Among UCR’s student body are full-time student athletes, artists and even self-starting entrepreneurs. Jaijeet Kakkar, who goes by Jai, is a third-year engineering student and one of the founders of IMPRUE, an internationally recognized company devoted to the manufacturing and designing of cases and accessories for all of today’s major cell phones. The company only consists of 12 people throughout California, including five in their Fremont headquarters, but is also host to warehouse employees, associates, manufacturers and designers from ages 17-40 all over the world. Kakkar, who is obviously committed to IMPRUE part-time due to his status as a student, still says “I consider myself on the job 24 hours.”
Looking back now, he never imagined his small business coming so far. In 2009, during the release of Apple’s iPhone 3GS, both Kakkar and his father anticipated the massive demand and dependence on smart phones in the near future and realized that this was the industry to get into. “I needed someone to fund the project because in high school, I was broke,” says Kakkar with a laugh. Driven by a simple idea to beautify and protect phones, father and son had the first shipments of products delivered to their own home before eventually buying and opening their own warehouse, then hiring employees.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Highlander – Best of both worlds: entrepreneurship and college life
