Supertable (previously called the Mobile Activation Station) is a project  by Holobiont (Haruka Horiuchi & Frank Hebbert) . It was  selected as the winner of the ‘Grand Idea Competition‘ organized by Designwala this summer. Haruka and Frank won a grand or $1000 to make their idea come to life. Supertable is a portable reconfigurable table with built-in power distribution, lighting and storage. It turns empty stores into communal spaces. Once built, the Station will be available for short-term use in vacant storefronts along Rogers Avenue in Crown heights, Brooklyn.  Supertable will be built off of an easy set of instructions with easily available kit of parts. It follows the idea of hackable and DIY culture of building structures that are flexible, adaptable, reusable and community driven. Stay tuned for the Holobiont’s other community and urban planning projects in the upcoming second part of this series.

Following the conversation with Kalyan Akkipeddi about ProtoVillage, I decided to weasel a little more of his time and get him to talk to me about InteGreater. I reckoned it would help me understand the larger framework within with the ideas of social entrepreneurship; sustainable habitats and knowledge sharing are situated. One of Kalyan’s favorite examples of how people can get together remotely, collaborate and co-create stuff is Wikipedia. The idea of doing something similar except with the core being social entrepreneurship, was never too far from his mind. Also, every time he travelled, be it for work or play, he found himself being faced by a shade of reality that was different from the life he knew; and each time this happened, he felt that he could do something to change/better the situation. There were such obvious opportunities to do things efficiently, except that it was being ignored, opportunities that can make lives better and easier.

And so he did what he thought was important- travel. He quit his job, sold his car, pooled all his money and took off. Travelled across the country, met people, saw things and through this journey, he realised three things that he thought, are the hurdles to systemic development.

1.     There are many people with good intentions, but they don’t have the know-how or the access to expertise to make things happen.

2.     There were many people working on similar problems across the country, but didn’t know each other, causing redundancy, and often reinventing  the wheel

3.     There was no space for diversity in the thinking of solutions. So most of them were quick fixes.

So after 9 months on the road, there was this feeling that there is space for an idea that addresses all of the above. And serendipitously, while attending a Buddhist sermon that said – All things apparently random are actually INTEGRATING into the GREATER one – gave him the name of InteGreater. This is how InteGreater was born. It began with the vision to get all those who think they want to, and can help solve the world’s problems, together. An intervention in the form of a networking space for people to build contacts, interact, exchange knowledge, trade expertise and take ideas forward. It brings together resources and competencies of industry, academia, governments, NGOs & Social enterprises, and individuals, to enable development and implementation of ideas that will solve the problems of extreme poverty around the world and build a happy planet within 15 years.

There are two kinds of networks on InteGreater. One for social entrepreneurs and the other for those with demonstrated expertise in their respective domains. The idea is to let people find each within and across these networks. Since the inception of Protovillage, Kalyan has also been feeding of this network, and has been working on various ways to get experts from diverse disciplines to create more possibilities like Protovillage. Also, working full time on Protovillage, he has now stopped managing projects for social entrepreneurs and NGO’s, having decided to let them find each out and work on solutions. With no physical address, the idea is for InteGreater to stay online permanently, while constantly working towards widening this scope of the network. Currently, the network consists of about 2400 people offline and about 300 online; both globally and locally spread over 40 countries.

If you think you can contribute in any domain, you can join as the resource person, that the social entrepreneurs will call for when they need, or as a social entrepreneur, you can join to tap into this rich network of people who work under social and financial constraints to provide creative solutions for systemic development.

To know more, visit – http://www.integreater.org/

Primary health centers are the cornerstone of the rural health care system. In 1991, India had about 22,400 primary health centers, 11,200 hospitals, and 27,400 clinics. These facilities are part of a tiered health care system that funnels more difficult cases into urban hospitals while attempting to provide routine medical care to the vast majority in the countryside. Primary health centers and sub centers rely on trained paramedics to meet most of their needs. The main problems affecting the success of primary health centers are the predominance of clinical and curative concerns over the intended emphasis on preventive work and the reluctance of staff to work in rural areas. -(Source – Wikipedia)

This is where the Low cost self-diagnosis tool comes in.

Winner of the International Design Excellence Awards 08 (http://www.idsa.org/IDEA_Awards/gallery/2008/award_details.asp?ID=35918307), this is a mechanical self-diagnosis tool was created to help patients in rural India capture symptoms and provide them basic information about their disease. Made with recycled materials to maintain low costs, it aims to empower patients and aid doctors with accurate diagnosis and efficient recovery throughout the rural parts of the country.

Designed at Honeywell Technology Solutions in Bangalore by Ankur Sardana (NID) and Parag Trivedi (IDC), this tool displays relevant information. With simple rotation of rings & mapping on the chart, the tool provides -

1. Criticality of disease, basic suggestions (like – ‘how soon to meet the doctor’)

2. Kind of diagnostic tests would be done on them (this is based on the research finding that the villagers are quite suspicious of blood being used for testing & also unprepared for the expense which tests might require)

3. Cases in which they should meet a specialist directly instead of going to a general practitioner

4. Information & contact numbers of healthcare providers

The tool consists of a set of Rings (symptoms), a disease chart & other information. These rings could be made of cheap but durable cardboard. Each ring has set of symptoms. The patient rotates the rings (starting from smallest) & chooses his symptoms by bringing them in one line, below the marker. Each symptom has a number printed on it. The user maps the disease code (set of numbers, 1 from each ring) on the chart. The chart provides tentative result –disease name, severity, next steps, diagnostic tests required to confirm disease, doctor they should meet (i.e. which specialty) & contact information of doctors &hospitals. Made out recycled plastic/cardboard, it is easy to be produced locally in the villages.

The low-cost self-diagnosis tool was born out of the need to provide rural Indian patients with a method to help themselves. Healthcare has not been a priority of rural dwellers in India & they have been used to taking ‘over the counter drugs’ or getting quick relief in the form of a steroid injection from the unregistered medical practitioners- URMP’s (in villages there are usually no qualified doctors). Though an immediate solution, it is not a proper one, disease symptoms resurface & the patient is rushed to a proper registered doctor in the city, who now administers an emergency case where it could have been a case of normal diagnosis. With the tool, the rural dwellers can be empowered with basic knowledge about their disease & can avoid the mistreatment by URMP’s. This tool can also be used by NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and self-help groups (in cases of illiteracy) to increase awareness & help make disease symptoms more understandable to the patients. There is also a mutual benefit for healthcare providers and patients. The patients save the money and side effects of self-medication and time, while the doctors have increased inflow of patients and thus more usage of their services.

Currently, in its present form it has not been tested on a large-scale. Most of the feedback has been gathered from the villagers. The educated villagers usually becomes excited, as they understand that they can get empowered if they have some idea of what disease they have. What has been tested in the field (in UP) is a variant in which there are no results, just collection of symptoms. The results have been mixed. Literacy is by far the biggest problem.

While this tool doesn’t aim to act as the messiah of the rural health care problems in the country, it certainly is a step in the right direction. One hopes that it inspires other creative practitioners and problem solvers to delve deeper into this space. It certainly needs more such social innovations.

For more information about more the tool, contact: Ankur Sardana: ankur.sardana@honeywell.com

More on Honeywell at – https://www.honeywell.com/sites/htsl/

Dr Simone Ahuja is the founder and principal of Blood Orange Media, a multimedia production and design company that creates content in emerging markets, focusing specifically on examples of innovation with global relevance. Most recently she developed, produced and directed the Best Buy Corp supported television series, Indique – Big Ideas from Emerging India, for which she journeyed across India to explore how innovation within India drives socio-economic development on the sub-continent and beyond. Meetings with CEO’s of multinational corporations as well as grassroots entrepreneurs heralding bottom up, small scale innovation gave her a holistic, on-the-ground look at the methods of innovation employed in India and the mindset behind it. The Center for India & Global Business at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, served as a knowledge partner for the series. Indique – Big Ideas from Emerging India is currently airing in PBS markets across the US.

Dr Ahuja currently serves as an advisor to the Center for India and Global Business and has served as an Associate Fellow at the Asia Society, NYC. She provides consulting services to trade delegations, academic institutions and Fortune 100 companies and regularly contributes to a Harvard Business Review Blog on HBR.org, including a recent post about innovation mindset entitled Jugaad: A New Growth Formula for Corporate America. Her pending book, Leading in a World of Scarcity:New Strategies for Doing More for Less for More, will be available in 2011.

Blood Orange Media is based out of Minneapolis, USA with affiliates in Mumbai, India and across the globe.

Ever had to catch one of those New Delhi auto-rickshaws? You know that you are being taken for a ride then. The rickshaw drivers are rude, they refuse to go by the meter, they always seem to be going the opposite direction to where you want to be going. I have questioned the local transportation system in the capital a bunch of times. The new metro system is a part of the solution but will not really replace the rickshaws as far as short distances are concerned. The government intervened in 1998 only to implement CNG or LPG for all auto-rickshaws and the bus fleet in the city. However, there were no service changes in order to improve any of these transportation systems. Recently, I came across a non governmental organization called NyayaBhoomi. The two main centers of focus for this organization are public transportation system and government accountability.

NyayaBhoomi has been developing a venture called the ‘Auto Star Club’ for sometime. The venture is focused on developing an auto rickshaw service that creates an ecosytem of profit generation, client services, long term growth options for the drivers, and technological innovation. NyayaBhoomi published a handbook for the auto drivers that tells them about their rights and duties. The book is aptly titled “Samaadhan” and was published in June 2007. They have also facilitated advertising on auto rickshaws by creating an organized framework for such advertising and got the Municipal Corporation of India to approve this initiative. Around 10,000 rickshaws are registered as volunteers under this system and around 5000 of them are expected to be included in the Autotisement initiative.

A new initiative called Auto Star Club is an initiative that aims improving the auto rickshaw service in India. They intend to have a call-in rickshaw service, very much like a taxi service. The auto’s would be equipped with GPS system to calculate distance and estimate the fare. The drivers would undergo and intensive etiquette and manner training sessions to deal with customers. They also want to create an organized sector for employment by giving the drivers uniforms, health-care and other retirement benefits. This would be made possible by money from the advertisements as well as higher fares.

The ‘Mission Mafia se Mukti‘ initiative is aimed at freeing up rickshaws from the clutches of the Mafia. NyayaBhoomi is still trying to raise money in order to put the some of these systems in place. Their main goal is to understand the underlying problems that causes the rickshaw service in India to be flawed, inefficient and corrupt and then work on solving the problem. It is almost a bit scary to think how we live through broken systems everyday and do very little to rectify them. NyayaBhoomi has taken that step and I hope they succeed. They made this very entertaining but very educational film about future possibilities in this sector that can be put into place as soon as Oct 2010. A hopeful film and perhaps a future possibility.

Bruce Sterling’s short story The Interoperation , featured in the Technology Review published by MIT, (Massachusett’s Institute of Technology) can be briefly summarized as a tale of a future where robots build and tear down buildings based on pre-set programs and a future where people ride bamboo bicycles.

In present times, this story is not too far from the truth. Well, at least, the latter. Today I had the opportunity to talk to Vijay Sharma – creator of Bambike- India’s first bicycle made of Bamboo. After accidently being enrolled at the Center for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad, Vijay’s foray into manufacturing bamboo bicycles began nearly two years ago, when his wife Niyatee bought herself a cycle to commute to work. Currently located in Bangalore, He began researching cycles online and came across the trike design. A trike (abbreviation for tricycle) is a three-wheeled vehicle, different from our very own cycle rickshaws in its placement of two wheels in the front and one at the back. While tricycles are often associated with the small three-wheeled vehicles used by pre-school children, adults also use them for a variety of purposes. In Asia and Africa, tricycles are used primarily for commercial transportation, either of passengers in pedicabs or of freight and deliveries.

The idea of trikes were far too irresistible for Vijay and soon he began to design his own. After a brief stint at a furniture design company, since he always wanted to have a workshop of his own, Vijay began his own workshop called ‘6mm Designs and Furniture’ along with two friends. It was in a rundown garage in a small alley of one of the crowded areas in Bangalore. Slowly they expanded and reached out to a bigger clientele, mass-producing furniture for them. The workshop provided Vijay with the space to continue his experiments with bicycles. The trike took 6 months to come to life – from the drawing board to execution.  Last year, a friend suggested he design a bicycle using bamboo. Armed with months of research, and with a few ideas of his own, Vijay made his very first Bambike in 3 days.  The first prototype was made with raw bamboo with metal sleeves on junctions. This resulted in a little fishtail wobbliness at high speeds. The second prototype was made using thicker bamboo sections and this time with a jig to hold all members and important junctions like bottom brackets, rear drop out, head tube and seat tube.  Here the parts were glued together without metal sleeves and using hemp fiber. A more streamlined and ergonomically superior one followed. After making the first prototype of the Bambike, Vijay met Arun Katiyar. Arun is involved with the Ride-A-Cycle Foundation that promotes biking and going green – a small way to give back to the environment. He was instrumental in encouraging Vijay to develop his bamboo bike further. While Vijay made more prototypes, Arun tested them out and gave him relevant feedback to improvise on the designs.

Bambike then went on to associate itself with TFN – Tour of the Nilgiris. The TFN is a challenging mountain bike event and would be a great avenue to test out the endurance of the bamboo bicycles as well as get it more endorsements. Vijay decided to create a bambike for the event, that would be awarded to the most sporting participant of the 8-day 900km cycling rally.

At 12 kgs, it weighs 3 kgs less than the first prototype and does not compromise on features, functionality or aesthetics. Bamboo serves as an apt material given its tensile strength and tubular structure. The fact that it is eco friendly doesn’t hurt one bit. Using Bamboo also cuts down the energy consumption as compared to steel, aluminum, titanium and carbon fiber. Bamboo has better shock- absorbing power for rough roads, and Vijay is working on a stiffer version for smooth roads.

Given the story so far, one would think that Bambike would have more buyers. This query led us to a discussion about the notion that most people have about Bamboo being a poor man’s timber. This notion tends to result in an expectation that given the material replacement, the cost of the bicycle should be tremendously cheaper. However what people seem to forget is the amount of effort that goes into the creation of a single handcrafted Bambike. While the idea of the bamboo bicycle has gained popularity in the country, it has had very few buyers. This doesn’t seem to deter Vijay’s spirit. He believes that he has achieved what he set out to, when he decided to design and create Bambike. While an increase in the sales of Bambike would definitely be a plus, he hopes for more people to start cycling for its health benefits and as an attempt by people to reduce their carbon footprints. It’s a hope for more environmental consciousness in an age of mass consumption.

For more information visit – http://handcraftedbikes.blogspot.com

Having spent a long weekend with Archana Prasad –Co Founder Jaaga, National Institute of Design alumnus and Bangalore based artist, in Pondicherry, where she was performing with her group The Manjunauts, (she is also a VJ) at the Freedom Jam; I had the chance to engage in a dialogue with her about Jaaga.

Jaaga’s name has been popping up at a very frequent rate, in the art+ design circle here in Bangalore. Over the last couple of months, it has become a hotspot for performances, exhibitions, workshops and social interventions. To break it down, Jaaga, which means space in Kannada, is an urban community art-architecture experiment, currently situated in Bangalore. It is a modular structure that employs a participatory design process where the community helps build and use it. It includes web enabled workspaces and large multi-level public spaces. The fact that this building is mobile and can be moved to different neighbourhoods, cities and countries; taking with it its culture of pushing the envelope of innovation and pro-activism at a neighbourhood level to greater heights, is an added bonus.

Jaaga was born out of Archana’s insatiable desire for a dedicated space for the city’s artists who are rich in talent albeit not necessarily in funds, to showcase their work.  Together with fellow artists Suresh Kumar G and Shivaprasad S, they founded an artist collective called Samuha. With 23 artists of various disciplines like painting, sculpture, new media and performance arts, Samuha is running for 414 days, having started June 22, 2009. Each artist member owns 17 days at the space and can use it for exhibitions, seminars, workshops and interactions on art practices.

Samuha being in place, Archana’s quest for an artistic haven – a creative common place, was still on. A chance meeting between Archana and Freeman Murray, an American technologist in India, lead to the creation of Jaaga, Having successfully worked with pallet racks in the past through various projects in the US, he suggested constructing a modular sturdy structure using this warehouse shelving, usually used for heavy duty industrial purposes. Pallet racking is a material handling storage system designed to store materials on pallets. Although there are many varieties of pallet racks, all types allow for the storage of palletized materials in horizontal rows with multiple levels.

Jaaga is a massive structure made up of red and blue pallet racks put together and looks like a movie set. With the assistance of volunteers, Jaaga was built up in all of 15 hours. The flooring is made up of plywood and metal wires and the walls are made of billboards. Being fully mobile, it can be dismantled and reassembled within hours. Jaaga is currently redesigning itself into being more spacious and modular. The entire structure will be a dichotomy between a natural earthy airy area and cyber industrial space.  Jaaga’s USP is that it brings together art, technology and social change activists to share their practices with the world and with the neighbourhood. It also re-looks the concept and conception of space; and that real estate can be moved, folded and floating.  Archana wanted the whole structure to look like a Lego building. When they got the space, a 300 sq. ft plot, they had to clean it up, as there was a lot of garbage and weeds that had grown around it. Volunteers came in and helped remove the garbage and weeded the place out.

The first event at Jaaga was the Robert Bosch Art Grant ceremony. Since its inception, Jaaga has hosted various events, including a performance by the Attakkalari Center for Movement Arts, which had eight dancers performing in eight modular spaces. As a space, it is available free of cost and artists or anyone interested are invited to submit proposals with ideas on how they would like to use the space. The vision of Jaaga is that it becomes a future University that harnesses the power of modern technology to herald a new breed of creative thinkers and doers; also to be a virtual repository of avant-garde thinking stemming in India and rooted in the world.

To quote Archana – “We live the reality of a world whose path, starting from mass production – industrialisation, has created the tensions that the West worries about. We already live it. Being an artist in that landscape can only be interesting. As artists we are super sensitive to these cracks and tears in the fabric of society. Our works are reactions, imaginations, renditions, and explorations of the chaos that surround us. How can anything honest that comes out of such stark, harsh, cruel yet beautiful reality be anything short of exciting. India is a hotbed of superbness now.”

For more information visit – http://jaaga.wikidot.com/

VAANI is an organisation that works to empower the deaf child. Its role is to act as a catalyst. Rather than delivering services, VAANI supports the development of accessible sustainable services for deaf children and their families whilst working closely with the overall development strategies of the country. VAANI works with local organisations to build on existing good practices to develop a resource base and understand what works for deaf children and their families in India.

In conversation with the Founder Director of VAANI - Brinda Crishna

RR:  So what’s the story of VAANI? How did it begin?

BC: VAANI was started by me after I had done a study which showed that although services for deaf had existed for over 150 years, it only catered to children who had already grown up and there was no understanding of childhood deafness or the role that parents played in the healthy development of their children. There was no communication as parents did not know how to communicate and children did not know how to express themselves.

RR: Who are the stakeholders of VAANI?  And who are the partners at grass root levels?

BC:  The beneficiaries are families of deaf children, deaf children themselves; community workers and other professionals including teachers. As far as the partners go – small NGOs who work at field level, possibly in community development projects or community based rehab projects.

RR: So VAANI’s services aren’t location specific. It is made available anyone who needs them? Vaani uses existing infrastructures to provide services? VAANI has designed a programme/services that can be emulated by smaller communities/NGO’s etc

BC: Yes and builds the capacity of the local NGO to carry on even after we are not there. The logic behind our model of work is that it addresses the issue of providing quality services to the thousands of deaf children who have yet not been reached, is cost effective, remains an active learning situation for both parties as VAANI and its partner NGO, build on each others strengths and ensures ownership and sustainability of the work. We have developed a whole lot of needs based training material and training curriculum to meet local needs. All our stuff is available in the vernacular.

RR: So does VAANI ever approach a group/NGO/community? Or do they come to you? As in – does VAANI identify a community that needs an intervention or does another smaller NGO approach you first for the liaison?

BC: It works both ways. The thing is that we are careful to choose our partners as there are a lot of organisations that work in the field who still believe in very traditional means of teaching or developing communication in the deaf child. What makes us unique is that we are the only organization in India that focuses on childhood deafness and believes that parents and children must learn to communicate in whatever means works for them; and that parents have the right to make decisions about the future of their children.

RR : But isn’t that the case with all parents? They have the right to make decisions about the future of their children? How is this any different?

BC: When a child has a disability then you allow the professionals to take over because you don’t know what to do. Most professionals in the deaf sector in India still suggest therapy and speech as the primary mode of communication for deaf children, but the reality is that communication is about connecting and understanding. Speaking requires very high quality hearing aids, which has to be given at the right time. Most children are diagnosed very late because deafness is an invisible disability and by the time parents realise their child is deaf, many of the language learning years have passed.

Fundamental to VAANI’s vision for deaf children and their families is the principle of informed choice. We believe that deaf children need to develop fluent language skills in order to understand and influence the world around them, by whatever means is the most appropriate for the individual. Deaf children do not gain access to language in the same way as hearing children. It is therefore very important to ensure that the means are available for deaf children to learn to communicate and that families receive clear and balanced information to help them make choices that are best for their child.

RR: (feeling rather foolish about the previous question) Right. Which is why the parents need to be educated about the possibilities like sign language etc. Why is it hard to identify deafness in a child? Are there non-medical methods that Vaani has developed to help identify child deafness?

BC: Because they look normal and many can hear a little or some sounds. It’s also because in India most parents don’t have long discussions with their children. Parenting revolves around nurturing, and often the child get by initially by using basic gestures. Yes there are definitely non-technical methods; VAANI has not developed them but we do use them to train community workers especially in urban slums and rural India.

RR: Since its inception 5 years ago, how far has VAANI come?

BC : Well, VAANI has worked in Karnataka, Gujarat, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Maharashtra. In these states we have provided services to over 1000 deaf children and families, conducted training courses and sensitisation meetings for teachers, Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) workers and families. Along with this we have conducted seminars on emotional and social needs of deaf children and their families.We are partnering with the government to provide training to teachers so that they can improve the quality of education of the government run deaf schools and are supporting an NGO to set up an early intervention programme for young deaf children.

RR : Thank You, Mrs. Crishna for taking the time to engage with me. It was a pleasure talking to you. I wish you all the very best with VAANI and its endeavours.

For more information you can visit – www.vaani.in

India’s headcount of approximately 1.17 billion people consists of more than one-sixth of the world’s population. In a country as large as this, it is rather alarming that there is no Indian policy document, which examines waste as part of a cycle of production-consumption-recovery or perceives the issue of waste through a prism of overall sustainability. In fact, government interventions have been fragmented and are often contradictory and fail to even to manage waste in a cyclic process. Waste management still is an undeviating system of collection, disposal and creating health and environmental hazards. Waste management thus poses as a fertile ground and stimulus for design innovation in this country.

One example of such sustainable design is Thunk In India. Thunk as an organisation was formed in January 2009. Thunk began as a creative venture, and is an extension of Suren Vikhash’s graduation project at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore India. Thunk is a brainchild of social entrepreneurship and design facilitation. The primal node that the project centered around was to try and reduce the outrageous amounts of waste generated everyday in Bangalore. One way that was identified to tackle this issue was to `re-use’ a product, thereby increasing its life. By looking at different ways to manage waste at source and by understanding how the existing system works, Team Thunk has understood how intervention at various points with small changes can result in big differences. They have, thus decided to make the so-called ‘useless’ waste ‘useful’, providing value for these otherwise discarded materials.

Thunk’s vision is to innovate with everyday waste materials, whether the materials are from household waste, industrial waste or natural waste. A lot of these waste materials have a long life span, but only a small percentage of its life span is utilized before it is discarded and reaches the dump yards. They use this so called waste, as new rich raw materials to innovate with (processing innovations, weave exploration and product innovation). This not only utilizes the waste materials and increases their life span but also reduces new natural resources from being used up. They re-use and thereby “up-cycle”, following a cradle to cradle design approach (i.e. waste from one process is used as “food” for another; waste = food).

Another one of their interventions has been targeted at empowering the livelihoods of under privileged communities. Under privileged communities including slum families and self help groups. HIV patients and tribes have been involved in various aspects of Thunk’s Up-cycling process. People from these communities form an integral part of the team. They are equal contributors and co creators of all Thunk products.

Rag pickers play a crucial role in the waste management system. They are the ones who initiate the process by primary waste collection. If it were not for them, the process would not start. Despite their valuable contribution towards the process of waste management, they are looked down at. Through this project, Team Thunk hopes to empower the livelihoods of these people and also bring them recognition for their valuable contribution.  Thunk operates on fair trade principles. Thunk currently designs 2 kinds of product ranges – Lifestyle accessories and Home décor and Furniture. Through their products and designs, they cater to audiences who are looking for green, eco friendly alternative products. They aim to provide alternatives for one to go green. The general notion is that eco friendly and organic products are either too expensive or not attractive. Thus leaving one to feel like there is a compromise one has to make in order to become eco-friendly. Thunk focuses on creating attractive, well-designed and cost effective products that would break the above notion and provide an alternative for people to wish to adopt a more conscious lifestyle.

Thunk In India has the following operational procedures and activities in place (In Bangalore):

·       Weaving setup in a village near Pollachi, Tamil Nadu

·       Tailoring setup in Bangalore

·       Furniture setup in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu

·       Design Exploration and Development Hub set up in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu

·       Marketing and supply of our products to various Outlets and Client based projects

All Thunk products are available in India and are currently retailed in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Delhi, Goa, Maharashtra and West Bengal. To know more, you can visit – www.thunkinindia.com

Unlike the westerners Indians use water to clean themselves after going to the toilet. However while traveling in cramped trains, the toilets have running water, but dont have containers or mugs to store the water to clean with. This unique problem has been addressed by Paul Sandeep. He designed a sustainable, disposable mug that could be distributed/sold by local vendors.  The mugs could also carry ads for local businesses and will be made out of recyclable paper and organic glue. It should be able to carry 1.2 litres of water.

For more details check out Paul Sandeep’s explanation of the product on INDEX awards.