Maker Faire Hyderabad, India’s biggest Makers festival celebrating innovation and ideas kicks off

Hyderabad, November 9, 2018: The Three Day, Hyderabad Edition of Maker Faire, regarded as India’s biggest Makers festival kicks off here in the city at Hitex on Friday afternoon. Maker Faire an event created by Make magazine to "celebrate arts, crafts, engineering travels to Hyderabad after its successful stints in Rome, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, Barcelona, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Seoul, Cairo, Kuwait, Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and San Diego The show is open till Sunday, 11th November from 10 am to 8 pm. Entry is free. All are invited. The aim behind organizing it is to develop a diverse community who likes to build things. Mr. Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, ITE & C Dept, Govt of Telangana; Mr. Ramanan Ramanathan, the Mission Director of the Atal Innovation Mission, that opened tinkering labs in over 5400 schools across the country; Mr. Sujai Karampuri, CEO T-Works; Mr. Sebastien Hug, CEO of SwissNex India that engages with the academic and entrepreneurial communities in Switzerland and India. And Mr. Chandramouli Vijjahala, Chief Information Officer at GE Appliances and Chief Architect of the partnership between T Works and GE First Build graced the inaugural function. Anand Rajagopalan, Sanjay Gajjala, Directors of T Works, Pavan Kumar, Workbench Projects, the other team members involved in three parallel tracks—Play, Purpose, and Passion Tracks also graced. The first of its kind of event for the Makers community in India is organized by T-Works, the biggest hardware prototyping centre in the country, the initiative of Government of Telangana. It is organized in partnership with Bangalore based Workbench Projects with the support from GE First Build. The most awaited event featured 200 exhibitors, never before life-sized installations, artwork, workshops and master classes. It is spread over 50,000 sq ft area. It is an event to be hosted by the community for the community, Sujai stated. The debut Maker Faire Hyderabad has three different tracks: Play, Passion and Purpose. Each track represents makers from different spectrum—Children, Artists, and Startups informs Sujai Karampuri, CEO of T-Works Better By Design, a Hyderabad based start-up which develops learning-by-making modules for children painstakingly curated Play Track. CollabHouse, one of the oldest maker spaces in Hyderabad which opened up a tremendous network of artists and makers is putting up Passion Track. SR Innovation Exchange (SRiX), a Warangal based start-up incubator gives a start-up flavor to the Maker Faire. A hundred makers struggled for six months to put up the show adds Anand Rajagopalan, Director at T-Works. T-Works facility which will be fully functional by April next year, endeavors to fill gaps in prototyping infrastructure, informs Anand Rajagopalan. Jayesh Ranjan, the Principal Secretary for IT and Industries and driving force behind Maker Faire Hyderabad, said “everyone is a Maker”. Throughout my life I led to believe that there was only one Maker up in the air, but, I am proved wrong. Given an opportunity and nurture talent everyone can become an innovator, Maker he informed. We need to inculcate habit of curiosity in our children. Kids naturally are very inquisitive. They break open things and explore. But, the same spirit dies once they are put in school. Maker Faire Hyderabad helps them to connect back to natural talent, Jayesh Ranjan added. If we see world around us in the last one decade, lot of disruptive ideas came out of Satart-up activity, Jayesh told. Be innovators, be makers, be explorers, be job givers he told the youth. We have many problems so we have many opportunities he told the youth as startup founders are becoming younger and younger, India with young population has bright future ahead he told. Addressing the gathering Ramanan Ramanathan, the Mission Director of The Atal Innovation Mission said the country has 1.3 billion people, 1.4 million schools, 10,500 engineering colleges and 150 million students enter job market. We must make use of demographic dividend. Maker Movement is necessary for the country. We must be the community of job creators. We need to create pool of people with problem solving mindset and innovative mindset, he told He informed that The Atal Innovation Mission, an arm of the government of India has set up 5400 Tinkering Labs in 750 districts of India. In his journey of setting of tinkering labs he found that rural students were far ahead of their urban counter parts in identifying problems as they face them every day. US has Technology and has No Problems. India has Problems and has No Technology. Maker mindset has to come in parents and corporates said Ramanan Ramanathan, Mission Director, The Atal Innovation Mission Corporates don’t invest in innovation in India. We need to change this he told his gathering. Hyderabad is really buzzing in terms of innovation said Consular General and CEO of SwissNex India. A Swiss startup delegation is also visiting the Maker Faire Hyderabad he informed. Speaking on the occasion, Chandramouli Vijayalakshmi informed that the third GE First Build, Maker Space will come up at T Works in April 2019. In our journey of last four years First Build Maker Space has come out with 26 products. Two products from them moved to mass production. Our aim is to introduce one new product every month. Chandrakant Agarwal, Director of IB First Build added that they would invest one million American dollars in the facility. It would be a 8000 sq ft area. Manufacturing mindset is very low here, he added. IB FirstBuild showcased Opal Nugget Ice Maker, which makes chewable, crunchable, flavour saving nugget ice which lot of us like. The Opal is an affordable, portable nugget ice maker for the homes, which is not yet introduced in the market. Sujai Karampuri, CEO of T Works informed that 360 Makers together put up the first edition of Maker Faire Hyderabad. T works would be the place where you walk in with an idea and walk out with the product he said. India must move away from being a consumer market to manufacturing market. We must create something instead of buying and selling products of others, he said. Referring to The Innovators book he read recently one common thread among all innovators the book talked about tinkering minds. All the innovators had this mind as children. Accept failures, risks. Try, fail, retry and create, make something new, he told the gathering of Makers, thinkers, innovators at the Inauguration of Maker Faire Hyderabad. The events witnessed participation from diverse backgrounds such as Architects, Artisans, Artists, Chefs, Corporate Employees, Entrepreneurs, Incubators and Accelerators, Leather Craftsmen, Maker spaces, Musicians, Potters, Rural Innovators, and theatre artists. Thanks to our partner Atal Innovation Mission, under NITI Aayog, a Government of India's endeavour to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, we have overwhelming response from far and wide places such as Adilabad, Bengaluru, Bhilai, Bhubaneshwar, Bidar, Chennai, Ghaziabad, Kochi, Mandi, Mumbai, Nagpur, Nashik, Pabal, Pune, Rewari, Trichy, Vishakhapatnam and from Switzerland thanks to SwissNex. We also received a message from makers in Botswana informed Anand in his welcome note. T-Fiber, CISCO, Resolute, X, the American R&D company under Google’s parent Alphabet, working on moonshot projects such as internet from balloons and Free Space Optics; Ciena, Dasan, HFCL, HPEnterprises, Huawei, IDBI, LnT, Sterlite, Tejas, GHMC, TSIIC, Hyderabad Metro. SwissNex, a network of science and technology outposts aimed at connecting Switzerland with the world's innovative hubs extended helping hand in making this record-setting event happen in the city. Workbench Projects got the first license to host a Maker Faire event in India, in Bangalore in 2015. However, it was the “Mini Maker Faire”. The country’s first featured Maker Faire held in 2017 in Bangalore. The ecosystem in Hyderabad us to co-host, informs Pavan Kumar, Founder and CEO of Workbench Projects a Hyperspace inside a metro station in Bangalore. Play Track showcases many installations and innovation, that'll inspire and spark creativity in a child. "To make children unleash their true potential, we've created the Aliver's Meropolis" adds Krishna Teja, CEO of Better By Design, the organization curated the track. The Aliver's Metropolis is a city that combines play, creativity and innovation, to give children an opportunity of like never before. This city fuels a child's natural curiosity, sense of wonder for the world and their immense creative energy. This city will unleash a child's mind, through idea exploration, hands-on prototyping, and creativity at the Maker Faire, says the Play Track team. The Aliver's Metropolis isn't just a space for kids. Parents too can join their kids, in a fun exploration with their minds and their hands. Together, they can have a lot of fun, in a city like no other. Key highlights of the experience include interesting workshops like Let's Khelo- an electronic kit workshop, Egg Drop Challenge; Interactive Installations and Showcase of Kid Innovations by kids themselves! If there is a child curious type, a budding scientist at home who has ideas that seem out of this world, Maker Faire is the place to be in, he says. Kids too can be makers, innovators. We need to kindle that though in them. We have made all-out efforts keeping this in mind says Teja of the Play Track. According to Ravi Devulapally of SRiX, who curated Purpose Track (Start-ups). Start-ups like PurEnergy, YZThings, Firefly Automation, Dhama, Hug Innovations, Nanospan, Centaur, Intech, Pure Energy, Flowrhex, Fogr, Gamitronics, Global 3D Labs, Social Impact agents like Palle Srujana, Bamboo House are showcasing the awesome products they built. These innovative startups worked on technologies as varied as IoT, Drones, Agricultural equipment, AR/VR, Sustainability, environment-friendly products and more! Purpose track also lined up mentors, incubators, investors and successful entrepreneurs to share their inspiring insights through panel discussions and give visitors a peek into the future. Vineel of Passion Track adds the core of the Maker Movement is the passion for Making and Building things. Some of the most Inspiring Artists and Artisans, Makers and who are showcasing their projects. These include Surabhi Theater, Makers Asylum, Workbench Projects, Collab House, MakersHive, PreLab, Kalachakra, Banaao, Technolexis, Kilkaari The Art&Co., Into Fablab, TinkerHub, Foxlab, Riidl Fablab, Fablab Nagpur and Curiosity Innovation Labs and more The passion track has curated some of the most exciting workshops which include Pottery, Sculpting, Bread making, 3D Printing Farm, Carpentry, Paper Circuits, Biochem, Kalamkari, Leather art by the Tholu Bommalata artisans, Frame weaving workshop, Soldering, Lamp Making and many more! The highlight of this track is life-sized installations that include: Surabhi Theatre, Metal Unicorn, Metal Steam Punk Biryani, Digital Fabricated Furniture, Handloom Weaving, Kinematic Puppet, Augmented Gallery Show, Virtual Cycling, Nail and Thread Art, Graffiti and Skate Boarding To encourage Regional Art and Artisans and to support and showcase the regional art artisans of Bidari, Lakh Churri, Cheriyal, Kalamkari, Dokra, Tholu Bommalu (Leather Puppetry), Kondapalli art forms are invited The track also lined up performances such as Tangy Sessions, Siddhartha Bendi, and b-boying A roundtable around the need and possible charter of a federation of Maker spaces in India is also lined up. Atal Innovation Mission and NITI Ayog shall be part of the discussion.