It was the first instance for a student to convert its graduation project to a prototype and make it commercially available at a trade platform. The journey from a student to an entrepreneur was facilitated by NIFT that provided the necessary industry and market exposure and guidance through the journey of a ‘striking idea’ to an actual ‘prototype’. NIFT came forward for the first time at GTE ’17 platform to provide their alumni-cum-entrepreneurs motivation and exposure. Team StitchWorld brings to our readers an exclusive interaction with Krishna Kant, Founder, Minflator sharing his story of NIFT’s role in his entrepreneurship.
“When I was doing my NIFT summer internship, I observed that poly bags are kept over the table in the packaging section of the factory. That’s when I realized that most of the factories pack the garments manually and this bright idea suddenly struck my mind about why don’t I automate the packaging process. And I came up with the idea of Minflator, a poly packaging machine,” shares Krishna.
With a bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering, Krishna overwhelmingly shares that his dream of automation in packaging section would not have been possible without the motivation and guidance of Prabir Jana and Deepak Panghal, Professors, NIFT Delhi. “After realizing the need of automation in the packaging section of the factory, I took up the same idea as my graduation project,” avers Krishna.
The journey of this idea to a working prototype was challenging. “The prototype failed at many stages, but I didn’t give up and I was ultimately successful in making a prototype,” further adding, “Prabir Jana sir and Deepak Panghal sir gave me industry contacts and their valuable suggestions whenever I got stuck.”
Minflator is a compact garment poly packaging system having a slant shape for easy insertion of the finished garment pieces into the polybag and its easy release. The machine is capable of packing up to 350 garments per hour. Already having an advantage of using no electricity at all, the machine has a pneumatic compressed air flow that inflates the loaded polybags so that operator can easily insert the folded garment into the poly bag. The pressure of the air can be adjusted as per the requirements of the operator. It is designed in a way that only the top polybag from the stack is inflated.
Commenting upon the need of automation in packaging section, Krishna says, “Everyone is now looking towards upgradation and automation. We are facilitating less dependence on labour with this durable machine that requires no maintenance and skills. It is an operator-friendly system that absolutely requires no training.”
