Prince William tasting the dasa.

CHENNAI: Prince William and Princess Kate may have met four entrepreneurs at a tech event in Mumbai on April 11, but it was Vikas Eshwar, an alumnus of SRM University, Chennai, who had them eating out of his hands.On the second day of their India tour, the royal couple met with four entrepreneurs at The Social, a collaborative cafe-workspace for young business talent, organised by the UK Trade and Investment in Mumbai.Among them was 24-year-old Eshwar, founder and CEO, Mukunda Foods, who had created ‘Dosamatic’, an automatic dosa maker.“Our machines, which we make in commercial and domestic models, are available all over the UK and the US machine that was why we were called for the meet,” says Eshwar, who graduated from SRM in 2013.He says it was in his final year of his B Tech course that he and his batchmate and Dosamatic co-founder Sudeep Sabat came up with the invention simply because they had become so fond of dosas and could never perfect the art of making a crispy paper-thin dosa.“Chennai’s crispy dosas spoiled us and we realised that when we went to other parts of the country or world, we could never get them as good as in south India,” he says.Eshwar, who showed off his dosa maker to Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a tech event in the US last year, says he was pleasantly surprised when the royal couple not only spent time at his counter, but even broke protocol and tasted his dosas.“Modi had just glanced at my invention when he saw it last year, so I expected the same from the Prince and Princess. But I was really surprised when they started talking to me about the machine, then made themselves a dosa and took a bite,” says Eshwar, who adds that he has been informed that the couple never ate in public, so he was excited when they sampled his fare.“The Prince has asked for one to be shipped to the Buckingham Palace as the machine makes pancakes and crepes as well,” says Eshwar, who adds that Prince William did not know what a dosa was and it was Princess Kate who explained to him that it was the Indian version of the crepe.“My mother is so excited,” says Eshwar, “because she never thought Prince William would taste a dosa made by me.”The other inventions presented at the event were a racing car stimulator from the Mahindra Racing Team, a Braille learning machine from Project Mudra, and a mapping app from Chris Sheldrick, co-founder & CEO of what3words.