Milind Vadnere

Guiding the Operations of Funvention & Eduketive with His Exemplary Business Values

For this exclusive inside story, we sat down for a virtual coffee session with Mr Milind Vadnere, the Co-Founder and CEO of Funvention Learning Pvt. Ltd. He walked us through various aspects of his avant-garde business venture that concluded in this fascinating read.

OUTLINING THE BUSINESS PORTFOLIO
Funvention, a start-up with a unique mission to make learning for kids engaging as well as entertaining conceptualizes, designs & manufactures STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Mathematics) based learning activity kits. These are DIY toys that help a child to unleash his hidden potential with proper guidance. The name Funvention equates to Fun + Invention, where kids get to learn with interesting playing activities and their energies can be channelized in an appropriate direction for better future prospects.

Today, Funvention offers a portfolio of over 100+ innovative products, for kid’s with age group ranging from 3 to 14 years and so far, have been able to sell 3 Lac+ educational kits and still counting. Alongside this, the company strives to explore export opportunities and soon, it will forge ahead with the multinational distribution for the selected product range.

Addressing the success of this innovative venture, Mr Milind reveals, “We have managed to successfully turn into a bootstrap within a year of establishment and doubling the turnover year on year. There is a lot to achieve, as the Funvention products are currently available at shops in selected 4-5 cities only and major e-commerce platforms and soon we will strategize to cover Pan India retail shops in next 1 year.”

He states, Funvention strives to foster creativity in Gen -Z with innovative and engaging DIY toys and other offerings. With their products, children can effortlessly build, play, and learn the basic concepts of the prominent subjects enticingly to trigger their imaginative side.

THE INCEPTION TALE
The foundation stone for Funvention was established in Jan 2017, by two brothers Mr. Milind Vadnere and Mr. Kamlesh Vadnere with a common objective to enlighten young minds and unlock their hidden talents and skills for their better future. But just after a few months of the inception, Funvention lost its Creative Founder, Mr. Kamlesh, to cancer. Later, Mr Milind took charge of all business responsibilities alone thereafter.

THE LEADING FIGURES BEHIND FUNVENTION

A connoisseur of art and technology, Mr. Milind Vadnere has proficient artistic as well as engineering competence that he attained by working for over 12 years in IT industry. His zealous outlook driven by innovation and perfection towards concept designing, inventing ideas, and modelling them into the projects, has bestowed him with a unique identity and every single product of Funvention can be seen reflecting these values only.
The Sales Head of Indian Operations, Mr. Abhijit Shirke, holds 12+ years of experience in toys/stationary industry. With his self-motivated and adept sales skills, Funvention has been able to generate considerable value. He joined the company two years back after calling off from his high-heeled job in an MNC, to prove his prowess and test the limits of his sales expertise. His dedicated efforts and hard work has been the motive force behind the success of Funvention products in several eminent stores and modern trade like—Hamlay’s and Toys Rus.

A TRIBUTE TO LATE MR KAMLESH VADNERE
Late Mr Kamlesh was the Co-Founder & Director of Funvention who was well-reckoned as a Creative and Meticulous Artist. He was a passionate introvert who was seldomly found busy exploring opportunities in the diverse field of Art and align his competencies accordingly. His robust professional background with 15 years of experience in textile designing, graphics and animation helped Funvention in multiple ways to make a difference to the targeted industry.

His outstanding artistry in soap art, crafts, thermocol sculptures and painting has been claimed to be spell-bounding and his exceptional work in DIYital art, graphic designing and animation, grabbed eyeballs across the domain that contributed to his highly regarded repute. His keen eye for grandeur in designs and works with minute details to make a beautiful piece of work will always be an inspiration to team Funvention to ameliorate its offerings.

THE INSPIRATION BEHIND THE ESTABLISHMENT
Mr. Milind says that nowadays children have become addicted to cell phones and especially to video games. Due to the tech dominance in our lives, it has become a common scenario for the kids to be distracted by the virtual world— be it mobile, social media sites, video games and reality shows. Hence, it has become crucial to make a child adept in technology usage alongside adding value to their knowledge pool to sustain today’s competitive world.

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Acknowledging this pain point,Funvention was established where the learning process could becomes as easy as playing video games! In this respect, Mr Milind conveys, “Learning happens when we find something challenging, face difficulties and try to resolve them. Based on this belief, we make STEAM-based creative, innovative, challenging but Fun filled hands-on DIY activity toys. Such toys add a spark of creativity in children. There are DIY robotics and mechanical toys that fascinate the kids about technology and helps them to choose the better carriers for themself.”

THE KEY USPs
When asked to reveal the major USP of Funvention’s offerings, Mr. Milind states that innovation, creativity, and stream of ideas are what they offer in their respective industry. Each of their product is one-of-a-kind but economical that allows effortless teaching to the kids. As they know the products have to be used by the kids, they have compelled the formation of every product with high-quality environment-friendly material, instructional video, pictorial & text instruction manual, and learning material on how things work.

Moreover, what fascinates the parents or guardians the most is the variety in learning streams and different forms of gameplay that manages to grab the attention of the kids, which is quite exclusive as well as commendable. No doubt, customer retention has become a piece of cake for them, owing to these features!

INTRODUCING A NEW AGE BRAND- EDUKETIVE
Mr Milind and his proficient team have launched a brand- Eduketive that designs & develops educational toys with a creative factor. Here, the products will be intensely converged on helping the children build their core skills—be it reading, writing, or comprehending the concepts of mathematics, science, logical reasoning. Owing to this novel start-up, the leaders of Funvention aspire to ensure a progressive hands-on learning approach to the kids.

Where Funvention has become a well-acclaimed STEM-based educational DIY Toys Indian brand, Eduketive will be primarily focused on ready-to-play games and activities only. And the motive behind this new venture is simple—revolutionizing the learning process for young minds by developing an extraordinary, interactive & diversified product line. Mr Milind claims that with Eduketive, they intend to assist young learners in developing better concentration power while increasing the span of their attention. He adds that their incessant attempts are committed to deviate kids from the mobile screen to real-life playing that will be enriched in fun + creativity + education.

WORK CULTURE AT A GLANCE
Mr Milind has an ideology that says— a start-up shouldn’t be obsessed with working with a specific type of people. He asserts that his entrepreneurial ventures are typically focused on talent retention and ensure a touch of diversity in the culture. For him, the doors are open for honest, hardworking, creative & self-motivated individuals to adjoin the ‘Funvention family’. The management has ensured to maintain an open work culture that treats every employees fairly and respectfully. Moreover, the ambience has an equal access to the opportunities as well as resources for the workforce to motivate them in contributing to the thumping success of the company.

ABOUT THE FUTURE OUTLOOKS
Mr Milind elucidates that STEM education is the fastest-growing element in the education and toys industry. And his brainchild- Funvention, has proved immense potential in STEM-based educational toys with its broad spectrum of innovative products that have marked their territory and existence in this proDIYious toy market.

For the future, he foresees a healthy growth month on month by making exponential leaps in terms of their sales operations. With the motto— “Best is yet to come”, team Funvention makes every ounce of effort to bring an innovative offering with ameliorated services for its targeted audience. At last, he concludes that alongside enhancing the awareness of educational toys across the world, they aim for growth in leaps and bounds in local as well as global markets.