Computer science grad Medha Karri applauds Wright Venture competition, urges widespread participation

Computer science graduate Medha Karri created an app that enabled small businesses to do their administrative work and more accurately.

Wright State University computer science graduate Medha Karri is a firm believer in the benefits of Wright Venture, the annual student entrepreneur competition hosted by the Raj Soin College of Business.

Karri earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science in India and his master’s degree in computer science at Wright State, graduating in May. He enjoys writing computer code and is passionate about building solutions that make people’s lives better.

Karri developed and owns Pure Battery Analytics, a computer app sold in Microsoft Store. The app helps users monitor and prolong the lives of their batteries as well as prevent overcharging.

“One of the best battery apps available on the store for Windows 10,” says Microsoft Store.

Wright Venture encourages students like Karri to consider taking on the role of an entrepreneur by providing instruction for starting a business and helping students bring their ideas to life. It creates an experience similar to an actual business startup, including networking, mentorship, creative idea development, product design, service creation, financial management, business planning and marketing skills.

When a Texas-based contractor spotted Karri’s battery app and its simplicity, he sent an appreciation email to Karri for the app and soon grew into an acquaintance. During their conversations, he shared his difficulties with managing his contracts and timesheets conventionally.

Karri discovered that most apps in this area had too many features, which were intimidating to some users.

“So, I decided to build an app for this contractor and help many others like him,” he said.

Karri created an app that enabled small businesses to do their administrative work and more accurately by making it easy to create job estimates and calculate profit margins.

Karri also customized the app to a timesheet solution that automatically calculates the pay for regular and overtime periods.

During the Wright Venture competition last April, Karri presented the judges with the new apps he created that help businesses quickly and easily determine labor costs, process timesheets and compute profit margin.

“It’s the easiest and elegant timesheet solution that all I wanted,” said one of the users of this app.

All of Karri’s work on the apps was done free of charge.

Karri said his apps were not fully developed at the time of the competition and that he probably lost some points and ended up as a runner-up.

“I got constructive feedback,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for learning and trying things and making connections.”

The winner of the 2021 Wright Venture was an on-demand laundry and dry-cleaning service called Tumble operated by Jeffrey Caldwell II and Charles Wheeler.

Karri credits the faculty and courses at Wright State for helping him be successful. He singles out Michael Raymer, Ph.D., Yong Pei, Ph.D., and Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Ph.D., all professors of computer science and engineering, and Kendall Goodrich, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Marketing.

In addition, Karri credits Wright Venture for contributing to his success and encourages widespread student participation.

“It’s a great opportunity to try building a product,” said Karri. “There are a lot of other things you might have to think of — marketing, product visualization and team. You work with professors who excel in those kinds of things.”

He recently started working as a systems engineer with ServiceNow, a Santa Clara, California-based software company that develops cloud computing platforms to help companies manage digital workflows for enterprise operations.

Students interested in participating in the 2022 Wright Venture can contact Kendall Goodrich at kendall.goodrich@wright.edu or visit wright.edu/wrightventure.