Damn, this is impressive. A 13-year-old boy, Shubham Banerjee from Silicon Valley, was surprised when he learned how expensive and cumbersome Braille printers are—nearly $2K, weighing 20 pounds or more. So he decided to use his Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit to build a new model of a more affordable and lighter Braille printer and showed it off at his school's science fair—and
the rest is history.
After the "Braigo" — a name that combines Braille and Lego — won numerous awards and enthusiastic support from the blind community, Banerjee started Braigo Labs last summer with an initial $35,000 investment from his dad.
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Shubham used the money to build a more sophisticated version of his Lego-based printer using an off-the-shelf desktop printer and a newly released Intel computer chip. The new model, Braigo 2.0, can translate electronic text into Braille before printing.
Intel executives were so impressed with Shubham's printer that in November they invested an undisclosed sum in his startup. Intel officials believe he's the youngest entrepreneur to receive venture capital, money invested in exchange for a financial stake in the company.
Braigo hopes the printer will be on the market by the end of 2015, enabling blind people to print letters, labels and other written materials at a much more affordable price—hopefully around $350. The printer will weigh only a few pounds.
Funny thing is, being 13, Shubham Banerjee can't actually be the CEO of the company he created. So for now, his mom will have to fill the role.
"My end goal would probably be having most of the blind people ... using my Braille printer," said Shubham, who lives in the Silicon Valley suburb of Santa Clara, just minutes away from Intel headquarters.
A pretty amazing goal for a 13-year-old kid. Kudos!