Curiosity Gym

Whether you are 10 or 99, you are welcome at Curiosity Gym even though the user majority (75%) is between 10 to 15 years old. 15% of users are between 16 to 28 and 10% are adults (corporations, entrepreneurs, …). Daily, 4 users are in the lab, 500 in the Middle School’s Innovation Hub and 15 in the High School.

Most of the people hear about the lab thanks to social networks and word-of-mouth in the schools.

When they come in the lab, users either look for expertise and coaching to develop their project or their skills, either look for learning something new and playfully.

The projects developed thanks to Curiosity Gym are very diverse. Two female students prototyped a sanitary napkin dispenser, a company asked the lab to develop an automated tea machine and kids learnt how to make by themselves fidget spinners.

Community life in the Innovation Hub is very intense. As kids consider it as their own home, they take ownership for building things for the Hub.

Girish self-funded Curiosity Gym and allocated 35% of its investments in rents after few refurbishments, 50% in salaries and the rest of it in equipment, tools, etc.

As the number of employees increased from 3 to 7 in 2 years, the rent represents 20% of the budget, salaries 65% and marketing 5%.

The Innovation Hub generates 80% of the revenues (annual fees paid by students’ parents), workshops and camps 10% (from 30€ to 150€ for a one-day workshop) and mentorships 10% (5 times workshops fees). 2 other activities are on the rise but don’t represent yet a substantial revenue:

• R&D for corporations

• Products commercialization: spinners and idIOTwears are on sale online

It is important to mention that this current business model and any numbers are only a snapshot in time and hence by its very nature out of date with change in time.

Curiosity Gym should be profitable by the end of the year. All the more since another Innovation Hub is planned to open soon.

In the near future, Girish and Jehangir want to penetrate multiple Innovation Hubs, dedicate 10% of the budget in marketing to get a strong brand image, generate one unique innovation per year and get 1 million contacts in 10 years.

To integrate innovation hub’s program into schools’ curriculum is time consuming and a real challenge for the lab.

The main indicators tracked are the contact hours / month, revenues and profitability.

The 9-person team includes 5 full-time members. Girish is the “maker evangelist” whereas Jehangir is the “technologist”. 4 instructors lead workshops, camps and participate to R&D product development.

Frequent camps and workshops take place in the lab on different topics : Arduino, 3D printing, video editing, … More and more companies and Colleges ask for private design thinking and prototyping workshops to learn how to innovate differently. If you have a project, you can ask for “Mentorship”. You’ll be accompanied by a dedicated instructor from idea to commercialization.

Outside the lab, an “Innovation Hub” was set up in a middle school. This Hub creates an “environment for design thinking and future innovators” of all ages. Toys of all kind are exhibited in the Hub to encourage kids to make things. An Innovation Design and Entrepreneurship Club (IDEC) located in a High-School of Mumbai provides design thinking and problem-solving workshops and mentorship for students.

Curiosity gym also organizes bi-annual meet-ups on inspiring subjects (cryptography, google cloud, drone, …) and yearly hackathons.

The lab built partnerships with a consulting company and several schools to organize workshops and conferences for those latter.

Documentation is key for Curiosity Gym.

First, every workshop lesson plan is documented via google documents for the team. After each workshop or camp session, students and teachers provide feedbacks. Then, during daily team meetings, decisions are made to create, modify and improve workshop lesson plans.

All the code of products developed by Curiosity Gym is available in opensource on GITHUB, Instructables or Youtube. If some products seem attractive to the public, then the whole documentation is created, posted in opensource and commercialized on the lab website.

2 main products are commercialized on the platform :

• Fidget spinners, the leading toy fad

• IdIOTware Shield : a simplified multi-feature Arduino board

For this latter, the lab even created its own crowdfunding campaign on February 2017 and raised more than 9K$. To do so, the team documented in opensource 31 different projects that can be created thanks to IdIOTware Shield.

Lastly, a documented methodical strategy was set up to develop R&D products. A unique template categorizes the different kind of features a new product can gather (Motion / gesture control, API / web services, Boards, Drives, …). Then each time an innovation is developed, this template is updated to enter the features of the product.