亚洲AV

Student entrepreneurs do their 'homework' before starting company

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In late 2021, just after moving to Northern Virginia from Dallas, Texas, to attend 亚洲AV, Arastalis B. Choudhury鈥檚 car was stolen. The difficulties he encountered as a result of that crime gave him an idea.

two students at a table
Student entrepreneurs Arastalis B. Choudhury and Fariha Askar. Photo by Cristian Torres/Strategic Communications

He called the police and reported it, got a case number, and the process began. But Choudhury, a major, figured there had to be a better way.

The system is, respectfully, 鈥榦ld school,鈥 and things just weren't really up to date with how technology is today,鈥 he said.

He wrote down all his thoughts on how the system could be better and shared them with his friend and fellow Mason student Fariha Askar, who is majoring in She then took his ideas and constructed a flow chart of how the system could work.

That鈥檚 when the real work began. They started their research with attorney to have a patentability search done. 鈥淎fter around three or four days, the lawyer got back to us, and it was great news,鈥 said Choudhury. 鈥淗e told us that our idea was novel, that there was nothing like it out there.鈥

But they were at a loss for what to do next, so they turned to their resources at Mason, reaching out to professors in computer science and data sciences for informational interviews. 鈥淲e got a lot of responses from the professors, and we started sitting down with them,鈥 said Askar.

It was James Baldo, director of the graduate in the , who connected them to the ) and its incubator program. The MIX is also where they met major Rediet Tadesse, who loved their idea and wanted to work them.

And that鈥檚 how their company NECX, which stands for Non-Emergency Communication Exchange, was born.

鈥淭he reason we have non-emergency our name is to clarify that we're not here to replace 911 at all,鈥 said Choudhury.

Tadesse immediately began working on a prototype while Choudhury and Askar continued their research, which include interviewing members of the Mason and Fairfax County police departments about day-to-day operations and taking a deep dive into victim services.

We knew the problem isn't that [the police] don't do anything鈥攊t鈥檚 more the flood of information,鈥 said Askar.

Their solution is a multi-platform service, which includes a free mobile app for the victims of crime and a computer web app, which is accessible by a computer for the police and detectives to do all their work. There is also a platform dedicated to victim services.

鈥淲e've connected these three platforms together into central database, which allows information and data to transfer and all of them to communicate with each other,鈥 said Choudhury.

They also took their idea to the , coming in eighth out of 68 teams from around the country.

As a part of the MIX鈥檚 incubator, the team was able to take part in the mini , which is an abbreviated version of the program offered to entrepreneurs through Virginia鈥檚 Small Business Development Centers, and were mentored by Senior Business Counselor David Powell.

Askar found the ICAP 鈥渉omework,鈥 documents that asked in-depth questions about their business, really valuable. And both found being with other entrepreneurs鈥攁nd their critiques鈥攙ery helpful.

鈥淭here were a few teams that were a bit ahead of us,鈥 said Askar. 鈥淚t provided a lot of insight because we could learn from their problems and also see problems to come.鈥

One of their biggest takeaways from the training is what they learned about customer segmentation.

鈥淲e had a very hard time figuring out who our customer was,鈥 said Choudhury. 鈥淲e knew how it could help this problem that was out in the world, but we didn't know who exactly would pay for it. ICAP really helped us with that.鈥