A new phase of Limen Leap Labs has started!
... the march of the Light brigade!
Introduction
Limen Leap Labs (LLL) is embarking on an exciting new phase! Since 2019, we’ve been building and innovating in submarine mode. Now, we’re ready to operate and transfer our IPRs to young Indian entrepreneurs. Our mission? To empower the next generation of IT innovators and change the landscape of original IT work in India; especially in the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) industry
Onto the “O” part of the B.O.T.
No. Not about robotics or AI. In our case, B.O.T. stands for “Build”, “Operate” and “Transfer” Limen Leap Labs has been working in submarine mode since 2019 setting up systems, inventing products.
Now we would be entering the Operating phase, where we would launch our various IPRs (SaaS products) and do a test marketing on them — kind of testing the waters.
In this part of our life, we would also be finally launching our workshops for youngsters from India who are keen to launch their own IT startups. We will train them, bring in external trainers too, and give all the necessary inputs to start their own IT startups. We will select talented youngsters in those cohorts, and ask them to form a team of at least 3 people. We’ll then invite each such team to use any one of our IPRs around which they can start their own venture.
In the “Transfer” phase is when we will do the actual handover. During that period I (i.e. founder of Limen Leap Labs) would join as a temporary CTO and actually participate in the progress of that young startup. It would improve their chances to get funding.
Why this? Why now?
Limen Leap Labs was started for a simple, unique purpose: India has the largest collection of youngsters in the world. From my teaching experience, I noticed that many of the youngsters are too-dependent on their own peers for advice, and top-of-the-mind opinions from social media on how to shape their careers.
Of course, many of the well-wishers from their earlier generation (parents, uncles, etc.) are quite conservative and not really exposed themselves to happenings on the Internet — so there is a double whammy with youngsters: They are not only misled by their own peers, but they are often given bad advice by the earlier generation too.
The result of this can be seen: For such a large collection of youngsters, India simply does not have truly original products.
The IT sector typically does not have large capital expenses to start-up. But even in that field, there is almost no real world-class original work. Rather telling about the state of our country. It would be a logical fallacy to jump into a generalization here: “Oh, Indian youngsters are poorly educated” or something along those lines. That kind of closure helps nobody.
For original IT work, we have woefully inadequate examples. What comes to my mind is the accounting software; Tally and maybe Zoho (the latter; with some riders).
Almost everything else in IT are actually not really product companies, but either tiny bespoke custom software shops that does some local CRM or accounting in Visual Basic/DotNet for local businesses; or the companies are doing slave-work for other companies that need IT staff and/or services. i.e. ITES (IT Enabled Services). Sad, but true.
I have always been a teacher and I always reflected on the fact that there so many intelligent youngsters in colleges but then I almost never hear of them after they graduate! (I defined “hearing of them” as knowing some world-class work that they did in our country)
It wasn’t until I won the CIBA Startup Championship in 2019 that I realized I could combine my passion for education with entrepreneurship. That’s when Limen Leap Labs was born.
I attended many “startup events” and participated in talks setup by incubation centers and so on; but I always encountered advisors/mentors regurgitating summaries of popular books such as “The Lean Startup” and “Zero to One” etc. But there was never real hands-on actionable advice.
Almost no mentor was prepared to stick his/her neck out and get a skin-in-the-game of the startups they are advising. They came. They lectured. They stepped out.
The overall goal of Limen Leap Labs is to contribute to these youngsters who often do not get proper direction.
It is critical that mentoring such Indian youngsters should not be done from outside, vicariously. Instead, LLL decided to setup a system where even we would actively be part of the startup we tutor. So it is not some “external mentoring” that we do.
BTW, my definition of a youngster is anyone upward of 18 years of age. No real limit, actually, though my intuition says that the system we are working on should help those up-to around 50 years or so.
I believe the time is ripe now for such private ventures like LLL to exist, because we cannot really solely rely on the Indian government to do all the work.
Think of LLL as an investment company. But instead of investment in money, we invest in our IPR. Of course we would take some equity in such startups and also take a royalty on their revenues too.
Technically, LLL is an atelier — a form of artists/architects practice where a master artist/craftsman would guide upcoming artists/architects who retain their own individuality. First seen in workshops in Paris, France during the impressionist movement in art.
Why us?
I was fortunate to start my own architecture firm in 1987 after graduating in 1984 from IIT Kharagpur, and after being an associate for a leading architect (Ar. Hafeez Contractor) We quickly graduated into not only solving architecture problems, but also problems of computing in architecture. We became possibly the first architects office (surely in India; if not the first in the world) to truly get into computing. What I mean by that, is that we were not using other software solutions, but we developed our own architecture design software. One of the first in the world, and surely the very first AI software in architecture. It was based on my research into architecture representation. I have over 10 papers published in international journals and conferences. My work was used in 2 research projects in the area of energy in architecture, conducted by IIT Bombay.
My office informally had 2 divisions: One dealing with conventional built-environment and product-designs and the other to do with architecting especially on the Internet. All our built-environment designs used our own software that I wrote; TAD (www.teamtad.com)
I believe that the Internet is a new kind of space, where truly one needs to have trained architects’ insights. For far too long, Internet too has been invaded by with people with no idea on how people use “space” — There are lot of mistakes happening on the “spaces” of the Internet, and it can be attributed to similar reasons on why lot of mistakes happen in the spaces of the built-environment: Lot of unqualified, untrained people who think they know the domain but are really not trained for getting the right solutions.
I have done several “firsts” apart from the aforementioned architecture design software; TAD: One of the earliest PDF creation system, a journal management system, India’s first HTML/XML editor, one of the first uses of pure JavaScript driven single-page dynamic CMS even before Ajax, a world class Wiki System, etc.
So with over 30+ years of experience, coding in 12+ languages and expertise in AI, Computer Graphics and databases, now I am reasonably sure that this kind of expertise possibly is not available elsewhere.
The community here
I am hoping to attract this blog to the attention of various audiences. such as:
those who are interested in our various IPRs — to launch their own startups
those who are interested in the IT ecology in India
fresh architecture graduates — this is because some of our IPRs concern architecture of the built environment (I still consider myself as an architect as I am trained as one from IIT Kharagpur)
those who are well-wishers of LLL itself — wanting to support by money or kind. Note: This is not a solicitation for investment with us. That’s a private discussion that you can have with me
Anyone else who are keen to get insights into cutting edge technologies in some specific areas of information tech: AI (especially symbolic AI), computer graphics, architecture (built-environment) software, graphical interfaces, etc.
Posts
Readers should get posts from me at least once a fortnight — I hope to squeeze in enough time to put up these posts. There were many developments, some covert — as in the submarine mode IPR development and some quite overt (such as my shift to Kerala to help my aged parents)
About our name and logo
Our logo is a balloon that is cut loose, attempting to float high. It reflects the childhood excitement of seeing balloons floating up; rather, soaring up. It is symbolic of how one can really stretch our minds and necks and reach upwards.
I coined the term “Limen Leaping” for that change-of-phase in my thinking happening just as I wake up from my sleep (“crossing the limen of wakefulness”). It is in that transition when I often get some real insight leaping into my mind that solves some tricky/wicket problem I was snagged with earlier.
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