer, Mamaearth; Harish Daiya, co-founder Lumenci and other marquee angel investors. The firm will use the funds to build its score team, develop its product, and build a good technology that can inspire & help the upcoming generation.

According to Atul, student’s main focus should be on skill development rather than acquiring grades only. Although he was from Electrical Engineering Department, he had worked on projects from the Agricultural and Food Engineering Department and chose courses like Psychology, Entrepreneurship, etc. These things helped him to work with his skills for other departments. Moreover, exploring things outside campus and building contacts to learn about the outer world’s needs was a key point. Real-life practical experience of working on projects is essential in building skills, and that’s what the vision of Cuvette Tech is. IITKGP provides enough resources for acquiring practical skills. Proper utilization of these resources is what he suggested to do irrespective of your department.