About Us
We're a tech-driven organisation building innovative, accessible solutions in efforts to make education inclusive. Our current focus is to make products that help improve learning outcomes for the visually impaired.
We envision a society where the visually impaired are independent and play a larger role in society. Our flagship innovation, Annie, is the world’s first Braille literacy device that helps visually impaired people learn to read, write, and type in Braille on their own in any medium of instruction.
How it All Began?
Thinkerbell Labs (previously Project Mudra) started as an independent research project at BITS Pilani Goa Campus.
The idea was born when co-founders Sanskriti Dawle and Aman Srivastava built a Braille alphabet song box on a Raspberry Pi.
It received overwhelmingly positive feedback and enthusiasm from visually impaired students and their teachers alike. This led to the team learning Braille themselves in Hyderabad, further solidifying the need for a literacy device for the visually impaired. Annie® had been developed keeping in mind the current teaching practices and the pain points of the teacher and student pool.
An Idea to an Organization
In 2016, we were incubated by Masschallenge UK, and had the opportunity to present to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge who learnt to type "George" in Braille using Annie.
In June that year, Thinkerbell Labs was officially registered as an organization. We then received the backing of Anand Mahindra and Indian Angel Network which ensured that our dream of working towards an inclusive world, became a reality.
And over the last couple of years, we've built a team of passionate, skillful individuals working towards solving this problem. (Read more about our work culture here).
Our core team's efforts have been compounded by the work of some wonderful interns, freelancers, and advisors who have contributed significantly in different capacities to make our work possible.
Our Team
Our Advisors
Rajesh Navaneetham
Board Member Operations & Strategy
Our Investors
Let's Venture
Anand Mahindra
Indian Angel Network
Our Customers / Partners
Awards and Grants
- Incubated at EmpoWer by Zone Startups.
- Winner, Social Alpha Quest (Assistive Technologies), 2019.
- Winner, Economic Times Leaders of Tomorrow, 2019, South Zone.
- Winner, ASME iShow India & Global finalist, 2018.
- Winner, London Acumen Pitch Event.
- Winner, Great Tech Rocketships, 2016 - Department of International Trade, UK Gov.
- Winner, 500K BIZ Launchpad - Deshpande Foundation (given out by Mr. Narayan Murthy).
- Winner, Dell Startup Challenge.
- Winner, Aarohan Social Innovation Awards by Infosys Foundation.
- Winner, Bumble Community Grant, 2020.
- Awarded the Centre for Augmenting WAR with COVID-19 Health Crisis (CAWACH) Grant by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, 2020.
- Winner of 1st edition of Techbharat 2020.
- Best Social Innovation - InTech50 (given out by Mr. Amitabh Kant).
- Winner of the Nasscom Social Innovation Forum grant.
- Top 2 startups at the VILCAP accelerator.
- Selected for the Reliance Jio GenNext Accelerator.
- Annie Nominated for Prime Minister's Excellence Award.
- Elevate 100 selected startup - Govt. of Karnataka.
- Winner of BIRAC- Social Alpha Quest for Assistive Technologies, supported by Mphasis, 2020.
- Winner, BITS-75 Charitable Trust and Center for Emerging Technologies.
- 3rd prize at the Global Social Venture Competition.
- Global finalists, top 10 at the Entrepreneurship World Cup, 2020.
- Top 10 in Asia, Cartier Women's Grant, 2020.
- Winner and Top 7 startups, Anjal Z Mass Challenge, 2021.
- Winner of Dell ElevatED Challenge, 2021.