An IIT-Bombay student from Patna has proved that seeds of entrepreneurship can be sown with a small idea.

Shahbaz Haidar (20), having his roots in East Champaran, is among a group of three who have launched premium quality notebooks, Ctrl C, at just Rs 23. The price is about 40 per cent less than the prevailing market rate of notebooks of similar quality.

Two other IIT-Bombay students — Nitish Agarwal from Bhopal and Saurav Jain from Guwahati — are co-founders of the company, Idea Rises.

Haidar, who cleared Class X from International School (ICSE wing) and Class XII from Loyola High School in Patna, told The Telegraph: “The idea to start a company came to my mind a few months ago. The primary objective of coming up with a good quality notebook, which is comparatively cheap, was to help the students.”

On how they managed to do the marketing of the product, Haidar said: “We contacted a few companies, including ShopClues.com, Smokin’ Joe’s, 21st Century Coaches (a Mumbai-coaching institute that prepares students for Union Public Service Commission examination) who could advertise with us. This brought down the cost of the notebook.”

Haidar, now a third-year student of civil engineering, said they did not want to hamper their studies for the project. So, they stayed back during the semester break to finalise the plans. “We sold 3,000 copies in just 40 hours. We had no idea that the notebooks would get such a good response in such a short time. In fact, all the copies were sold in IIT-Bombay itself. We will order for more copies soon. We would also hire someone for the marketing. But Patna will have to wait for the product to be launched there,” he said over the phone from Mumbai.

The IITian said the process of analysing the advertising strategies and convincing the companies to join them was a “great experience”.

Haidar, who prepared for the IIT at Rahmani 30 under the guidance of director-general of police Abhayanand, said: “It was my childhood dream to do something for the society and this is the first step towards the fulfilment of my dream.”

Idea Rises co-founder Nitish Agarwal (20) said: “All three of us were never interested in doing a job and have been nurturing the dream of starting a company. We felt that notebooks were expensive and there was a need for a cheaper and good quality notebook. For all these, we needed advertisements, which could help bring down the price of our product.”

The third co-founder of the company, Saurav Jain (21), said: “There were times when we faced disappointment as we got a negative response from various companies. We even thought of giving up at one stage, but when the product was finally launched and we received good comments from our friends and customers, it gave us the ultimate satisfaction. We realised that our hard work worked.”