Delight – India’s new connected e-toilets
by Shagun Singh
Public toilets have always been a big problem in India. New and innovative solutions are created everyday to solve this problem. The latest in the row of toilet innovation is the E-Toilet by a company called Eram Scientific Solutions which is a part of the Eram Group, a technology research and development company. The company [...]
Disrupting women’s hygiene in rural India through design thinking.
by Shagun Singh
Having grown up in a middle class family in India, this came as a shock to me – 88% of women in India do not have access to sanitary napkins. They resort to using rags, ashes, newspaper, dried leaves and husk according to a study by AC Nielsen. According to an article in Fastcoexist, girls [...]
India Design Forum : Some thoughts on the new design forum in New Delhi
by Shagun Singh
My day job is to work as an interaction designer at a world renowned innovation company called frog. While catching up on the latest design events and happenings on designmind, the reputed frog blog on design, technology and business, I came across a post about a design event in India called the India Design Forum [...]
Designing Innovation : India Future of Change Design Contest
by Shagun Singh
India Future of Change is a five year initiative that focuses on getting students and professionals to compete, collaborate and co-create a better future for India. The initiative is made possible by the collaboration of IDC, IIT Bombay, CIIE, IIM-A and Financial Times and is supported by the Govt of India. India Future of Change [...]
Designing Education Systems : Butterfly Fields
by Shagun Singh
The Indian education system is not particularly known for its hands on learning methods. The education culture still lauds rote learning and book based learning methods. One social enterprise is thinking about learning methods a bit differently. Hyderabad based Butterfly Fields recently won the case study competition themed “Democratizing Innovation: A Game Changer for Inclusive [...]
Sarvajal – Innovative technologies for distributing clean drinking water
by Shagun Singh
Sarvajal is a franchise that provides clean drinking water to India’s rural community. It is run by Piramal Water Private and was started back in 2008. Sarvajal is not only serving a social cause, it is a great example of systems thinking, brand development, franchise business development, data collection and sustainable design and technology. Sarvajal [...]
Mobile Innovation in India
by Shagun Singh
There are close to 850 million mobile subscribers in India. Mobile penetration in India is increasing every day but that does not come as a surprise. In the past we have looked into successes like Just Dial geared towards the urban Indian and innovations like MKrishi geared towards India’s rural population.
Architecture in India since 1990: a survey of the contemporary built environment in India
by Jasem Pirani
Rahul Mehrotra a practicing architect and urban designer in Mumbai and Boston, where he also teaches at Harvard University was on a seven city tour in India to launch his most recent publication – Architecture in India: Since 1990. In Mumbai the book was launched at Project88. Nestled in Colaba in a warehouse like building, [...]
India’s Unique Identification Project
by Shagun Singh
India is a country where one’s identity is heavily defined by class and caste relation. If you are one of the 400 million Indians living in poverty, this can be a harsh reality to deal with. The government invests millions in anti-poverty programs every year but the final recipients are usually never the intended ones. [...]
Designing ATM’s for rural India
by Shagun Singh
The new ATM machine that was recently prototyped by NCR truly disrupts the ATM space. The machine which is being called the ‘Pillar’ (since it looks like one) is probably the only ATM machine which can be used by people who are illiterate and cannot read or write. For starters, the ATM does not have [...]
Designing sanitation for low income urban and rural dwellers
by Shagun Singh
Public toilets in India is a design problem which is yet to reach full resolution. Only close to 45 % of Indians have access to any kind of toilet. I remember traveling with my parents as a child while growing up in India. We never stopped at any public restrooms since there weren’t any. If [...]
Collaborative design and medical innovation in India
by Shagun Singh
Medical innovation became a house hold term after GE launched its $1,000 electrocardiogram device and the $15,000 portable ultrasound machine in India and China. A term called reverse innovation is being used to describe products that not only bring lifesaving technologies to the developing world at an affordable cost but also promise to lower the [...]
Redesigning the rickshaw ecosystem
by Shagun Singh
I have always found 3 wheeler rickshaws that ply the roads of India extremely convenient. They are everywhere, affordable and go places where a taxi cab cannot. Its common knowledge that these two stroke engine vehicles are huge pollutants. Auto rickshaws seem like such a South Asian phenomenon that its tough to believe that rickshaws [...]
Tata Group’s $720 flatpack house
by Shagun Singh
The company that brought us the world cheapest car is now creating the worlds cheapest house. TATA, one of India’s largest corporate houses is trying to create the world’s cheapest house. This comes right after the $300 house by Vijay Govindarajan and Christian Sarkar. The house being proposed is a $720 or Rs 32,000 flat [...]
Mobius – the SUV that will connect Africa and its entrepreneurs
by Shagun Singh
This is probably one of the first articles in Designwala that encompasses design thinking outside of India. It is tough to talk about design thinking in India without looking at what services and products Africa and China are creating. Design for the developing world cannot happen in isolation and as reverse innovation takes a hold [...]
The Design Clinic Scheme – A platform to connect designers and small scale industries in India
by Shagun Singh
I recently stumbled on an initiative called the ‘Design Clinic Scheme’ while doing research on the internet for an entirely different project. The government of India is spending close to Rs 73.58 crores to create design intervention and bring design awareness to the enterprises in the country that need it the most. The initiative that was [...]
“New-Improved” : Haute Waste
by Ria Rajan
“New-Improved” is a label started by Namrata Narula, a textile designer based in Bangalore India. (She is also is a close friend and classmate of mine from college). “New-Improved” stems from the age old habit of recycling, preserving and jugaad especially amongst Indians. The idea behind the label being that there is still use and [...]
CKS – 34 ways to save a life
by Ria Rajan
This post is long overdue. Ive been caught up with the madness that trails behind deadlines, mundane activities like getting my driving license, visas etc. In the midst of all this thankfully, I managed to have a chat with Aditya Dev Sood, Founder and CEO of the Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS). CKS is an [...]
Designing a criteria to count the poor in India for BPL cards
by Shagun Singh
India’s poverty line is sometimes called the ‘starvation line’ since this income based poverty line considers the bare minimum income to provide food and does not account for education and healthcare. An income of less than a dollar per person per day is defined as extreme poverty internationally. By that estimate, 40% of the Indians [...]
Rethinking indian agriculture using mobile technology
by Shagun Singh
My parents live in a farm house in a town called Ambala in Haryana, India. When I visit them, I go on early morning walks with them, walking through the surrounding farms, villages, temples and gurudwaras. Along the way we run across farmers starting off their day, walking to their farms in dejection. During my [...]
Publishing a Hindu newspaper in Muslim Pakistan
by Shagun Singh
“Sandesh means ‘message’ and our message is love, peace and tolerance”. This is what Harji Lal, a Hindu man in a small district of Sindh Pakistan says to Bassim Tarikh & Omar Mullick, who are video journalists. Harji started the first Hindu paper called ‘Sandesh‘ for the minority community of Hindus in the Sindh province [...]
