Vaibhav Chhabra, the founder of Maker’s Asylum, talks to RedBull.com about how the idea for the learning playground was born, the kinds of products to have emerged out of it, and why he wants Maker’s Asylum to be a key player in alternative education.
How was the idea of Maker’s Asylum born?
Maker’s Asylum was born six years ago with the idea that I could share tools with other people. I’m a mechanical engineer. Back then, there weren’t any spaces where you could get access to tools. There’s infrastructure available inside universities and organisations, but you can’t really get access to them. When I was working at a start-up called iNetra in Boston, which was part of the MIT Media Lab, we had access to all the labs. We could go from one place to another and create prototypes. I got back to India and was working for the same organisation, but it wasn’t as much fun because there was no access to hardware to be able to produce prototypes. You had to go to a service provider who would take a month to give you the device. I also practice carpentry as a hobby. So one day, after an accident in the office, I invited more people to build furniture. We then decided to get a shed to put tools together and set up our community space. That’s when we moved to Bandra and set up a small garage.
We see ourselves as an open institute where people can come and learn different skills and get credit for that.
Could you give me an example of how people from different disciplines collaborated to create something at Maker's Asylum?
Some time ago, there was this guy who was a pilot. But he came to us and started creating skateboards and then there was this other girl who was into marble painting, which she did with water. They started working together to create customised skateboards that had marble paintings designed on them. Apart from that, there’s a guy who built something where you could cut laser lights and build music. It was a collaboration between an artist and people in electronics backgrounds to co-create that.
Maker’s Asylum is also a co-working space. Who are the people you're looking to attract to the space?
So the way we work is that you can join Makers Asylum as a member. We call ourselves a learning playground – be it for start-ups, hobbyists or students. We also have entrepreneurs coming in to set up start-ups here. We have an organisation that creates applications for drones. There’s another organisation that was into hydrosonics and is making electric superbikes. So I won’t call it a typical co-working space. You can come in and access tools, so it’s more of a shared lab that has 3D printers, laser cutters etc.
Other than space, what were the challenges you had to face while setting up Maker’s Asylum?
Well, making people understand [what we’re about] has been an interesting challenge. A lot of enthusiastic people want to work at Maker’s Asylum. We come across a lot of people doing really exciting stuff who want to work here. However, Maker’s Asylum requires people with very diverse skill sets to keep it alive and sustainable. So getting people who can see the possibility of what it can become is a bit challenging. Sustainability, in terms of revenue generation, to keep the space alive would be another challenge.
What are your future plans? How do you intend to expand Maker’s Asylum both in terms of geography and scope of work?
We fit into the alternative education space, where people come and learn different skills. However, if you look at what’s happening around the world, alternative education is no longer alternative education. Universities, colleges and schools are coming up with shorter courses. If you do them at a university, you get a diploma. These diplomas carry a lot of weight today because that adds to the profile of a person. Also, the number of universities aren’t growing as much as the number of people who want to get into those universities. So do we imagine students going from one university to another, learning different skills? We think students will be going to multiple places to gather multiple skills. All of this will fit into a bigger degree of its own.
We are part of Open Badges – an organisation based in Tel Aviv – which gives a badge or certificate to an alternative education organisation. It is a blockchain for education and gives value to a person’s certificate. So we see ourselves as an open institute where people can come and learn different skills and get credit for that. That’s the interesting change happening in the education world, and we see ourselves as a key player in it.