Coming soon! An electric wheelchair for pothole ridden roads

Walking on pothole ridden roads can be a nightmare but imagine you are wheelchair-bound and have to navigate the city's roads. Santosh Kocherlakota, 27, who graduated from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad along with three others has come up with an innovative design to help the wheelchair bound navigate the Indian roads.

"While there are electric wheelchairs in the market we wanted to create something that was affordable as well," said Santosh who is the product head at the Indent Designs, a start-up being incubated by IIT-B. "

Dhruv Chaudhary, 33, who is the CEO and Rugved Rane, 22, along with Abhishek Narvekar, 32 are embedded engineers in the team.

The idea was a part of Santosh's thesis at the NID in the final year. "Throughout the development we spoke to the doctors, physios and NGOs and realized that none of the existing products go over the Indian terrain," he said.
While the prototype of the wheelchair is in the testing stage, the team expects it to be ready by December. It is likely to cost under 50,000 - a fraction of the cost of electric wheelchairs available in the market that can go over an uneven terrain.

To keep costs low close to 95% of the parts were manufactured in-house. "We also used products off the shelf of a bicycle shop that are both easily available and durable. So even when someone from the rural area wants to go to service any part, he/she can just to a bicycle shop," Santosh said.