By Asmita Dave
Ahmedabad, Jul 17 (IANS): It’s hard for working new parents to stay awake all night to care for their child, even during the day they can’t be by the cradle the whole day. It’s a real challenge for the new parents to calm the crying child every time the cradle stops swinging. A start up from Ahmedabad has come up with an affordable idea. Rushabh Sheth has created an electronic cradle with some interesting features.
Rushabh shared with IANS, “I had to do a project during my final semester of mechanical engineering in 2017. I used to see the mother doing labor work at construction sites. How they had to create some temporary cradle out of bedsheets or sarees. could not even stay near their children to swing them. Sometimes their children got out of the cradle and started playing in the risky areas as the cradle stopped swinging. I saw a similar situation at my home too. That drew me to build a motorized cradle “
Rishabh shares about the journey of his cradle design. “I made a working model with a normal steel cradle as I did not have much money. But Gujarat Technological University saw potential in my design. So they promoted it, I also got some media coverage at that time.”
“I got some demands from the market to make it into a usable end user product. I started making better designs by 2019 for commercial purposes on demand. I used to make 7 to 8 pieces on demand. Then the customers started giving feedback and I started improving my design according to that. The product we are selling now is a totally changed model, that was a motorized version and now we are making an electro magnetic cradle. We make everything from cradle to mechanism kit to charger in our own workshop. “
Rishabh describes the design, he says this cradle uses a power adapter like laptop and mobile charger, so it doesn’t pass an electric current. It has a timer of 20 minutes and speed variation options that can be changed according to the weight. We make a full cradle and also a user-friendly cradle kit that can be installed with any normal cradle by the customer themselves, he adds.
Rushabh said right now the cradle costs between Rs 2,500 and Rs 5,000, 6,000. I have about 6,000 happy customers. We are trying to make it more affordable along with adding some features like more timer variation options, adding some attractive toys to the cradle and connecting the system with some mobile app to entertain the child with lullabies.
About the funding part Rushabh said, “I have got incubation support by Ihub incubate of Gujarat government. But it’s limited to the mentorship stage till now, I have not reached the funding stage. I make all the products on my own. I have also ventured into other baby products like baby bedding. We are in talks with some brands of baby products too.”