Braigo

While in 8th grade and at the age of 3 a young kid in San Diego named Shubham Banerjee saw an advertisement asking for donations to the blind. This left him to wonder how blind people read books and when he asked his parents there response was to google it. After learning how braille works Banerjee found himself concerned with the printing cost of braille books and textbooks. After this Banerjee entered his school science fair with his new design for braille printing. His idea was simple: instead of using big expensive parts he would use his love for building cars  and model planes out of legos. Doing this he cut down on the cost of printing drastically from 2000 dollars to just 300 for printing braille. He would use the legos to poke holes in paper in patterns that made letters for braille.  This idea caught the attention of many major companies and this eventually led to national news stories. On top of that he started to receive funding from many major businesses in the science and innovation world. Most notably he received funds from Intel capital who is reported to have said this is the youngest person they have had received capital funding. Using this funding he created his company called Braigo. His mother ran the business for him until he was old enough to take over himself. Banerjee’s story is very interesting because he took an object which is fairly common to create a device that had always been seen as complex and used it to help those in need. It’s also important to note that he used something that he loved and tapped into his love for building things to create his business. Nowadays he is a very popular keynote speaker and in his own words is still trying to find ways to better impact the world.