Anab Jain is a designer and a TED Fellow, interested in creating stories that lead us towards new, alternate futures. Educated in India, Vienna and London, she is the Founder of Superflux, a design practice working at the intersection of people and technology.

She created ‘The Power of 8’ a collaborative project to imagine alternate, optimistic futures. Most recently she was working on a project called 5th Dimensional Camera that explores the wider implications of living in a world with quantum physics. Her recent talk called ‘My Elastic City – Designing for India’s immaterial urbanism’ at the World Congress for Information technology revolved around soft urbanism in India.

The recipient of Award of Excellence ICSID, UNESCO Digital Arts Award, and Grand Prix Geneva Human Rights Festival, Anab has also presented her work at MoMA, NY, Apple Computers Inc, LIFT and SIGGRAPH.

This video footage was recorded on skype so please bear with the quality. Thanks!

I visited Paris in the summer of 2007. After spending a couple of weeks of learning french and reading the lonely planet, I was prepared for a week or two of intense historical, cultural and architectural overdose. Everything was pretty much as imagined except the law that allows one to open a bottle of wine, out in the open in a park, something that is a huge taboo in New York. Another great thing to see was the Velib bikes – a public bicycle rental program. My credit card somehow didn’t work with the system but I discovered later that one can also buy a 1 to 7 day Velib card over the internet. A similar New York bike share project summer pilot was launched in 2008 and was quickly wrapped up. I haven’t seen anything since.

Today, as I worked on the projects that pay my bills and simultaneously scanned my reader for some inspiration, a project called FreMo caught my eye – A bikeshare program in India. A couple of things did go through my mind as I scanned their websites for the deliverable and information. India is a country packed with two wheelers. Is there a need for such a service? Even if there is, the idea of taking out credit, borrowing, sharing and leasing things are not quite culturally ingrained or accepted. Also, the country seems to be accelerating in terms of per capita income of the middle class. People have more spending power. More and more college grads prefer to drive cars vs scooters and bicycles. In such a backdrop, I am glad someone thought of FreMo and opened up an option that we are conveniently negating. The option of leaving our cars behind, reducing congestion on the narrow, badly maintained roads and reducing pollution in cities full of smog is surely a welcome sign. I hope that it gets deployed. For Rs 499 lifetime membership, it seems like something I would use.

Here is more on FreMo. “FreMo” is a division of Ecomove Solutions Pvt Ltd

In India, power cuts during exam time is every child’s biggest anxiety. One breaks into a sweat, starts pacing up and down and even goes to the extreme of praying to the Almighty; promising reforms, pledging away a life of sin and the long dreadful countdown to when the lights will turn back on.

This very real, and seemingly life-threatening fear is what served as a starting point for Studio ABD when they began designing StudyLite – a LED lamp, in collaboration with BPL. Studio ABD firmly believes in story telling as integral part of designing products and services; and so it seems fitting that the lamp was inspired by the ring of halo that hovers above the head of the wise and saintly. Light is the quintessential metaphor of enlightenment.  Designer Abhijit Bansod visualised a ring of light glowing over the head when a child is studying. In the StudyLite he has tried to keep things simple yet unique.

This iconic and animated study lamp embodies a smooth and seamless form to allow maximum user interaction as it’s designed especially for children. It is extremely eco-friendly with its solar charging capability and low power consumption; and has a 6-hour battery back up to provide uninterrupted source of light while studying. Ergonomically simple, portable and lightweight StudyLite has recently won the prestigious Red Dot award. Red Dot stands for belonging to the best in design and business. The red dot is an internationally recognized quality label for excellent design that is aimed at all those who would like to qualify their business activities with the help of design. This is a proud moment and a big leap forward for Indian Design, being perhaps the first Indian company to receive such critical acclaim.

Another refreshing feature of this rechargeable lamp is that every lamp is marked ‘Designed and Made in India’.  Studio ABD wanted to highlight the fact that the components of the lamp, the assembly and the design were all done here, within the country – promoting the use of locally available resources, materials, people and technology.

StudyLite came into existence by the sheer genius of the design team who worked directly with the end users without much interference from the manufacturers –BPL. The biggest challenged faced by them was to tackle the mindset of resistance from the manufacturers. While they were extremely supportive of original design and idea, the concept of having a halo head for the lamp seemed a tad unnecessary. Fortunately, it was nothing a little patience and persistence couldn’t contend with.

Another problem they had to deal with was the pricing of StudyLite. At the moment, being marketed at a little more than Rs, 1500, there seems to be a slight apprehension to spend that much, despite its pleasing aesthetics, functionality and sheer practicality. Again, it’s a matter of tackling mindsets. Studio ABD hopes that the right marketing and publicity will go a long way in helping them do so.  Winning the Red Dot has done wonders for StudyLite in making its presence felt in the Indian market. Currently available throughout the country, it is now gearing up to be hopefully exported and retailed internationally.

To know more about Studio ABD, please visit – http://www.studioabd.in/

The ChotuKool is like no other fridge. It does not have a compressor. It runs on a battery. Utensils and bottles need to be loaded into this 43-litre cool box from the top. It weighs only 7.8 kg and costs only Rs 3,200. A product of Godrej & Boyce, the fridge was co-created with the woman of Osamabad, a small town tucked away in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra. This project has another service design component which is extremely interesting – the retailers who go from house to house selling the Chotokools. They belong to the self-help group created and run by Swayam Shikshan Prayog, an NGO microfinance institution (MFI). The number of women retailers approximate 101 in 77 villages. They sell nano refrigerators among other products, in Osmanabad, Maharashtra. and earn Rs 3,000 a month as commission. The MFI also sells Hindustan Unilever water purifiers and BP Energy India cooking stoves. It accounts for 60,000 of the 200,000 Oorja stoves sold across the country by BP Energy.

Outlook Business cover story on India’s New Retailers

Greenlight Planet is a startup based in Mumbai that sells affordable solar LED lights targeted at rural India. The sustainable solar design is a substitute for the kerosene lamps widely used in rural india. The lamp provides 16 hrs of electricity on a single days charge and is known to be twice as bright as its unsustainable predecessor. The lamp costs less than Rs 1000 and has been designed by Patrick Walsh of the US and Mumbai’s Vaibhav Tidke. The product is named the Sun KingTM solar lantern.

VNL | Meet the next billion mobile users from VNL on Vimeo.

Vihaan Networks Ltd., an Indian telecommunications company known as VNL, won the Bronze award for a solar-powered base station to bring cellphone access to remote rural villages. The inexpensive base station can be quickly assembled and set up by unskilled villagers, and can run entirely on the built-in solar panels and batteries. The technology, which now is being called the ‘WorldGSM’ has a philosophy of providing mobile services that are low in cost, maintenance, can be self deployed and are solar powered.

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