INTERVIEW OF ARPIT (FOUNDER OF VOYAGER MODEL ROCKETRY ORGANIZATION)

So could you give an introduction about yourself, tell us about yourself a bit.

My name is Arpit Jha , I'm a normal teen from Bangalore, you know just walking through share tips. So yeah, I'm the founder of Voyager model rocketry organization, which is basically not just India's or Asia's , but the world's first model rocketry organization, which is basically the term for minor rockets, which is working to educate the underprivileged.

It is really interesting. So how did you come up with your idea for your initiative?

So like, if you see one of the biggest brands of model rocketry in India itself, the name is called rocket years, then one day is going through their website just to seeing how they work. So you know, one thing that is common between them and or other competent companies that BPS, and then home space, that is they charge 1000s of rupees to students to actually teach something like rocketry with jump I just didn't think was fair. And second thing, I did not have that much money. So yeah, just taking that in, you know, considering that fact, I, you know, went through a lot of channels, you saw a lot of nonprofits, and I thought of starting one of my own, I taught what not, then tought something that I already know about, which is rocketry because, you know, like any normal person, you know, their mid levels. I was really interested in STEM, so I just, you know, continued in the field.

So what inspired you to learn rocketry or got inspired to be interested in rocketry?

I guess, I knew, like, I'm kind of a introvert person, I spend most of the time in my rooms. And I guess I used to see a lot of people who have built their own SOPs. And you're seeing someone from Bangalore, if you see, there's a lot of people working in STEM majors and trying to do an impact. And you're just seeing that every single day in the news that just, you know, forced me to think about it myself.

That's really is great. So what are your future plans?

I am thinking about planning right now. Because if you see, the time when we started our whole organization, it was something that, you know, I just planned out, it was like you know by the end of the year, I'm going to teach 10,000 students, we're at a bare minimum. But things don't actually go according to plan. So you know, that's just awful taste medicine. But the I guess the patient needed it. So now I'm not making out any plans right now.

So what do you want to be when you grow up?

Most likely an Entrepreneur.

So how do you manage your academics and everything?

Well, it's something like, I guess most likely scheduling things. Because you know, in every person's life, you need a bit of self discipline. I kind of learned it the hard way. Because as I told about the planning thing, when I started the whole initiative, very few people actually know about it. And all of them are my family members or people in my team. So the thing is, when I started you as a normal startup, founder, I did not know about the whole stress and the whole thing. So I know, a lot of stress started coming in on your I just entered high school. I did not know how it works. I just went through your normal eighth graders type of thing. I just thought it would go off. But it eventually did not. And there's kind of like Tourette Syndrome called tics. You know, I have the simple case right now. So that just taught me that , managing between things is really important. Like your self discipline is a key thing. So you're managing something like academies and startups is kind of tough, but you got to have self discipline.

Yeah, that is really good advice. We all need to have self discipline sometimes. So how were you able to grow your organization?

Well, most likely, we started by I think 120 students, which just you're really hyped up the whole team that you're with, these are numbers so soon, so fast, but there was a whole drought between some months we were not able to get a lot of students. But I guess the main thing is that, you know, we just never stopped ,were persistent enough. And we just keep on reaching NGOs. And right now we have more events coming up. We're gonna reach our goal of 200 by October 9. And then we are partnering up with other organizations and a lot of them teach 700 to 1000 students. So yeah, by pretty much the end of the year. We are going to teach 1000 plus students.

Well, that is really great. And really I wish good luck with that. So do you have any other hobbies or interests?

I think the starting thing I really like to teach people even though if people do not want to hear about it, should really ask my siblings or friends. I just keep teaching them about random things. So that just kind of just became a hobby of mine. Whenever I learned something, I researched about it and I teach it to another person. It's something like the Kamins technique, it just makes me remember it, but it annoys a lot of people ,accepted but just teaching someone makes my knowledge better.

What inspired you to start teaching?

I guess it's a natural thing. Because I'm like not like all students , never really interested in academies till sixth grade or something and yeah, it just really hit me when a person told that , I wasn't one of them because I did not used to study anymore as being a competitive person myself, I just you know, took it to my heart and I started studying and at that time, like till date, the person is teaching me so my tutor started teaching me at that time period and you know, I just found a lot of similarities between me and him that you know the way he teaches things, he learns more about it. And he is also a young person so that just inspired me I teach someone anything you have that this reflects back on me.

That's really nice to know. So, could you describe yourself in three words.

I guess cynical, persistent and dedicated.

That's really nice. Now, tell us a fun fact about yourself.

I don't really think there's a lot fun about me. But yeah, a lot of people do see that I come from a social entrepreneurship background or something like a stem background but not a lot of people know about you know what I really started off the whole thing. I am actually really interested in martial arts. And I have a black belt like the first degree I will get my second degree like next year because of the whole COVID thing and I even won a lot of national awards, but very few people know about it.

That is really fascinating. So do you really like martial arts?

It's something like you're like a lot of Indian parents have forced their kids to do you try out something my mom you really wanted me to do this because since an early age she knew she lived in a whole huge enormous family and she saw her brothers and you know a lot of people get in fights because she used to live in like the ancient moderate Bihar there was a lot of goons and the whole thing going on. So she saw a lot of fight going on there now. A lot of people weren't safe at that time so you know, she just wanted us to be safe. And my sister started it before me and silly little kid as me I went to her classes and I started you know, just replicating or cheated and like there is a know principal in martial arts we have someone call a grandmaster. So he saw me doing the same thing and in front of the whole class I guess it was 500 students or something. So he told that our next student has been trained there my mom had no idea that she wanted to put me there once he told it my mom's like you're going in, So even if I don't want to go I have to.

Yeah, that is really nice. So how do you see yourself in 10 years?

Pretty much before starting the whole startup thing seeing a lot of my peers , I taught are most likely going to apply to an Ivy League or something like that. But as I told you about the whole thing that has been through . So I guess most likely I will get a degree in India itself like undergraduate, postgraduate maybe outside, I'm not sure, but most likely I'll be running a startup alongside.

So how to deal with your Tourette's Syndrome if you don't mind telling , did you face any difficulties.

I guess one main difficulty is that when you have a tourette syndrome, you have symptom called tics , which is basically a weird kind of involuntary motion. I have it in my eyes so I don't actually see a lot of people because you know, you don't want to look at a person and do have your eye twich , so yeah, it's most likely it doesn't actually have anything. It's not curable, actually. The only thing you know you can do is to control it, which is by medication and meditation.

I hope it gets better for you soon. So do you have any other projects or anything you're working on?

Well as I told , I really like entrepreneurship. So , being a social entrepreneur has taught me a lot of things over time. But you want my first company, like my first ever company, me and someone who I knew from my school, we started a company. And it was kind of like a corporate type of company. And I still till date, you know, use corporate techniques in my nonprofit, which is kind of weird, but yeah, it helps you to grow. So most likely, I always wanted to go in the corporate field. So I have been working on a project, which is, basically, I can't really talk a lot about it, because it's still in the prototype stage. But yeah, it's something, I'm gonna connect the older generation with the new generation, because, you see there's a lot of gap between them.

Yeah, that's a really interesting idea. So what's your biggest inspiration? Who's the biggest inspiration in your life?

I think it would probably be my parents. Because as I said, they're from a whole Goon type of area, like you're in bihar , and they never expected to actually go in business field or something like that, before. They inspire me to even go to the corporate field. So they had a lot of difficulties in their life. I do not exaggerate. They started off with 100 bucks in their pocket. And continued continued and did till where they could ,that just inspire me that a person can actually start with zero bucks in your pocket and just continue continue and you just be persistent and go along the way.

Yeah, that was really inspiring. So what's your life's main motto?

As I describe myself really competitive. My life's motto is most likely whenever someone asked me that the only way they can win is if I let them.

It's a really great motto. And there are many people that have been helping you on your rocket thing, how do your promote your model rocketry.

So pretty much as I told this, you know, like we prioritize our mottos in a way because you know, building modern rockets are expensive and tough. It takes time. So our main motto is to teach them because even if we cannot launch a lot of them, if we teach 700 or 800 new students big in launch 700 to 800 rockets, you should be more than we can. So we just that is a priority right Now. Then comes building model rockets. So right now, I guess building model rockets, we partnered up with one of the biggest under 18 company model rocketry company. And alongside there are professors from Ivy League like Princeton, MIT, and from India, like, BITS and IIT who are helping us out in the whole model rocketry phase. And when we come to teaching phase, I guess I get the whole career to my team, because they actually work on a zero incentive based thing. even if we provide them incentives, their main motto is that they work kinda like volunteers, they do not actually care about return. You know, I guess if you have a great team, you can continue to do greater things.

That is really nice. So, you know, obviously building rockets is a very complicated thing for many people to understand how would you simplify it? Like make people like be interested in it.

So you know, as you see that, we actually teach the underprivileged or special or disabled students who lack a bit more than students and we totally understand that. That's where you know, instead of teaching rocketry, which is a whole other concept, and a more complex concept, we teach some model rocketry, which is kind of minor and anyone can understand that. Because the first person who built the whole model rocketry system, they just made like, a stone on a stick idea. So they just started it off somehow. And just by the creativity, they increase it. So I guess just for building a model rocket, you just got to have clear physics and clear mathematics that to on a basic level. And you can just, you know, try doing it on your own because it's just about experimentation.

That's really interesting. So how would you describe your whole teaching experience?

I guess, like, as I said, you know, a lot of peers influenced me to start the whole thing. so I just starting, as a lot of people, they start the nonprofits for there college admission process. So I started it. For the same reason but once you actually teach someone and you see the impact that you have made in someone's life, your perspective change towards the topic. So my perspective towards the topic change. So everything went great, I guess only one backflow was there enough for several sessions, which I keep on repeating, because your people should know that not everything goes smooth in their life. The thing is that, I guess it was kind of like a master class or something like that. And two members of my team, were teaching the students and I wasn't actually there at that time, because I had a lot of school work going at that time, instead, and I don't think there was any teacher also at that time. And truth be told, the students started abusing my teachers then I call them, I was like, how's your experience? And then the, the person is like, like, he knew gujarati That's why he told because all your students are from Gujrat. He told us, the students are abusing him. And I just did not know how to react to that. So yeah, bad things happened, you know, you try to do good things but you just gotta beat it .

So, do you have a favorite subject in school?

I guess, pretty much. You know, I'm kind of like a nerdy person, except when it comes to maths , I kind of lack. But my favorites, I guess it would be commerce and physics.

That is really interesting. So if you weren't an entrepreneur, what would you rather be doing?

I guess I started the whole thing during the COVID time period. So if the whole COVID thing wouldn't have actually happened, I most likely would have I think I would have been a delinquent because back in the school me and my friends used to delinquents, so that's most likely what I'd be doing right now.

Why would you say that?

We used to do that in school, because we weren't actually ever the suspects. We were the victims. our seniors used to actually do that to us. So me and my friends. So came up with the idea we are going to be delinquents. So I guess we would have continued to that idea. But we are not in a bad way or something like that most likely we used to help out our juniors.

So, did you face any difficulties in starting your thing, mainly because of COVID or anything did you face any difficulties?

I guess when you start any sort of company or anything, you need your team. So I actually participated in a competition or something. And I took two of my classmates in it, and they were generally interested. And we started a company from there itself, because the competition removed us, because their policies change and international students were no longer allowed. So we just started the organization, like I had this idea and they agree to come in, then we started it. But the thing is, at the end moment, both of them took temporary leave and till date. So pretty much yeah, it was really difficult to start the whole thing on your own. I didn't actually pay any attention to academics at that time. So that was a kind of backflow. But you know, we just went with the flow.

That's really hard to start entire thing on your own. So how did you keep going with it? did you thought about backing out .

I don't actually think I did, because that time I was really is highly motivated to just keep on doing this because it was something I was generally interested in. And then I started recruiting. And then I guess I had a team of 20 people truth be told only two of them are working right now because I fired all of them. Because I started the whole company on my own. And I knew that I can continue this even if there is no one but there are two people from company who your state along the way, no matter what, they never left Chhavi and disha . So whenever I try to leave, I guess, Chhavi herself was a startup founder. So she used to tell me how to do what to do. And whenever I thought of backing out, you know I just thought there's, two or three people still in the team looking at me to help them out. And moreover, there are millions of students who are looking forward for us to help them out.

That's really nice of them. So the final question, do you have any advice for any future upcoming entrepreneurs?

Yeah I guess like some people do ask me this once again I specify some but yeah the thing is you most likely just gotta start because you know a lot of times you just have an idea in your mind but sometimes you think you do not have enough money to do this or your this thing is already been done How do I know if this is successful or not? There's a lot of thoughts coming in and a lot of time positive thoughts to You know, I can just do it whenever I want to, there's no complications that are gonna come. But you only realize the truth after you start. So starting is the really important step.

That's a really good advice. So it was really nice meeting you. So let's conclude this interview now. And I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours. Thank you for having us. Thank you for being here.

Thank you so much for interviewing me.