Four IITians created a go-to multitool for makers. Now they’re crowdfunding it

Photo credit: Pixabay.

Abhishek Sharma and Dhrupal R. Shah like to take part in robotics competitions. Over the years, they’ve tested their skills on robotics teams and come up against the same issue again and again: if there was a problem in testing, the team had to figure out the issue by trial and error.

That was in 2013. They, along with fellow IIT-Kanpur students Akshat Agarwal and Pankaj K. Verma, started talking to their friends in the maker community, hoping to make what they call a “one-stop debugging solution” for hardware.

Programming boards are readily available through electronics portals like Arduino and Pinguino, but debugging can require another kit. Adding a wifi connection can cost around US$40 extra. That quickly adds up in money and in time.

“We asked for suggestions and realized a simple debugging kit would not be useful for everyone,” Abhishek tells Tech in Asia. “If you want to target the whole maker community, you need to include features for learning, making, and testing.”

(From left) Evive’s creators: Pankaj, Abhishek, Akshat, and Dhrupal.

Around September and October last year, he says, is when they began work on Evive, their product under their startup Agilo Technologies. It’s a prototyping platform for makers and can support a number of projects: calculators, graphing applications, and even motor-powered skateboards. It’s powered by a rechargeable battery and weighs about as much as a tablet.

Evive is powered by Arduino, an open source prototyping portal that helps makers create electronic gadgets. It’s also compatible with Scratch, ROS, Python, and other platforms.

With 15 days left to go on its Indiegogo campaign, it’s raised 32 percent of its US$30,000 funding goal.

About four years ago, electronics prototyping board Galago hit its Kickstarter goal.

Crowdfunding makers

Evive has a flexible funding plan, meaning it gets to keep all the money it raises. However, the founders explain on their Indiegogo page that in order to keep their prices low they need to meet their goal.

Indiegogo also has a fixed funding plan, which only allows the fundraiser to keep the money if the goal is completely met, but fixed funding plans only allow donations via PayPal. India’s government restrictions on PayPal mean that the campaign can only receive donations via debit or credit card. The funding page says Evive will refund the money if it doesn’t reach its goal.

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