Bhubaneswar, Oct. 18: The entrepreneurship development ideas of two engineering graduates from the state have received favourable response at two global summits.

Subhendu Panigrahy and Aniket Panda have received their BTech and MTech degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur. Now, they want to convert their ideas into full-fledged ventures of their own.

Subhendu, who studied agricultural and food engineering, and Aniket, who graduated in chemical engineering, participated in the Kairos Global Summit 2010 organised by students of various US universities on April 16 and 17 this year.

Their projects were shortlisted among the 50 best entries and they were invited to a summit in Hangzhou, China.

While Subhendu’s idea concerned an enterprise for healthy food processing technology by developing multi-grain bread with wheat and millet for diabetics and health conscious individuals, Aniket proposed to trap solar energy and light up villages with a low-cost technology.

Subhendu, who was a student leader with the entrepreneurship cell of the IIT Kharagpur, said: “There is a great scope for entrepreneurs to develop their ideas about healthy food using indigenous cereals and fruits. We have somehow become obsessed with foreign ideas, and food materials. But, there are excellent indigenous food alternatives which are cheaper and healthy. I believe my idea, developed under the guidance of my teacher H.N. Mishra, will benefit the society in future.”

Aniket, on the other hand, is keen on energising the rural habitations through solar energy. He has floated a company called Orgone Energy Private Limited which will take up projects in states like Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan in future.

“We had also planned to include Orissa and Bengal in the project but had to change our mind because of technical reasons. We will trap energy using a special inverter developed by IIT Kharagpur, and through this we can supply power to villagers at an affordable price. We are going to use a technology called ‘micro-grid’ which will help minimise their power bills,’’ said the young engineer.