Fracktal Works is raising the standards of innovation in Robotics with their 3D printers.
After winning a competition, Rohit Asil and his business partner Vijay started a company called Fracktal Works in college which has emerged as an industry leader in 3D printing today. In an exclusive interview with The Tribal Box, Rohit shares his journey.
Robotics and Innovation
“I got into the Manipal Institute of Technology for the 2011-2015 batch. In my first year, I was all for exploration and tried my hands at multiple extracurricular activities. There was a tech-fest held at my college in the first semester of my first year and I participated in the same with a decision to put my knowledge of Robotics to use. Through the process of building my model, I met many seniors and got exposed to multiple things that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I gave it my best shot while enjoying the process of building my robot that was going to participate in an obstacle race.”
Empowering Creation
“When the time came to compete, a robot made by one of my seniors, Vijay, caught my eye explicitly. It was the fanciest looking robot in that race and seeing it I wondered if I could make something like that. Even though I made a very basic-looking robot, it so happened that I stood second in the race and Vijay stood first. After the competition, I wanted to know more about Vijay so I kept following him in an attempt to understand how he builds his robots. On the final day of the fest, Vijay walked up to me and asked me to become a part of one of his projects which was like a fanboy moment for me. Together we participated in many competitions representing our college, won many of them, stayed back during the summers building robots, and learned a lot. We complemented each other pretty well.”
Inception of Fracktal
“We participated in and won a competition called Provenance 2013 organized by Manipal University Technology Business Incubator. As a result of winning this competition, we either had an option to take 5 lakhs home and start a business or leave with just 50k. We chose the former without any plan in our minds, but just zeal to innovate something useful for the future. After creating an office space within the college, we registered our company with the name of Fracktal Works. Around this time, we went to IIT Bombay for a tech-fest where we saw a 3D printer for the first time. We saw that someone imported a couple of parts and built a 3D printer with them. Coming back to college with that idea, we started to work on our model of a 3D printer and started building the same. When our college Dean walked in, he appreciated our work and asked us to take this seriously and build more devices. As a result, the college bought our first five devices.”
Business Expansion
“Besides our college, our first customer was a professional from L&T who visited our college and really liked the device. Vijay and I went to L&T, installed the device, and also made a demonstration. The device became a huge hit and is working until now. Post this, there was a newspaper article published on our work and that is how we got more customers in Bangalore itself. We built our team in Bangalore, got our first investor soon after, increased our team size, worked even harder, and everything took up from there.”
Road Ahead
“Since the inception of Fracktal, we have come up with new models every year while increasing the functionality of our devices remarkably. In 2019, we launched a 3D printer for industrial applications priced at about 16 to 17 lakhs with a much better capability. In the future, we have a couple of new launches planned that are aimed at scaling up our product functionality and service range considerably.”
Rohit shares three growth pointers he has learned from his journey until now.
1) When you are young and you build something, it is very easy to fall in love with it in the sense that you stop taking negative feedback.
“When you are building something and it is bad, you should be open-minded enough to dismantle it and start building it again.”
Learning: Be open-minded about your creation. Take constructive criticism and be okay with improving at every level.
2) If you are starting a business or are in the process of building it, your fundamental goal should be to make money not burn it.
“There is no point in huge investments that look fancy on paper if you cannot generate a regular cash flow.”
Learning: The first priority while building a business is to generate a cash flow. If you cannot sustain yourself and your team by paying salaries on time, there is no point in growth.
3) Be open to trying as many things as you can until you find your calling.
“I tried my hands at many things and got rejected repeatedly. Robotics was the one field in which someone approached me because my skills got acknowledged and appreciated.”
Learning: Be okay with trying and failing repeatedly until you find your calling.