Innovator’sCorner - Charging Ahead...

The cellphone dying on you is a daily soap. We speak to the sultans of sustenance who invented the mechanical mobile charger

KUNAL GUHA

It’s happened to each of us. Reaching the peak of anxiety on discovering the cellphone is drying up on battery charge. Nomophobics is what the Brit researchers call us. But, all is not lost, just yet. A tag team comprising Ankit Mehta (25), Ashish Bhat (24) and Rahul Singh (24) combine forces to form Ideas Forge, a company dedicated to keep your cellphone screen glowing at all times through their unique charger which can charge a phone just by cranking a lever.
Their prototype called the mechanical charger (for lack of a better name) looks like a pocket massager that has a lever blooming out like a one-petal flower. The mechanism requires you to connect the charger to your phone and turn the lever in circular motion. The cranking generates mechanical energy, which charges the phone.
Mehta explains, “A minute of winding
would give 30-40 minutes of stand-by time. Another unique way of charging would be the roll-on method, where you stick the lever back in and roll it on any surface, like your legs or the table. This makes it a one-hand operation, so one could easily talk on the phone using one hand, while charging it with the other.”
Mehta and his team had their share of cell phone battery woes, “We’ve actually seen our phones die during calls, leaving us handicapped from even checking the contact number to call the person back from a PCO. On looking outside, we realised this was an increasing pain-point and we were determined to solve this,” he expresses in a responsible tone.
The biggest fight for a technology innovator in India is the price-point. Regretfully adds Mehta, “Chinese products have spoilt the market. They may initially deliver but then eventually fail. So, people’s expectations from technology products have been lowered. So, when we deliver a quality product, the price expectations are low.” While issues closer to their heart would be attending to rural lighting and cooling, their commercial dream would be to develop a special charger. One that could be worn like a shirt and would facilitate all the external power needs (music player, phone etc) and even provide cooling on a hot day and light in the dark. Mehta smiles, saying, “And since you’d wear it everyday, you won’t leave home without strapping it on.”

The power rangers: (from l to r) Ankit Mehta, Ashish Bhat and Rahul Singh