Makersbox

At Makersbox, they don’t look for specific profiles but the largest part of their users come from University (50%) then Middle and Senior Schools (30%). The rest of it gathers artists, kids, teachers or international makers, …

Since the creation of Makersbox, more than 5 000 makers passed through its doors. The frequentation depends on the lab: from 10 to 12 makers per week step by the Home Lab but in the College’s makerspace, the figure gets closer to 100 per week.

Most of the Makersbox’s users aren’t physically stepping in the labs, as its main activity is to provide workshops in schools and colleges. Those joining the makerspace feel their education is incomplete in some way. They want to experience making while learning new skills. Start-ups are also using the space to work on their prototypes.

Most of the users discovered the lab via Facebook or Instagram, monthly meet-ups on making, word-of-mouth and Colleges & Universities. The space is highly incitating their most involved students to take an active role. Hence, 3 students ambassadors were nominated to promote the makerspace to their age group.

Haarpret and Gagandeep initially invested 14 700€ in Makersbox but the total investment is split as follows :

• 36 800€ for the home makerspace and pop-up makerspaces

• 44 000€ for Karnal makerspace

• 44 000€ for the University makerspace

• 3 000€ went into the slum school makerspace

This investment has been partly supported by the government, schools and owners of the spaces. From the 1st year, Haarpet and Gagandeep went cash positive with 73 500€ revenues. The secret of this makerspace? They launch a makerspace only if they don’t pay the rent. Thereby, 50% of their revenue come from workshops and the other half from memberships. Their main costs are wages (50%), consumables and new technology goods (30%) and electricity, internet, … (20%).

In 2016, Makersbox launched 4 makerspaces and they plan to do the same in 2017. If their cash balance goes well by the end of 2017, they would like to launch in 2018 their own Makersbox bus to democratize the maker culture around India and bring MakerFaire in India. And if everything works out, in 2050, Makersbox makerspaces will develop products which people use in the day-to-day lives.

At Makersbox, everyone is a maker evangelist towards exterior. In the lab, organization is more formal :

• Gagandeep, mentor and business developer

• Harpreet, operations and financial manager

• Himanshu, fabmanager of “Home Lab”

• Rahul, fab coordinator of “Home Lab”

• Surrender & Navim, in logistics team

Each makerspace has a manager and his assistant. Added to that, 17 instructors work for Makersbox. Even though “Home Lab” is officially opened from 9 to 6pm, the community is available 24/7, using their dedicated slack channel. Today, 600 workshops were organized on different topics (IOT, electronics, …) focusing on S.T.E.A.M. methodology across problem solving and critical thinking.

To animate the Makersbox community and spread the word about makers, Makersbox has been organizing one meet-up per month, 10 pop-up makerspaces, 1 Mini MakerFaire in Delhi gathering 2 000 people. Moreover, each newbie is invited to join the Slack community which gather more than 5 000 users with 200 active ones.

Gagandeep and Harpreet developed an important ecosystem of national and global partners such as Make Block makerspace in Shenzhen to buy electronic components, the Government to make makerspaces accessible for rural areas, Intel for hardware and software or Sprout box as an incubator.

Makersbox team is convinced that documentation is key. It’s an excellent way to learn from one’s good practices and failures.

All what is happening in the lab is documented. However, a distinction is made between public/open source and private documentation.

Workshops remain private: every quarter, 5 books (one book, one S.T.E.A.M. letter) are edited and kept in the lab gathering each 500 exercises realized during Makersbox’s workshops. Furthermore, students feedbacks and their auto-evaluations are recorded to analyze on the long-run their evolution. The 2nd stream is in-house projects. Video, text, pictures on the website, Youtube, or Slack can be used to document those latter.

Sometimes, while making a product, they make timelapses to understand a posteriori what went well or wrong.

Projects of exterior people have to be documented by the maker himself.

To inspire from other projects, they usually go on Git Hub or Instructables. Some public projects are also made and documented open source by the lab’s team, to be founded on youtube or Insctructables.