 I may do much, let's say detailed business model or detailed modeling of the finances or a market, maybe at a later stage, but I should have a little knowledge very early, even when I am doing a research kind of, because market is a filter for many of the products. As I said, a lot of prototyping, probably we would have spent just two years doing prototyping, building and testing before we could actually go to market. That was also first product. We did not understand the complete this chain of innovation. If you ask me to do the similar product, I can do it in much less of iterations, because now we know where are the failures are likely to happen and you understand the community and the market better, which did not happen with the first product. So that is also one reason why we had to go to the 12th version which went to market. When we did subsequent product, they did not go through those many iterations. So this is a lot of testing. Every time you do, you need to go and test with the people. Some are more of functional prototypes. Some are more like models in styrofoam or thermocool. But you had to go through these aspects. This is one of the version 9 which is there. And also people said there are controls in the smart cane. How do you indicate? Somebody put it as a braille points in this. Now the moment you put a braille, this also goes into mold, correct? Because when you're doing a 3D printing, it's easy. But when you go for a mass, you need to do. But this was a mistake to put a braille. Why was it a mistake? What's your injection point? Mass production, not many people know. No. Which braille? Hindi braille, English braille, Tamil braille, correct? So the braille is different. Only it's still a six or a eight dot system. But the combination is different for different languages. You can't just prepare a mold for one language and do it, which is there. So what we had to do is we had to come back and remove the braille and just put it as symbols and let the symbols be explained in the manual for people to know this is an on-off button. And there is also a button where you can set your range to 1.5 meter to 3.0 meter. Why two ranges were given is that in a place like this, many of them are within 3 meters. It will always be giving a vibratory feedback. So I would like to set a smaller range when I'm indoor. So you have a control for that. Now how do you tell the users that these controls exist and these are the symbols? Now that's another research which has to be done. How do you indicate a power button on any of these devices? What symbol do we use? A circle. A circle with a line. But that doesn't make any sense to them. Because those symbols are designed for visual route to comprehension. But I think when you are going through a tactile route to comprehension, same symbols do not make sense. Then we looked at what is the power symbol for if you want to use a touch route, then we found that there is nothing like that exists in the world. So what was basically done is a small symbol which is in the form of a T shape. One end is on and another end is off. So you just put a T symbol and explain in the manual that this end is a power on and this end is a power off. And we had to do because symbols for them is still not standardized and do not exist. And all these things are important. Suppose if the symbol exists and if I don't put, still it's a crime because they say they would be looking for that symbol which is a standard and they don't find, they can't find that there is a power symbol. But only you have to do research and find out that such a standard doesn't exist so you have a choice to do it. Now the world is meeting. There is a big consortia in the world who are actually trying to make such symbols for the blind person in the world but it will take many years before they become a standard. So if you look at the prototype, first one and the one in the market, all the features have changed and all of them are user ratified. So that is where you know somewhere, okay, now that it's completely co-created with the user, it's less likely to fail. White cane comes in two version, one is a foldable version and another is a non-foldable version. Many of the people use the foldable version. So here also you can do the folding. And the moment you say fold, the users came up with another aspect. Four folds are a five folds. Some people use four folds and some people use five folds. So we thought, okay, let's go with the four folds. But then most of the women were very not happy. They said, when you have a four folds, it doesn't come in my purse. But the moment you put it as a five folds, it comes in my purse. So then we had to switch over from four folds to a five folds so that women are also happy. And the normal bag which they carry can also have fold and keep it as aspect. Just a, it's a very small thing but it can probably please or displease somebody. And that could be a reason for your failure too. So in fact, one of the things probably I didn't bring out is that this, the smart cane is actually an attachment. It is actually a detachable and you can put it on any of the white canes. And good thing is worldwide people have standardized the diameter of the white cane. And that standard came to us very handy that I can make it detachable. So you can detach and do that. And this detachability is extremely important. Suppose in case I, my white cane gets damaged because of certain things. Sometimes it happens. What happens is you are actually going and suddenly somebody who is actually going on a bicycle or a bicycle wheel can entangle with your white cane. It happens sometimes. So then your white cane gets damaged. You don't have to throw away an expensive. You just have to replace your white cane and still the smart cane still works. There's another important question. Can the people use just as a white cane, smart cane only without white cane, without white cane? Some people tried. And though we said it's a smart cane is something which complements the functionality. It's not an independent product, but still some people used and they shared their experiences how they could detect some aspects in this. But it is still a risky proposition. The risk which is there is, as I said, if it is a structured environment, still there is a less risk. But in an environment suddenly, let's say the municipality has opened the manhole cover for this thing they have not put. Then how do you come to know that there is a serious drop off? And this brings very important aspect. When we do the user trials, we generally do a multi-location trials. When we did a 30 user trials of the first product, we went to five cities. In four cities it worked very well. In one city it was a failure. It worked very well in Bangalore. We went to one rural area called Chitrakoot, which is also well known. So we went to Chitrakoot, we did it in Delhi. We went to Shimla. In Shimla it did not work. We came to know that in cities, like particularly in hills, people don't use even the white cane. It's very risky to use even white cane when you have serious valleys and drop offs. And they generally use only sighted assistance to move. Now how do you tell the people that it cannot be used? You have to put it in your manual clearly. If you don't put it and if they still use it, you are still legally culpable. So there is a legality also when you prepare manuals, et cetera, that what is that you put? Some risk you can mitigate in the product. Those things which you can't mitigate in the product, you still warn the people. I think that's what most of the medical devices and drugs would do. They say there are certain risks associated with this. Please read that carefully. You can't use the drugs during any situation. Same thing happens with assistive and medical technologies too. See these are products where there is a risk. Now whenever there is a risk, it will be regulated also. And you have to follow those regulations. It's very important. When colors were demanded, we just also made it in different colors. Yeah. Sir, we talked about center of mass. So is it solved in it? It is solved because the problem is that earlier you had a huge center of mass. So every time I move, it would actually turn. So then you don't know whether the sensor is pointing out in the right direction, et cetera. Now the geometry itself gives you the tactile features on the surface where you are holding tells you clearly that what is the direction in which your sensor is moving. So those tactile features have to be built in while you are doing this thing. And ultimately when you're doing a form, you need to take care of certain ergonomic and human factors that requires you to come up with more optimized form. That time you can also incorporate this as well. You have to solve that. There are certain features which you don't solve, people won't accept. There are certain things which probably still can be accepted or your market may shrink. Various aspects like one of the versions which we did. The color choices for men and women is very different for visually challenged. So you need to do a small survey to know what are their color choices. Lot of issues came from the school going girls. They said the form which you have come up is something which is probably pains at certain positions. So then we had to actually go to the schools, give them a clay models and do a complete ergonomic analysis to know. For example, what are the regions? Like you can also know how the pressure is being distributed on your palm for a given form. You can do a very simple study and then see what are the regions where it actually pains. Because typically a user is going to use for about two hours a day. And if you're using continuously, it can be very painful. And that is what most of the elderly people complain about their cane, which they use. And still in the market, this is an unsolved problem. Something which is a good ergonomic cane is still, many of them are not very ergonomically designed. It's still an unaddressed need in some way. So this has to be done with various people and then do optimize. And then once you have a clay model, which is kind of an optimum, then you can do a scan and build a CAD model and then go and build the molds, et cetera. So but that continuous process of reverse engineering, et cetera, had to be done if you want to incorporate user choices. It's not only important to have a product, but how you package, what are the manuals. There is one aspect is they are given it to over training, but other than that, they also need a manuals. Now, how do you write these manuals? So you need to do it in Braille. Now, once you say it has to be done in Braille, you have to do in multiple languages. And then you also need a charger. And initially, the first few versions, you are charging used to be for four or five hours, but later this was done almost like 30 hours of charging. If I'm using for two hours per day, I had to do once in a fortnight and that they were very happy. But initially when it used to drain this thing, there the technology optimization comes. So you need an electrical engineer who is very good in terms of power electronics, optimizing, bring their own domain knowledge. So that is why this team which actually built had mechanical engineers, computer scientists, electrical engineer, industrial designers, social workers, and it's a highly multi-disciplinary team. How do you know if the team is out of charge? That's a very, very good question. Let me demonstrate through this. So how do we know that the battery is left? Now, this string is many of them use with the white cane and they wanted even if there is a smart cane, you have to give this. What people do is they actually put this and then hold that. Why they hold is they see that under any circumstances, your cane is not separated from it. Like somebody said, is this detachable? Like you can always detach. So this is the smart cane and this is the normal white cane which you can do. And since the string has to go, you need to have a features to do that. And so when I actually switched it on, it had two beeps and also two vibrations. Now, two beeps says that your battery is 40 to 70%. Single beep less than 40%. Three beeps, 70% and above. Correct? There is no other indicator to do. So you need to use a audio. But there is also a vibrator. India also has a large number of people who are both deaf and blind. And for deaf and blind, tactile is the only route. So this is a device which can be used for deaf blind also. And we have large number of deaf blind users who are using this particular product. So all the vibratory, the tactile haptic aspect takes care of this particular aspect. So this is the one, this is the indoor outdoor navigation. This thing I can set. And then this is the charging port where I can charge. Usually people sometimes hold like this or sometimes they hold and when you're holding your angle is changing. So you should be able to adjust your sensor to a different angular positions. If sensor should ideally be put it in such that the ultrasonic ranging covers from knee to head. And there is also a methodology to set this particular angle, which is there. If you're standing at such a meter, then this should be pointing to a, like basically a chest of a person. And there is a methodology which we'll also find in a manual. Very simple in terms of technology. Ultrasonic ranging is there for many decades now. The challenge is not just with the technology. Technology is one aspect where you need to optimize, but also you need to work with the design and the features, et cetera. Sir, did any user complain about fatigue and the hand ache because of vibrations? What happens is there are international standards for objects which are vibrating, where the vibration is felt to either hand or to body. And what is the extent of vibration which is permissible? So when you design such a product, you actually go and do this testing. For example, there are some products where your whole body vibrates. Like, for example, a bus, correct? Driver is sitting in a bus for a certain hour, whole body vibrating. But then it says, what is the vibration intensity, which is generally measured in terms of accelerations? If my acceleration levels are this, then you are allowed to have up to four hours. If acceleration exceeds, then you can only have two hours. If acceleration even further, you can only tolerate one hour. So these standards have been made. So when we put a vibrator and do, before we launch a product, we need to do this testing and see that this is a safe for this thing. If I don't do, you are right. Then if somebody, the vibrations are really this thing, then you will have a repetitive stress injury. After some time, your palm will become a numb, which is a serious medical condition. So those regulations, the risk which is posed by the product has to be mitigated before you do that. So that's a regulation part of it. Suppose if I want to launch this in one of the countries, will they permit me to do, or will they check whether there is any risk? This product is going to have further. So what we generally do is we apply for certain regulatory standards. Like one of the regulatory standards, which is commonly used is CE marking. You may have seen, correct? Most of you may have seen the CE marking which is there. So this is a CE marked product. The moment it is CE marked product in 90 countries, I don't have to take any permission to go on, let's say launch this particular product. The problem only come in case if I am infringing any intellectual property. Somebody has let's say a patent or a design registration and if I am mitigating, only in those situations come. If I have freedom to operate, then as long as I have taken care of the regulation. So in US, if you want to use this, this should be approved by FDA. And FDA regulations are very, very strict. People don't even try making products because it's very difficult to get an FDA. So this is an FDA approved product. So I can go and sell, there is no problem. So this is right now price 3,500 rupees. So the 3,500 rupees, you get the white cane, you get the smart cane, you get the charger, you get audio manual, you get brain manual and two hours of training. So what steps did you take to weather? Is it weather proof? Because there are a lot of moving parts. Same thing, when you put your specifications, you need to say what is the temperature, humidity, and other aspects which you do. So somebody says, like for example, is this waterproof? Correct? So even that there are many levels. For example, this is a splash proof. What do I mean by a splash proof is that, suppose if let's say this gets wet, some of the water goes inside, it may stop working. But once it dries up, it starts working. So somebody, when we said this is a waterproof and splash proof, one of the user went and put it in a bucket of water just to try. And luckily after drying, it started working. So that shows key, can I use this when there is a rain? The answer is many people don't use when there is a rain. There are two reasons. One is that there is also a splash proof requirement which is one, because your electronics, et cetera, becomes a problem. The second thing which people says key, even the water droplets are treated as the obstacle. So it is beeping. You don't know whether the beep is because of the water droplets or is it because of the real obstacles. So those regulations become very important. Like for example, is this material good to skin? Is this material biocompatible? You need to tell that when you go for a regulation. So biocompatibility also has a Dagen levels. If the material goes inside your body, it has a very serious biocompatibility requirement. If it is only touch, you have a less of a biocompatibility requirement. So biocompatibility testing is also done and there are different levels to do. So getting all those technical tests done to get this regulation itself cost about, costed about 50 lakh rupees, just the tests and regulation and getting FDAC approval. So that's the money which goes into also building a product. And the important thing is, if I can say that I'm not doing all of them, I primarily want to sell it in India. I can probably reduce the cost, but I'm giving you an inferior product that people don't accept. So usually, if you say that an affordable product which is less quality, usually doesn't work. And because the aspirational aspects are very, very important. People don't want compromise anything. It's like saying that here is a poor man's product. Go ahead. For like waterproof rating, can you just do it by yourself and try to waterproof? Similar to that export, whatever you think. So what happens is, you are very right. How is this regulated technologically? In fact, in some of the cases when the risk is less, you can do a self-certification. What you are selling is. But in case, suppose let's say, because of that a risk happened to the users, then you are liable. Suppose if I have a, if somebody else does a test, a regulating body and then they save, then you are much better off. Then you say that we didn't do the testing. Testing was done by the laboratory which approved the safety norms of that. So I'm not liable. So in some cases, user can also do the self-certification, but people, some people choose to do it. Some people still want laboratories to do the test and give a certificate for the safety aspect. Yeah. Sir, at the beginning you told that it's hard to read. Free commerce is hard to read. So the user, they don't know where the market is. Then how are you selling this product and through a channel? When we were doing this research to design, when we shadowed large number of the users, we came to know that most of them go to their nearest a social organization or an NGO to source such products because there is no other serious marketing channel which is available. And it's not only this concern. Last month, WHO was debating what should be the marketing channels for this in Geneva when we had a meeting because it's the same situation worldwide, not only in India. And also you have to do manuals in multilingual. Very interesting thing is one of the person said, what is this ultrasonic ranging? I don't understand. How do you explain to a blind person that ultrasonic ranging is a cone which probably diverges kind of a thing? Then we had to make diagrams. And then we realized in India, making diagrams for the blind is still not a mature technology. So we had to come up with a methodology to prepare these embossed figures where you can actually touch and feel the ultrasonic ranging, et cetera. We found that this is a gap. Now we have a complete startup which does only these books for NCRTs, making maths and science books accessible to the blind. And this is the issue which is there, some of the products. So where do you position is very, very important. These were there in the market but not within the reach. The question is even that is a little, many people feel how is that we are able to go to that small is a very important aspect. What happens with the technology such as this is that user does not have a buying power. Some of the countries like US and UK, what do they do? They give every visually challenged person certain amount of money or subsidy to buy these products every year. Like in one of the countries, every blind person gets $1,000 coupon. Every year you get $1,000. Out of these $1,000, you can buy products from the market and the government will pay for $1,000. Anything above $1,000, you have to pay yours. Now in India, we still have those aspects but not for products such as this. So if you put it in a market and say this is going to cost 20,000 rupees, it will not sell or it may sell but the numbers are so, volumes would be so low that you can't make a profit out of this. So what was done is we went to a charitable organization which is called Welcome Trust and this organization said we'll take care of all the development cost of this product like making molds, setting up manufacturing, all the regulation costs, getting C marking, getting FDA approval, it's going to cost about three crores of rupees or four crores and they said we will give you that money but in view of this, you have to price it low. So we went to a manufacturer. If manufacturer would have taken up and made it, it would have been 20,000 rupees but since all his development costs was met by another organization, we negotiated and said this should be priced as a 3,500 rupees. If you don't do that, then this person probably may not even take it up, this product would have never happened. So the charitable organization is happy because their whole idea is to reach out to such people and do the charity and the company is also making profit even with 3,500 rupees. That means there are certain products which need a very different business model, very different ways to reach out to people. They are not market driven. It's not like a mobile phone. If I have suddenly some wonderful feature, a million people or a 10 million people would buy doesn't happen with such products and that's assistive technologies is particularly rampant. What government does is they sometimes buy wheelchairs and white canes and give free of cost to the users. That Indian government also does. But they're able to reach out to very small population but not to a large population. So Indrani is one person who is like more exploratory than the other people and she doesn't want any curtailing her freedom for the mobility, et cetera. So she was like one of our very early users. You also need some users who are ready to help you with your product development, who are like your focus group people and Indrani was one of the focus group members for that who gave a lot of this, et cetera and is a good case. And when this product was designed for obstacle detection and negotiating the paths but people came and told very different users for which the product is not defined, designed. Like one of the person came and said, Ki, this actually helped me to follow a queue. We didn't know how, what the person is saying. This says Ki, every time I keep my cane I know how far the person in front of me. If the person has moved a little then my vibratory pattern has changed and I take one more step to know that queue is moving kind of thing. This, we never even thought of this as one of the specifications when it was designed. Most of the young girls are very happy, young women are very happy. They say Ki, before this, even with the white cane we were able to be a mobile but there used to be many unwanted collisions with the people. And particularly women did not want that. They say with this we are now able to avoid unwanted collision with other people which is another use case. So sometimes you design for something and people come up and say very interesting stories for which it was not designed. So since you mentioned that how we actually reached out so one is that we went to, we did the product release in multiple cities to know that such product is now existing and referrals is still a very important in this community. The moment they come to know that there is a wonderful product they have their own communication system and it spreads very well unlike an advertisement exit. So referrals helped us a lot. We also had a channel partner. We have 50 organizations in India which are basically working for, these are people, these are organizations working for the visually blind. They are, they take the orders and then the industry which is actually manufacturing in Chennai it's called Phoenix Medical System which has been given this particular license, this product to manufacture. They ship out to these people and these 50 organizations also provide the two-hour training and then give the product to them. And there is a scheme of government of India which is called ADIP. If your product is less than certain amount then government can also buy and they can give it to a people in lot of camps, et cetera. So lot of our sales have also happened through where government has bought the product and gave it to people too. And it is important to know that what is that amount? Suddenly one of the products very recently launched they priced it as 20,000 rupees and government said 20,000 rupees is too high compared to a 12,000 limit we have and hence the entire government market is now closed for them. So even to know that these things exist when I'm designing a product is an important aspect. And we have e-commerce but it is not. The numbers are very, very small. In fact, we also did small innovations there is we negotiated with the e-commerce website key you put two options for the people either buy or you can also give users to donate. So suppose if somebody donates 3,500 rupees one person gets it free also. So few of them also happened through donations because sometimes donations do happen in this space. And then there are some marketing channels which are specific to 80. There is one in Bombay and one in Delhi, two organizations, one is called Barrier Break in Bombay and Saksham in Delhi. They sell only assistive technology products. We have products with Arvindai care or LV Prasad which is a very big hospital. What they do is when in an ophthalmology department you try to restore let's say vision of a person through surgery. In case surgery is not successful then hospitals do a rehabilitation aspect. So in that part of rehabilitation they also suggest a smart cane as a tool for probably living with the blindness. So you also need to go to that and there are few blind associations in countries like Canada, Australia, U.S. We work with those aspects. And then a lot of training. You need to take care of the training requirements of children, elderly. One of the first lessons in innovations who are your early adapters of your solutions. If you start with people who are not very excited about your product, it may even have a failure. You go to a particular community. Elderly people have a lot of inertia to accept any new technology. So we went to elderly people almost towards the end. And initial population which we targeted was 15 to 35 and they were our early adapters kind of a thing. And that's also an important decision. Today we have reached a stage where nearly 80,000 devices have reached people. But I would say some of the main challenges that we still face is mass-skill training. So for reaching out to people, we followed all different mechanisms. We identified where we did some analysis of who are our stakeholders and how the solution as well as our awareness should reach people. So one way was definitely reaching out to partner organizations, the ways NGOs are operating in different parts of the country. The same time in India, there are many universities where these special education programs are being run. So we did workshops at their place and trained the future, to be the future special educators in using this technology. So that was one way to create awareness at a much larger scale. Okay, so Piyush is a PhD student who is working on mobility for the visually challenged. And he was a part of training large number of users. And then there is another category of people who train users in mobility. These are called orientation and mobility experts. So he trained a lot of orientation and mobility experts. And then those people went in. Like we now have launched it in multiple countries, 20 countries. So how do you train the people there? Is we train their orientation and mobility experts. Then they train the people in this thing. And then you have to do a lot of testing with various obstacle courses, et cetera. This is also one of the requirements before you actually launch a product. And as I said, a lot of technology related testing, which I mentioned biocompatibility, electromagnetic interference. EM interference is a very big thing. What about like if there are two people using the smart cane, come face to face? Or you have another ultrasonic sensor which is coming from let's say car, when let's say car is backing off. They also use the ultrasonic sensing. What about the interference with those products? You need to test that and see that you still don't have a risk. And here you need to do a lot of technology optimization. So another thing is just to use the technology, but to use an optimum technology, there is a lot of research and engineering also has to be done. And a lot of compacting in terms of electronics because you need electronics for multiple things. One is for sensing, another for vibrator, all those aspects have to be incorporated and all of them should be within the handle. They should all actually go inside the small body. And you have to do multiple technology related iteration to compact them and fit it into the small. We really funded the renovation from really from the bench at IIT Delhi to the user's home. We are very delighted and proud that it is sold at a very affordable cost and really more than one lakh users are using this cane. So these are the people like welcome trust is an organization based in UK and they fund 800 million pounds every year for medical and assistive technology charity, mostly product development and solutions kind of thing. So they gave us this liberal funding to do so that initial development cost can be met. The company which produced also got their entire this thing met and so that we can do. So they are almost second to Gates Foundation in terms of funding in the world. Gates Foundation is still number one. And then we did a product release to people. Prime Minister himself bought 3000 units because he distributed in his constituency, the Varanasi. MPs also have a fund, you know and a certain percentage can be used for distribution of that. We had a Mumbai release by Vidya Balan in this city. Different camps which we had initially for people to know that such product exists, one need to reach out in large numbers. This is also a lot of similar training programs. You can see Piyush probably training all the people in various countries and these are all orientation and mobility experts who will now train their people in the smart game. So there is a request from 65 countries. We have launched only in 20. We still have to reach out to other countries. We haven't done that. And I think the product, one thing which people found is particularly because from the design perspective people think that this product is very simple to use and in spite of all the things, the product finally come out to be a very simple. That's why this is also now has won number of awards. Both the students who worked and others, for example, there is a TR35, which many of you may know which MIT review gives technology that is 35 innovations below 35 year every year, get it. Then this is also there in many international design museums like Smithsonian. Then it's also there in Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center. Also places like Scotland National Museum. You can see the, and we didn't go to anybody to this thing, I don't know how they came to know but this is also has been accepted as a product for those exhibitions. Because of its impact and kind. This is like excellent again. I think the way you captured the total journey from design which was fabulous.