Our Adventures in India - Maker Week Programme

Earlier this month, Dodeka had the great pleasure of participating in the Maker Week programme in India, organised by Swissnex India. Swissnex is a global network that fosters relationships between Switzerland and the most innovative hubs around the world. Swissnex India is one of the offices of this network located in Bangalore, India. Precisely, the objective of the Maker Week was to connect Swiss startups and academy institutions with Indian companies for collaboration in the manufacturing sector.

There was no way Dodeka would waste this opportunity! So, super thrilled to be one of the three startups to be selected for this programme we traveled to India with our piano keyboard under the arm (or more realistically, inside a very large luggage).. So, here’s a quick recap of our adventures in India.

We started our journey in Hyderabad, a tier-1 Indian city with a population of more than 10 millions ! As a first step, we were exhibiting at the Makerfaire in Hyderabad in the Swiss Makers corner, alongside two other fellow Swiss startups: the People’s factory and Brainwhere.

At our booth, we got a few iPads and our latest prototype - the Stellar. The idea what to showcase what we do at Dodeka and make the audience and participants play their chosen short piano songs on either our mobile application or the Stellar prototype.

As soon as the conference opened, our booth got literally crowded by hundreds of students and children (literally hundreds as you can see) eager to see what we were doing and try our new piano keyboard and mobile application.

As you can imagine, it was slightly hectic to explain how to read sheet music with Dodeka alternative music notation to all these children - but it was also very inspiring to see them instantly caught on Dodeka music notation and play their first piano songs in few minutes. For us, it was a very special moment.

Here’s a short selection of pictures to give you a feel of our experience at the Makerfaire in Hyderabad. As mentioned, crowded !

While animating our own booth, we also took the chance to visit a few makerspaces and innovation hubs in Hyderabad. We were really impressed by the entrepreneurship and innovative mindsets emanating from the Telangana state and city of Hyderabad. We really enjoyed being part of this vibrant ecosystem for some time.

After that, we traveled to Bangalore. Another very big city to the south, which is said to be the leading hub of innovation in the country. The programme was then dedicated to 1:1 meetings with relevant stakeholders for our activities. We met with potential partners for the manufacturing of our hardware and as well as stakeholders related to the educational potential of Dodeka. In particular, (and those who have been waiting to get their hands on Dodeka linear piano keyboard for quite some time will like that) we met with a musical instrument manufacturer, which look very promising for future collaboration in the production of the Dodeka piano keyboard. Overall, all our meetings went really well and gave us more confidence than ever in the future of Dodeka. What is sure is that we look very much forward to seeing what will come out of these meetings and discussions.

Thanks again to Swissnex India for the great organisation and stay in touch because some great news (we hope) is coming up soon.

Reinventing music one step at a time…