Wonder Grass: Three months in its infancy

The New Year, we await the coming year with lot of enthusiasm and eagerness.

Wonder Grass, practically 3 months old now. We started operating from the office at NS Raghavan Center, IIM-Bangalore on 2nd October, so we can consider it as our Foundation day.

These three months have been full of activities, crammed schedules and running around to get our fledgling operations in some stable shape, but as with all start-ups the anxiety and work-pressure never seems to cease.

But there have been some good achievements and milestones for Wonder Grass in these three months into its working, Beginning of a new year could be a good time to sum-up what we have done so far and also to visualize and lay our road map for the year to come.

October saw two critical moments, one the selection of our company 'Wonder Grass' for incubation support by NS Raghavan center for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) at IIM-Bangalore and second award from BiD India challenge for innovative business plan.

We also bagged first order to supply treated -graded bamboo for Ar. Surya Kakani's project for a school 'Anand Niketan' at Ahmedabad.

November; We started the registration process for Wonder Grass. We proposed to organize a seminar under the theme 'Bamboo and Building Industry; Prospoects and Potentials', which was eagerly accepted by Dr. Kalyani Gandhi and she even got the venue finalized. It was due to the support from NSRCEL, that we got the boost to pursue the work on Seminar. Data compilation for invitees, sending emails, calling concerned people.

Running short of manpower and resources, but we kept persisting. Enjoying the experience to organize and conduct a full fledged seminar.


December; All our energies were concentrated on making the event a success. To generate enough curiosity amongst invitees we even tried to get some articles about bamboo and its building applications in leading newspapers, without success.

Keeping the date of the seminar our deadline, we could put together our communication-material together,

1. Visiting Card and Logo
2. Banners for the seminar,
3. Brochures
4. Website

The communication material has come out really good. Brochure designed by Jaai, has come out really wonderful. It lives you with the comprehensive idea about the venture.
Our printer Mr. Subramnay did a good job and that too on time. He works really hard.

Chandrima and Prashant were really patient with all my constant pestering to complete the website, and upload it. Prashant literaly worked two nights to finally upload the site. ALl those who have seen it have appreciated the website.

Chandrima has come up with an interesting logo, which people have liked a lot.

The seminar was a great success, much more than what we had anticipated or expected. It has generated a good awareness about bamboo for building applications in general. Some stake-holders from mainstream construction industry have already approached us to see if we can start providing them services.

Wonder Grass, has been featured in two regional dailies namely 'Vijaya Karnatak' and 'Prajavani', this has taken our name far and wide.

People from across Karnataka have been calling to see if we can provide them with the building-soluiton using bamboo.

To sum it up;

• We have made the beginning and launched Wonder Grass into the operations.
• We have, if not completed but put together some kind of 'identity' for the company, which is represented by our visual communication materials,
• We have received a lot of inquiries and we are working on three interesting and large projects for now. it is in the initial stages of discussion, we will know for sure about our role towards the middle of January-2008.