Aman Bhandula, hailing from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh, initially harbored a passion for various art forms. However, driven by his sister’s unfulfilled dream of joining an IIT due to financial constraints, Aman shifted his focus to engineering.
Completing his class 12 education at GK Welhams College, Moradabad, Aman secured a JEE Advanced rank of 6930. Faced with the choice of securing his preferred stream in a newer IIT or exploring a different engineering field in a first-generation IIT, Aman prioritized the campus environment. He enrolled in the Integrated Master’s degree in Geological Engineering at IIT Roorkee, India’s oldest engineering college.
Campus life at IIT Roorkee provided Aman with the opportunity to rediscover his interests in art, music, and painting. Additionally, he formed a band with fellow students and delved into learning about machine learning technology while actively participating in sports.
A pivotal moment occurred when Aman injured his shoulder while playing squash, leading him to seek medical attention. The experience, coupled with discussions with roommates and doctors, sparked the idea of creating an app to digitally store people’s medical histories. Despite initial discussions, the project was put on hold as everyone pursued summer internships in 2019.
A turning point in Aman’s entrepreneurial journey came during his internship in Bangalore, where he had the chance to stay with Shashank Kumar, the founder of Razorpay and an IIT Roorkee alumnus. Inspired by this experience, Aman and his team developed an app that digitally stored medical histories, aiming to streamline information from doctor’s clinics and labs.
Initially intending to hand over the app to the government, the team’s plans shifted when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020. They decided to apply to Y Combinator, a prominent American technology startup accelerator, and secured a seed fund of $150,000. Aman committed to working on his startup, Farmako, full-time for the next five years.
Aman’s co-founders, Kaishu Sahu and Nikhil Kumar, also joined IIT Roorkee in 2016, pursuing a four-year BTech course in Biological Technology. They chose to forego campus placements and dedicate themselves solely to Farmako, a centralized health record system for India.
The pandemic posed challenges for Farmako’s operations, with the team facing health crises and disruptions in the healthcare system. However, Aman remains optimistic, noting that the increased focus on health and the normalization of touchless services will benefit their startup.
Farmako currently boasts over 60,000 people with structured medical histories, with more than 1000 registered doctors and labs in Delhi NCR, Roorkee, and Moradabad. Aman advises those contemplating dropping out to carefully consider their passions and not make impulsive decisions, emphasizing the importance of evaluating whether one’s outside interests can be pursued successfully before leaving college.
