RiiDL

As RiiDL is located in a University, 70% of its users are students. Most of them study architecture, and use the lab to achieve their final study project. Some are part of teams building cars or drones to attend international competitions. Others are launching their startups. 20% of users are University employees or teachers, using the labs to produce material for education courses, or goodies to distribute to students. 10% are external to the University, start-ups or artists.

The 48 regular users of the lab are mostly looking for the facilities, machines and workshops. Start-ups also join for the mentoring and network offered by the “Refine” program, and also for the grant accessible when joining the incubator, referenced as a government nod.

RiiDL communicates a lot by publishing small videos of students’ projects on their social networks, showing concrete examples of what can be achieved in the lab. It also hosts free events and workshops for students, to encourage them to cross the door.

The lab holds several “in-house projects” (self-assembling drones, water quality measurement…) and involves its members in their development. Hence any member can take one of these projects forward.

RiiDL is a non-profit organization. In 2010, the 3 founders got a grant of 40K/year during 3 years from Somaiya University to test their idea. It has been used to buy the first machines, materials, and organize the labs’ activities.

In 2017, the annual budget of RiiDL is 120 K€, partly funded by the University, government’s grant and the lab revenues. As the 3000 square-feet-space is located inside the University, RiiDL does not pay the rent. The main costs are salaries (62%) followed by operational costs for the machines, materials… (20%), marketing and events (12%) and others (6%).

Revenues are mostly coming through space renting for startups incubated (50%), workshops (40%) and occasional activities (10%), such as the production of goodies for the University.

As key success indicators, the lab focuses on the number of active members, workshops attended, social networks followers. It also tracks the number of applications received by the incubator as well as the number of startups currently incubated.

Key challenges for the future will be to focus on raising the Indians will to launch startups. RiiDL is currently applying for a governmental grant allowing the launch of new Fab Labs across India. It will also focus on spreading the maker culture, by increasing communication, events and partnerships.

While they were 3 members in the team in 2010, RiiDL has now 1 CEO, 1 administrator and 7 technical experts. 3 are dedicated to the Fab Lab, 2 to the incubator, 1 to the BioAcademy, 1 to event and PR.

The place is open to everyone, and any new member has to follow a regular process of trainings, to use the machines. For all, many workshops are dedicated to electronics, engineering, design… The lab even hosts fabacademy and since this year bioacademy.

Entering the Technology Business Incubator requires to apply and be selected. The application process is rolling the all year, and each startup is selected by a committee of expert looking at several criterias including the area of action (must be SMAC or embedded electronics), business plan, scalability, team…

Once selected, the start-up can benefit from the experts and external mentors coaching, a governmental grant, and from all the lab’s partnerships (Facebook dev, Google dev, Amazonweb services, IIT University…). The most promising start-ups can attend the “Refine” program to finalize their business model before launching their product.

RiiDL also created an alumni network between new and old members to enhance exchanges and collaborations inside the community. They strongly encourage all startups to help each other by exchanging services.

Each project developed inside RiiDL has access to the intranet discussion channels of the lab. The teams encourage their members to document at least monthly their progresses, challenges and next steps. They are asked to put pictures and explanations. But this process is not mandatory yet.

Internally all workshops are documented and can be accessible to the students online on the members’ website.

The lab does not hesitate to provide documentation from old projects to the new joiners so that they can be inspired and even use this knowledge of it for their own.

In the future, one of RiiDL’s focus will be to develop a standard documentation process internally. The main challenge is the time required by such a task, which can not always be handled by the team.