nRays, Chitkara University
India’s first 48-hour Design Thinking Hackathon, nRays, was spread over three days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) from September 22 to 24, 2017. The pilot edition was launched in association with Chitkara University and was co-hosted by Centre for Entrepreneurship Education & Development (CEED).
What is nRays?
In Mathematics, n is a natural number. The word ‘nRays’ breaks down to n number of Rays, rays being ideas, people, and hope. nRays, thus, provides a platform for ideas and people to bloom and flourish. The aim was to install Design Thinking in the newest generation and mobilise them to use the tool for creating an impact at scale.
What is Design Thinking?
Design thinking is a human-centered approach to generate solutions for complex problems within all aspects of life.
Design Thinkers step into the end users’ shoes – not only interviewing them, but also carefully observing their behaviours. Solutions and ideas are concretised and communicated in the form of prototypes as early as possible, so that potential users can test them and provide feedback – long before the completion or launch. Typically, solutions should:
Solve a problem which appeals to people.
Be technologically feasible.
Be economically viable.
A typical Design Thinking Process.
This edition focussed on generating sustainable solutions for Chandigarh, with themes like Food, Data, Safety, Leisure, Healthcare, Governance, Environment, Architecture, Transportation and Future Workforces.
DAY ONE: Kick Off
Friday morning saw tremendous energies and enthusiasm among the organisers. Participants walking in at the registration desks is always an encouraging sight to have. That’s when you know the hours you’ve spent in marketing and promotions have paid off.
Humans of nRays.
Introductions were followed by a bootcamp. Participants faced challenges like:
How might we illuminate a dark washroom when the door opens?
How might we send three people to Mars in 2050?
How might we?
Participants chose a theme and formed teams to work on this theme. To pin down a workable problem, they researched from the internet, went out and talked to people, called their friends and family, and observed user behaviour from a distance. By the end of the day, all teams had a problem statement they wanted to work on over the next two days.
Oh, and one more thing. Design thinking requires everyone to step out of their comfort zones and mingle with your team at the same frequency. What better way to do that than a session of Bhangra?
The original 'Put your hands up in the air!'
DAY TWO: The Day of Mentors
It was a colourful - lots of people with lots of ideas on post it notes. It was abuzz.
For the problem statements that the teams had shortlisted a day before, they then ideated and looked for solutions. Wild, crazy ideas. Quantity over quality. They came up with ideas, made simple tangible and intangible prototypes and went back to the users to get them validated. It was a continuous, iterative process.
Ideas.
More ideas, organised.
Let there be light.
13 Mentors from a wide spectrum of backgrounds joined the participant teams. They:
Educated them on why ideas coming from young minds are so important for the development of our world.
Furnished them with insights about your industry / theme.
Guided teams to come up with their best solutions.
Helped them plan and strategise better.
Inspired them with stories and learnings from your life.
Joined them as one of their own to initiate a change.
Mentors included Munish Jauhar, Bhavish Sood, Inder Sandhu, Vineet Khurana, Kanwarnihal Singh Gill, Abhiraj Malhotra, Amanbir Ahluwalia, Mushtaq Ahmed, Dr. Neha Kishore, Naveen Jain, Dr Nakul Bansal, Raveen Walia and Nitin Trehan.
Munish Jauhar is the CEO/Founder of GrayCell Technologies and GrayCell Ventures. His aim with GrayCell Ventures is not only to provide seed capital for start-ups in software, web, mobile and the cloud computing space but to act as mentor for the talent. An active angel investor he has invested in over 25 startups. In 2011, Munish was awarded the prestigious Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Award for Most Promising Entrepreneur. GrayCell has been awarded the ‘Jewel Of The Crown’ award for Excellence for being a ‘Socially Active Unit’ in this region for three years. Munish is a member of the International High IQ Society, Rotary Club, the founding curator for the Chandigarh Hub of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community, a charter member of TiE Chandigarh and ex-chair of Yi (Young Indians), Chandigarh chapter. He is also a member of Indian Angel Network, LetsVenture and a founding member of the Chandigarh Angels Network.
Bhavish Sood is a General Partner with VC fund 3737 North and an amateur calligrapher. He is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore, Welcomschool Manipal and St John's Chandigarh. Till recently, Bhavish has spent more than 10 years as Research Director with Gartner’s Software Markets advisory service where he focused on analyzing business models of large capitalization vendors like SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM. Bhavish’s focus is on understanding the technology business models and has been quoted in Wall Street Journal, Economic Times, Hindu Business Line, The Mint among others. In the year 2010, ARInsights ranked him at 38 out of 5,511 analysts from 694 different firms worldwide.
Inder Sandhu is a Mechanical Design Engineer by trade and has a Masters in Machine Design from San Jose State University, California and an MBA from Panjab University, Chandigarh. He has retired from his Engineering career and relocated back to India where he has started an NGO by the name of Peedu's People : Educating Humans about the UNDERdogs. Peedu's People takes care of stray and injured animals, reduces human-animal conflict caused by animals, promotes gender equality and for the protection of the environment. The roots of Peedu's People are aimed at fighting speciesism and are based on Veganism. Promoting cruelty free living, tolerance, harmony, love and kindness is the focus of another group he is running called Vegans in Chandigarh.
Amanbir Ahluwalia is a Marketing Enthusiast with over 5 years of experience in helping startups and SMEs in creating various Digital Marketing Strategies for Branding, Conversions and Increasing Online Revenue. She has worked with some of the big brands like Citibank. Currently she is Lead Faculty Chair for Search Engine Marketing (PPC) with eCdemy Learning Solutions and an independent Marketing Consultant. She is a Certified Google Adwords & Analytics Practitioner and a Social Media Marketing Expert. She has always liked working with startups/younger setups as the people are very passionate and has thus helped businesses grow by creating successful strategies, online campaigns and sharing the right practices with them.
Naveen Jain has been working in the field of Industrial Automation from past 7 years with his fields of expertise being Industrial PLCs, Sensors, Machine Vision, Industrial Wireless and Machine Safety after pursuing his degree in Electrical Engineering from Chitkara University. As a keen entrepreneur, he has been hard at work running and growing Unseen Era Technologies and at the same time managing 3 startups: India Franchise Academy, whose vision is to represent the voice of the Indian Franchise Sector, 24 Check-In, aiming to provide coworking spaces, and Pranshi Hospitalities. He holds the privilege of representing India in the International Martial Arts Tournament in the year 2015 and that of being a Gold medalist at the National Level.
Nakul Bansal is a healthcare and medicine specialist who graduated as Bachelor of Medicine (MBBS) from Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS), Rohtak. With an aim to help kids break-free from the vicious circle of poverty, he has worked with non- governmental organisation: Make a Difference (MAD) which aims at providing shelter to poor kids. He pursued his exclerkship from Harvard Medical School (HMS) ,Boston, Massachusetts , Newborn medicine from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. As a medical enthusiast, Nakul aims to contribute towards the development of novel treatment strategies — primarily in the field of molecular biology and genetic engineering.
Dr. Neha Kishore is a Doctorate in Computer Science and is working as an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Chitkara University, HP for last 8 years. Along with her keen interest in research and teaching activities, she is working as an Associate Director at Chitkara University Centre for Entrepreneurship Education & Development to motivate, mentor the young aspiring/budding entrepreneurs and organize/manage all the activities of CEED in the campus. She helps turn students’ business ideas into reality. She has keen interest in research and believes that innovation is the first step towards building big businesses. She has filed two Indian patents and is also working on a government-funded research project.
Mushtaq Ahmed is the Dean of Commerce and Humanities at Learning Paths School, Mohali. He has been a teacher at St. Xavier’s High School, Chandigarh and Vivek High School. He took initiative to Mentor the JA India Student Company Program there and participated with them at 'Next Generation Leaders Forum' and in 'Asia Pacific JA Student Company of the Year Award'. His intense involvement with the Program led to him becoming Program Head for Business Competitions. Apart from teaching he also has a passion of conducting quizzes related to the Business world. He has been the Quiz Master at Qbiz India and has designed, organised and conducted innumerable quizzes. He has also been associated with University of Fraser Valley for more than 8 years.
Kanwarnihal Singh Gill, aged 28, is the CEO of X3D Studio, which provides turnkey services in the field of 3D Scanning and 3D Printing. He's also the Founder and Director of EdQuest Travels and Mass Edutainment and an investor and partner in Game App Studio. He founded The Clean Revolution Service and is the Founder and Core Member of the Punjab Angels Network, an angel investor network to provide a boost to the startup scene in Punjab.
Nitin Trehan (R) followed his degree in Commerce with a M. Sc. in International Economics Banking and Finance from Cardiff University. He established M&A Industries in 2004, which went on to become a leading manufacturer of protective packing materials and a major supplier to leading auto industry brands like Honda, Bajaj, TVS, etc. He comes with an experience in the restaurant industry and a fervent investor in the capital markets. Currently, Nitin is working on a Travel Social Media app, Picture Your Travel, which has just hit the App Store.
Abhiraj Malhotra is a Tech Enthusiast and founder of SchoolPad. Being a hustler since a very young age, he started building websites when he was in school. After graduating from Chitkara University, he started SchoolPad to provide better parent-teacher communications with just two schools in June 2013. Presently, more than 76 schools and 3 lakh parents, students and teachers are a part of the platform. He was awarded as the top 5 SME(s) by Google (SME Heroes Campaign) from Chandigarh Region.
Vineet Khurana (R) is a venture capital professional, entrepreneur and Startup ecosystem enabler with a strong belief in the Lean methodology of building Startups. He is currently building Chandigarh Angels Network as its Vice President with an objective to invest in Startups working on to solve the real life problems and have the potential to grow globally. Within a year of Starting up, with his team, he has helped grow CAN to 35 Angel Investors investing into 10 interesting Startups from different parts of India. In his efforts to place CAN at Core of the Entrepreneurial ecosystem blooming in Chandigarh and neighbouring States, he has also sensitised hundreds of aspiring Entrepreneurs willing to Start new businesses and seeking venture capital to scale up.
Raveen Walia is a Sales and Marketing Expert with over 20 years of rich and diverse experience. An excellent performer wherever he has been, he has worked with numerous auto companies across Middle East and India after graduating Punjab University in 1997. Having worked with companies such as Subaru, Maruti Suzuki and Ford, Raveen holds expertise in handling sales and marketing, strategic marketing, brand development and management and many more fields.
DAY THREE: Climax
After three gruelling days filled with research, ideating, mentoring, prototyping and more, Team GAMAS emerged victorious in a close competition for the first position and walked away with a space in Chitkara University’s Explore Hub, a grand prize of fifty thousand rupees and an opportunity to further pursue their idea of an intelligent and connected garbage collection system with the close mentorship of CEED, Yellow Cursor and the Mentors. The Jury was led by Nitin Gupta from Sickle Innovations, a company that extensively employs design thinking for improving agricultural practices.
How is nRays different from other Hackathons?
No skills required, unlike tech hackathons and B-plan competitions.
An adrenaline-filled gala at all times.
Reputed Mentors on the ground, like in some hackathons and unlike in many.
Student-driven event, making it more innovative and relevant to the current generation.
The team that made it possible (some members missing). Behind the smiles are tired legs, exhausted brains and sleepless eyes.
This article was originally published on Facebook by Yellow Cursor in 2017.