Start-up comes up with ‘Deskit’, a study table-cum school bag!

The kit is being used by over one lakh students in 16 states of India, according to an official of PROSOC Innovators Pvt Ltd, a start-up incubated at IIT-Kanpur.(sourced)

A start-up incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K) has come up with a unique solution to check the problem of bad posture among students. ‘Deskit’ — a study table-cum school bag — is being used by over one lakh students hailing from the economically weaker section in 16 states of the country, said an official of the start-up.

“Our company is incubated in the Startup Incubation and Innovation Centre (SIIC) at IIT-K. The centre, a launch pad for purpose-driven entrepreneurs, provided our start-up, PROSOC Innovators Pvt Ltd, a platform to come up with this innovation,” said Eshan Sadasivan, founder and CEO of the company. He explained that PROSOC stood for ‘products for society’.

Explaining how he first got the idea for the kit, he said, “I was teaching children of marginalised communities as a volunteer as part of an initiative of IIT-K students. I saw students sitting in a wrong posture while studying. When I surveyed the market for existing solutions, I found that the products were not ergonomically well-designed.”

“I took the help of some friends, a few team members from PROSOC and the technical staff of IIT-K’s design programme to develop more than 40 prototypes before finalising the design that was eventually commercialised,” said Sadasivan.

He said the idea behind attaching the desk to the bag was to make it simpler for students to carry it to school. “Also, in many government schools in our country, children still sit on the floor to study. The kit would be of great help to them,” said Sadasivan adding that recently the Telangana government had placed an order for these special kits with PROSOC.

“Each bag costs around Rs 500. The funding and incubation support we got from the Invent Social Incubation Programme by the technology development board, Government of India, in association with Villgro and UK Aid, was very helpful while we were scaling up,” he said.

‘Deskit’ has design registration and trademark protection. “The PROSOC team is working on taking the kit to more than three crore students,” said Sadasivan.

source: http://www.hindustantimes.com / Hindustan Times / Home> Lucknow / by Rajeev Mullick / November 27th, 2019

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