At night, when the lanes of Delhi’s Trilokpuri begin to empty and the sound of traffic recedes, the machines inside Nikhil’s building continue working.On the first two floors of his home, thirty-two 3D printers hum through the night, steadily producing architectural models, industrial prototypes, drone chassis and medical-device casings.Upstairs, on the third floor, Nikhil’s family — his father, mother, and younger sister sleep.Nikhil’s father manages the printing operations, and his sister handles the finance. Nikhil, 22 years old and still studying, spends his days balancing classroom lectures and client calls and production schedules while on the Metro to college.“If you think of something in your mind, we can make it,” he says about what his 3D printers can achieve.A few years ago, Nikhil did not even know what 3D printing was.Back then, he was a Class 12 student at RSKV Kalyanvas, a Delhi government school, trying to build a smart stick for visually impaired people, working with seed money that he had got from the Delhi government’s Business Blasters programme.Story continues below this adThe idea had appeared doable inside the classroom. Once he tried to build the smart stick, however, several issues arose.“We wanted to solve problems for blind persons,” he said. “But when we tried making a physical product, we faced problems, especially with the outer hardware box.”Every manufacturer that he went to, told him the same thing: mould-making was expensive. Industrial production was not designed for government-school students with limited money and no technical background.“Everyone told us, ‘It’s very costly. How will you do it?’” Nikhil said.Story continues below this adAnd then, someone suggested a technology he had never heard of before: 3D printing.That suggestion changed the course of his life.The Business Blasters programme itself emerged from the Delhi government’s Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum, launched under the Aam Aadmi Party government as an attempt to encourage students in government schools to think beyond conventional career paths and become “job creators rather than job seekers”.The initiative provided Class 11 and 12 students small seed grants — usually Rs 2,000 per student — to develop startup ideas or community-focused projects in teams. Over time, lakhs of students across Delhi government schools participated in the program through school-level funding rounds, district showcases and state summits.The program was implemented with support from the Udhyam Learning Foundation, which worked as a technical and program partner.Story continues below this adMekin Maheshwari, founder and CEO of Udhyam Learning Foundation, said the larger aim was never simply to teach business.“Across our work, the idea has never been to teach entrepreneurship as a theoretical subject,” Maheshwari said. “It’s to help students look at the world around them a little differently, identify real problems they see in their homes, schools or communities, and build practical solutions to them.”“What makes these programs powerful is that students are not working on hypothetical case studies,” he said. “They are working on things that directly affect their lives, which changes the level of ownership and seriousness they bring to the process.”Maheshwari said that this broader transformation is precisely what the program was designed to create. “We’ve been doing similar work across 15 states since 2017, reaching close to 4.7 million students through different government partnerships and programmes, including initiatives like Delhi Business Blasters, Uttarakhand’s Kaushalam programme and Haryana’s KBC,” he said.Story continues below this adAfter the government in Delhi changed in early 2025, the original Business Blasters programme was discontinued.For Nikhil, the consequences were immediate: “My startup had been approved for nearly Rs 7 lakh in support funding distributed in installments. But only around Rs 2 lakh ever arrived.”“The remaining amount stopped after the government changed,” he said. “I was never told the reason.”Still, Nikhil continued building. It was a team of seven — they called themselves the “G7”, Nikhil said.Story continues below this adNikhil grew up in Trilokpuri in East Delhi, and studied entirely in Delhi government schools before securing admission into an integrated BBA-MBA course at Maharaja Surajmal Institute.His father worked in an export company. His mother was a homemaker. “My father’s job was terminated during the coronavirus pandemic,” Nikhil said. “So everything (to ensure the family stayed afloat) was up to me.”After school finished in 2022, many of Nikhil’s classmates focused on college. He started working.“I did take admission in college,” he said. “But to continue the project, I needed to earn some money.”Story continues below this adFor one month, he worked in a call centre before joining a 3D-printing company.Since he initially knew nothing about the technology, he began approaching college students and teachers for help.“I connected with some college professors,” he said. “Teachers helped me financially as well.”Eventually, Nikhil found a company that was willing to print his computer-aided design (CAD) model. The relationship evolved into employment.Story continues below this adFor nearly eleven months, he worked while trying to continue college simultaneously. “I explained to the company that I have to attend college for some days,” he said. “They helped me a lot.”Those months became an informal industrial apprenticeship. “I made machines. I operated machines. I handled machines. I fixed machines,” he said. “I did almost everything.”The smart stick project itself eventually evolved beyond him.Nikhil said the company became interested in continuing the idea and acquired it from him for around Rs 3.2 lakh.“When I realised I wouldn’t be able to solve this problem in India alone, I handed the project to the company,” he said.He also quit his job. College schedules had become impossible to balance with full-time work. His original team had dispersed. And by then, Nikhil no longer wanted merely to build one product. He wanted to build a company.For five to six months, he immersed himself in research around 3D-printing technologies and manufacturing systems.On March 27, 2024, he officially launched Nova Nik 3DD. “Nova means new,” he explained. “Nik means Nikhil. And 3DD means 3 Dimensional Dynamics,” he said.In the beginning, the company had almost nothing. “One or two machines,” he said. So Nikhil started calling strangers.“I used to take out fifty contacts every day,” he recalled. “Then I started calling everyone — third parties, customers, everybody.”The business slowly expanded. First came 3D-printing services for architecture students at SPA Delhi. “We make building models for them,” he said. “They have to show designs, and we print them.”Then came industrial and institutional work. Through a third party, the company briefly worked on components connected to rover testing associated with India’s space program.The company later worked with IG Drones on drone manufacturing for defence-linked applications. “We manufactured around 2,000 drones,” he said. “The full body. The chassis.”It also developed ongoing work linked to medical-device manufacturing. “We permanently work with ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) projects,” he said. “Blood-testing machines, their outer plastic body work, I handle that.”