 The third session in our module today is on building the problem statement. In fact, the right problem statement will help navigate the entire startup journey very very effectively. Let us now look at our example of Netflix again. Going to the video store has been a pain and people don't like traveling back and forth just to rent a movie and hate paying late fees. And version 2, going to the video store requires fighting traffic, wandering through aisles and waiting in long queues just to get a single movie. Both these statements have the same intent but the second one details out the pain and brings out an excellent narrative which is very very critical for defining a problem statement. Now let us hear from Dr. Rupesh what he has to say about the problem statements developed by our IIT Hyderabad students in their startup projects. So like again, good afternoon all of you. Let us now today is a session where you are going to present your problem statement. Yesterday you formed your teams like we welcome Dr. Rupesh and we will see your problem statements and we will just support you with mentors depending upon what your problem statement is because it's the first time you're presenting we will leave it to you to take this forward. Please go ahead Vijay. So this is team one so like we are consists of five people Dautam, Mayuri, Nikita, Shubi and so we came up with the idea like how we can help visually impaired person to be a more self-reliant like in their daily activities like cooking, shopping, traveling, banking, like monitoring transactions, dating, physical activities. So we are targeting on shopping like while shopping there are some experience like high dependency on strangers like shopkeepers retailers or lack of information by purchasing goods or lack of choice and confidence by choosing the product or lack of trust while handling over the money. So how we might reduce dependency of the visual impaired while they make a transaction or purchase goods. So here are the five problems like who like the visual impaired people affected with the blindness. We are targeting like making a making transaction easier like and a proof of transaction. They face problems in the malls or shops like also in a banking transaction also they have to depend on someone, strangers and this is the objective we are planning to come up with a product for the visual impaired that is customized for a printing bell essentially on the receipts for the purchase they do in our shopping malls to reduce their dependency on others for basic information. Very good so like that's like quite okay so Rupesh any comments on that? Yeah it is good start but since I'm aware of the field so maybe slightly prejudiced because what there is one IoT Bombay startup, IoT Delhi people who have worked there are other people what they do is they have their mobile connected to there is a device which is there which is called digital braille. So there is a startup of IoT Bombay Mr. Shyam is an IoT student Shyam who worked on it so you would be surprised at the rate at which visually impaired people can read braille okay it is fantastic as in the speed is phenomenal so they made a device which had a digital braille basically there are six rods which come up you feel that and that is how people can understand what is the language and these six letters as in six which one dot is up which dot is down based on that the letter comes up so he made a visual as in he made a physical device which can convert this into whatever is connected to it whether it is mobile whether it is whatever so the moment you dwell more into the problem you'll understand the problem. Good afternoon everyone. Hi my name is Mahima and I'm here with Mahishriya with Valioka and we are doing four and let us walk you through what our idea is uh if you see nowadays we really can't live without phones everyone needs phones we start our day with mobile phones or laptops and we end with them too even during break times our main focus is let's just take a break okay we'll just flip the tabs and we'll start playing games our lives are so dependent on these devices but do you remember when we were kids we you know that our parents would go out and we could be so happy that we'll finally lights are out let's go out and play all the calm kids would get together and they would play various games like Coco no kachopee they would play with these marbles and these are our nostalgia it's some of the memories if we do not bring them back what will happen to them they'll be lost forever most of these games they help you with our hand-eye coordination with your concentration and mainly they help you with physical activity our problem is that you know involved from apes we are trapped in apps everyone is so bound and technology that looking beyond is growing impossible our whole idea is to work around bachpun and bring these things back yeah looks good we will see how we can narrow down further no rupees we'll just check up how things can happen so the problem is it will be much much more clear the context will be very clear you clearly don't want to use technology in this or is the technology enabled bachpun we really don't know so just get that clarity a little bit there and then we are okay with you know and then indian aesthetics is too broad so you be very focused with you know i like your hand-eye coordination focus only on that maybe that can be a great selling point so you need all these things in entrepreneurship so maybe more will come when you you know take things forward let there be a problem that has to be solved so there is a reason why it's called problem right as in it's a good to have versus a problem windows are supposed to be there for clipping something open so wind can come in light can come in there is a reason for it so maybe define the problem which you are going to solve that if you can come down to slightly proper like professor chakrat is a hand-eye coordination then your person will get developed for who you are maybe a good idea to understand if the kids who are playing outside there are certain advantages which are reported in some studies are missing in the current generation so if more people are wearing let's say spectacles because they're from the mobile or the concentration is though if there is an evidence base then that will help you to say that there's a problem which you're going to address that's a good start yeah so we go to team two unshield and we are the team of four people unshield puja tito and vibhuti so this is what our problem statement is a stress among people in colleges and office due to long working hours so can we make we were targeting on mental health of people so we were thinking of is there something that can be done to these people in the time of short breaks which we take like everyone has our brain has been brain is programmed to just focus for one hour and then it is important to take a 15 minutes break so that we again refocus and that keeps the efficiency of every person so can we what could be done in those 15 minutes which can be better for a person to be more efficient what our thought was like five minutes break which we have sometimes in the class also if we if we take a if there is a five minutes of nap like it's like a power power nap it it feels much fresher than a half an hour one hour of sleep this is what our idea was so in what way could we do that so previously basically we already in previous project we had done a project on this with virtual reality and we were thinking key that was just an experiment which is like a poc of concept that we tried at that time and what we wanted is now we want to develop that as a product or some kind of a evolution to a second level which can be implemented in something once you both you know ahead of the course you'll also understand customer discovery whom are you making for when you when you talked about college students you then you go deep dive there you know what would they like and how will you monetize it so all that will push you into the things but you can also you know define it further you know you know like basically doing short breaks so rather than the wrong thing and then how would you you know how would you know that they are stressed if you are aware of Elon Musk and if you are aware of the brain device that is working on one of their elements work on a device which gives you kind of an energy there is a device deleted technology for which you can try to reduce stress so there has been effort in that direction which has proven to reduce stress so but you know make the statement a little bit more you know from the point all the aspects should come in more with the statement yeah the statement should give us everything about your problem so our problem is what we collectively realized is that guided meditation is boring and even though it's really boring we still need it and we the problem statement does came down to finding alternatives and aids to developing mindfulness mindfulness is a concept that talks about living from moment like experiencing moment from moment to moment and not fixating on things that are in the past or in the present and we were wondering if there could be a way where this act of focusing on your body on your breath on different points of the body through yoga and guided meditation it usually falls like the burden of attaining enlightenment falls on the person and his ability to concentrate so we were just thinking what would be a better way to assist this path to enlightenment or feeling more mindful and we decided to look for product design solutions where then there could be something as simple as a bug or a piece of market that when you lie down it travels across your body and it guides you where you should be focusing upon and we're just exploring how we can get into the market which is already quite saturated with a lot of apps and products that encourage guided meditation very good I personally like this topic a lot so I'll be you know I'll look forward for a solution this is a fabulous area and like but you could be very you know I think your your problem statement is too wide narrow down to just meditation narrow down to just support during meditation which will be more intuitive which will be more you know inherent so things like that may be much more definition in your problem statement and you know you all know the advantages of meditation is phenomenal so you know you can just go there because that was exactly the problem you faced and we'll check how many other people are facing that problem and what type of health benefits they get so that's anyway their knowledge is there so like on product design solution will be fabulous actually because you know we really don't know whether it's possible to build such a solution but with your creative thinking you can surely build such solutions yeah Rupesh what do you say this looks like a very very interesting area yeah so again interesting pinpoint problem and come down to that part where is the value that you'll be adding differentiate from good to have something which is just an accessory or an ancillary product to something which is a mid-based thing maybe that is something there are a lot of people who want to do this but they do not know whether they're progressing so monitoring is also something which helps you identify if you quantify something so that is something which you could try and will be able to come out properly like one of the aspects of mindfulness is also focused to treating and we also realized that that while mind practicing mindfulness can be a way to better react and respond to symptoms of asthma and COPD and if that kind of mindfulness can be developed in our patients with this disease it would be helpful so those are the kind of utilities we're also looking for and maybe it can be more pinpointed in that direction yeah it's a good idea it's so define your unmet clinical need if it's going to be towards any treatment elevation or supporting any therapy that is what you are then you are in medical device zone say there is a difference between fit bit versus a temperature which is a thermometer which is medical grade ecg versus apple watch because apple watch never claims that it is for clinical use or medical use it is something which you can measure you can know but there is no clinical relevance to it so try to figure out whether you're going to be in a first zone or the second zone because then the regulatory compliances are difficult so choose the product accordingly both are valid both segments are good actually we were mostly thinking to start it up as a brand and sell it as a brand instead of a product so a brand that sells products which are designed to so that people can pursue mindfulness always come back to the part of value finally amazon could be a brand but there is a service which either it is a product or service either it has to be one of that i'm very happy that you're already talking about product planning where you have six products and you choose the product you want fabulous that's of course good but that comes you know little you know like further in the state where you have defined your you know statement very well your you know your brand you know the brand statement of what is your brand standing for so you know and then maybe you're not in the clinical space so think about that very if you're in the clinical space the situation will be very different yeah hi this is amir we are group seven our team members are me gaurav and karan all are sitting here we want to focus on the segment of backpacks because backpack is something that everyone carries sometimes in the form of a bag sometimes in the form of a trolley so we have not narrowed it narrowed it down to one problem statement but we are focusing on one segment and what we did was we brainstormed on the problems related to the backpacks trolleys and this particular segment we jotted down every kind of and any kind of problem that we face the first one was a gamification of bags for school kids trying to make the backpacks interactive for the children second one was a backpack for blinds they cannot see so make it something tactile and something in nature that a blind person can fail and interact with the backpacks all the areas are perfect so we you know backpack with sitting or standing support like that was talked about the chairware project fabulous again gamification of bags for school kids don't know weight of the luggage before going to airport wow fabulous a very important problem problem in taking out stuff from back when it's on the back wow we did this for the postman you know where we had a both sling and a back support portable or convertible backpack for immigration labour workers wow all of them too good very nice let us let us have much more detail and we know by tomorrow yeah very good yeah about your next move so we zero down our focus area on traditional learning and classroom learning which i think all of us have questioned after covid with the online online system setting in so our problem statement that we have zero down right now is to remedial measures to transform the traditional classroom education system into a new and more flexible version which is robust agile special special and tech enable so we're still thinking on how we are going to put this forward though we do have a project that we've been working on since earlier on education and you let them you know be more specific maybe no within the education what exactly are you seeing what is the remedial measures you're seeing remedial measures only people who are not passing out in classes no people are not you know able to but they don't learn something and they they go to the next class because of the they're not learned something they can't go forward no that's their immediate you know classes they have so that they can cope up with you know the education so just check out those things and i think it's surely a good problem to solve but you know from a business angle from a you know what what would you pinpoint on for making it very effective because a lot of these online platforms are coming in how do you measure how do you take things forward it could be a very good you know thing for all these people no very very good topic and very you know pertinent for our condition i am going to present for the next group so this is the team and we started discussing and brainstorming and after our discussion we just came across with common points that we all felt like working towards and the problem statement that we all agreed to work on was how might we bridge the gaps in the different social interactions so there are different types of social interactions and interactions are very important because they are not only a part of our social life but they affect us emotionally mentally in all of those ways so we were thinking that what are the different gap areas or how do social interactions affect us so some questions that have been mind-boggling us are basically the experience of say an individual who has been at home for so long and now needs to go out in the world and needs to do reconnect with people so interactions between them or maybe just children or kids who have been at home and have not been going to school for years now for three four years of schooling and then they suddenly have to be in that environment so other important things were generational gap like there isn't any game that you can play with your parents to just have an interaction or promoting your thoughts or listening to what they think so we're just categorizing the different social different gaps in social interaction and trying to understand how we can bridge this and the initial vague idea that we have right now are kind of some sorts of games or activities or say even a template form of enhancing or encouraging such conversations. There's a fabulous area Ananya very nice but we can actually add all those things social interaction between the elders and kids or whatever that and you can add in that other aspect also so you can build the problem statement already and lock in over there because because the toughest of the problem is actually social interaction between you know like the elders and the youngsters the parents and children or uncles and nieces whichever way and you know you're talking about games so it can be a game-based interaction so a game-based gap bridging social interaction between the elders. Do something that's an icebreaker so icebreaker will automatically that will be a separate thing but your problem statement could be this where you're bridging the gap between elders and like two age groups basically with a game so game is very very fixed you know like the gap is fixed and the people are fixed so you need to really fix that and please you know lock that in it's a really really good area it could be you know varied you know aspects that you can come up with so we'll have detailed presentations later on when we have all the mentors and all together but today is just to you know get a problem statement right.