Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Wonder Grass completes one year in operations

  1. Progress of Work over one year of operations
    October 2007 to October 2008

    Citations and awards:

    1. Wonder Grass was awarded 2nd prize in the start-up category of BiD-India challenge 2007.
    2. Wonder Grass has been selected for Incubation support from NS Raghavan center for Entrepreneurial Learning, IIM-Bangalore.
    3. Wonder Grass is selected for participation in Social Entrepreneur development program 2008-2009, organized by social impact group Hyderabad.

    Within the span of first six months, we could process and complete following project-proposals
    Anand Niketan school, Ahmedabad
    Supply of treated and Seasoned bamboo, BCIL Bangalore.
    Extension to existing roofing at NS Raghavan Farm-house, Hosur.
    Extension for terrace-top house at T-Zed apartments, Bangalore.

    Innovation
    Driving spirit at Wonder Grass.

    Our design team headed by Vaibhav Kaley and assisted by Ravi Kamble kept working on developing a structural system and a complete building-solution which would be a standardized, modular and ready-to-assemble in nature.

    We developed the first sketch-proposal in April-May. We developed and generated computer models, actual models to understand the way system will behave in real. We then made some prototype of columns, truss to its actual size with the Ms-plate joinery complete.

    We made the first prototype at Peth in june’08. we could bring the whole system to some perfection. It still needs a lot of work before it can be said to be a system ready for mass-application.

    The system has evolved to a point where it can certainly be implemented and tested in the actual scale. The next step is to do a pilot-run of the systems in real life situation and refine it further.

    The last 3 months we have been concentrating our energies on design-development of two ‘Ready-to-Build’ building-solutions for a standard housing unit and a module for Staff-quarters for construction-workers.

    We have developed both the systems and is ready for application. The next step is to pilot run this system and refine it further to take it into market on large-scale.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

We are one year old today

Happy Barthday Wonder Grass!!!!

One year in operations – October 2’ 2007 – October 2’ 2008.

Wonder Grass is precisely one-year old today. It was the 2nd october’2007 that we initiated the activities of Wonder Grass in a formal way.

We were partly lucky that we could actually start working from out first office at Bangalore from 2nd October, officially, and so we decided that may be this is the most appropriate day to start with.

The date of 2nd Cotober, has a very symbolic significance to what we have started out to develop as an enterprise or a venture under the name of ‘Wonder Grass’.

The vision is to bring bamboo based building systems in the mainstream of construction industry. This will ensure that the building-industry will have an option or a choice of using a building-material that is sustainable, ecologically sound which also creates spectrum of economic opportunities for a wide spectrum of society, specially in the rural and semi-urban areas.

This will in part ensure some movement of money to the rural economy.

One more reason why we believe that 2nd October probably is a fitting coincidence, is that we believe in the spirit of innovation. Innovation ins every aspect of the enterprise and all the dimensions of the enterprise, some are tangible some intangible.

Mahatma Gandhi, we think was and still is one of the very creative and innovative individuals in the Indian history. From political strategies, spiritual discourses, socio-economic movements, lifestyle adoption, he constantly innovated.

The spirit was to continuously evolve, to look at the situations from a fresh perspective, the problem was an opportunity to put in action yet another of the innovations in practice. There was at the same time openness to change, to except the failure and work on it to refine and evolve.

This is the spirit which if Wonder Grass as team, organization could inculcate and internalize will make our journey a lot more wonderful and interesting.

We shall take a look at the progress of Wonder Grass in the last one year in the subsequent post.