eChai Showcase : CircuiTricks
Today's one eChai Showcase we are introducing CircuiTricks - which is about electronic circuits with paper! This kit teaches you how you can make your own electrical circuits by using just a paper and a pencil. All you have to do is draw the circuit! This will include creative things like making a music system, making disco lights, creating your own motor plane and creating your own games using a paper and a pencil!
Here is the insightful and candid conversation with Nirman Dave, Co-Founder, CiruiTricks. Nirman Dave is just 18 years old, an innovator, software programmer, explorer and with over 200 different software and hardware projects to his credit.
How did you come up with the idea of ‘CircuiTricks’?
CircuiTricks evolved from a complex idea that boiled down to simplicity. Sohil and I were heading to Barcelona for the MIT Fab10 Conference, where we were asked to conduct a workshop. We came up with crazy ideas like “teaching people how to make a google glass” or “teaching people how to make a computer” etc. But all of this required complex hardware, we wanted to make things simpler, boiling our ideas down, we felt it would be awesome to draw out our circuits instead of making one. And then the journey started, today it is our mission to encourage simple and creative ideas among school kids through the CircuiTricks Do It Yourself Kit.
What problem are you solving?
I myself being a high school kid, have realized that high school kids are usually given education in a specific format which circumscribes their exposure to think in a manner that connects simple things around them with complex ideas. So to foster their creative thinking, CircuiTricks provides them with a platform to combine design with simple science. As we believe that true creativity is about making simple things unforgettable.
How does it work?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt-9a0wQthY
Imagine how awesome it would be if I could just take out my pencil draw out something and make it real. That’s exactly how CircuiTricks works. If a kid wants to make a guitar, she/he does not need strings, all they have to do is draw out lines and it works. Or even better, to make drums, all you have to do is roll out a piece of paper, draw out drums on it, and it works.
The idea is simple, the graphite in a pencil is a good conductor of electricity, with this every drawing made with the pencil conducts electricity and the rest is done by the CircuiTricks electronic blocks! So all the kid can literally take any paper and any pencil to draw his own working electrical circuit.
What is your target market?
Our target market is kids ranging from standard 4th to standard 10th.
What is your competitive advantage?
Along with uniqueness, the major competitive advantage we have is that CircuiTricks is very simple and easy to understand. This gives the end user a sense of transparency which allows them to confide in our company and the products we build.
How much time did it take you from conceptualization of 'CircuiTricks' to actually launching it in the market?
It took us 3 months to actually launch CircuiTricks in its completed product form in the market.
Tell us more about your team?
Sohil Patel (Co-founder) who graduated from Nirma University and dropped his well earning job at Google to become and entrepreneur. And as an entrepreneur, he is doing a damn good job!
Nirman Dave (Co-founder). I am an 18 year old high school graduate currently on my drop year, doing various things that I love!
What is your technology stack?
At CircuiTricks we don't us much technology. Apart from the fact that we deal online and we have a website people can go through : CrcuiTricks.com. We just got a support proposal from Microsoft Bizspark, we might shift our website servers to azure soon.
How do you plan to market your product? What are your customer acquisition strategies?
We feel that the best way to market is to tell people about our vision. The vision of empowering kids by leveraging their creativity using the things around them. This will enable us to gather a group of people who believe in what we believe and hence establish a great customer base.
One way to tell people about our vision is through active interactions with our kit and the children who use it. But this doesn’t mean we rule out the traditional methods such as internet promotion and reaching to the public through other media.
What is the revenue model of ‘CircuiTricks’?
We earn from selling the CircuiTricks kits and providing schools with workshops and tutorials on using CircuiTricks.
What do you want to achieve from this? What is your larger goal or vision?
Our vision is to empower kids by enlarging their creativity. One way we approach their creativity is by making innovative products by using the simple things around them. Something as simple as a pencil and paper.
What sort of support and feedback are you looking from the community?
We look forward to an active support as this is not just a product, it is a movement that promotes creativity through hard-core applicable ideas. And betters the future of the developers of our future!
