My name is Subramanian and I’m a 31-year-old engineer from India who loves building products. Over the last 10 years, I've built products across technology, card games, fashion and sustainability. Young Sustainable Impact fellow | Young Ocean Leader | Sequoia hack winner
I grew up in Mumbai and moved between 3 cities during my schooling before moving to Bangalore for university and work. Now I call Bangalore my home. My childhood was mostly about having fun and playing for school football and tennis teams. I decided to take computer science in university by flipping a coin, but in hindsight that is one of the best ways I got lucky.
I am by no means the best engineer but I have evolved into a very good product thinker and a young leader through my experiences. When I built my first product in university, I had the chance to pitch 1v1 to Mike Butcher from TechCrunch and he gave me the best advice I have got: don’t add-up on features, focus on solving the problem properly.
I believe that great products are built by good ideas and exceptional teams. Three things in particular have enabled me in my journey to solve big challenges with my products:
Young People - Big Voices, Development Goals Forum, Oslo 2020
Waymore is a sustainable clothing initiative that makes clothing by recycling waste plastic bottles. We wanted to address the lack of an easy, responsible call to action for individuals to opt-in and contribute to fighting plastic pollution. We’ve recycled over 1.3 million waste plastic bottles and 25 metric tonnes of cotton waste.
By producing t-shirts from collected bottles, every shirt tells a story and helps customers to know they're having a strong contribution. Waymore promotes sustainable behaviour in fashion consumption.
Women experience a myriad of emotions when sexually harassed - pain, anger, vulnerability, confusion, helplessness, violation, depression to name a few. These are powerful expressions that the society often overlooks so we are building a medium to give them shape and fight sexual harassment.
The big question was what if we could get men to experience these emotions? We created See For She - a virtual reality experience where men experience sexual harassment in the body of a woman within a virtual space.
A VR experience that captures a universal yet personal journey on the provocative subject of violence against women. I found myself asking questions I hadn’t considered, which balanced discussion of what makes a singular experience so devastatingly uncomfortable for women
What do you get when you combine computing and fashion? Our clothes are the biggest real estate that is in constant contact with our bodies. With connected fashion, the canvas for ideas and solutions are very broad and limitless, but two frontrunners are definitely entertainment and social good.
I worked with the H&M team in the summer of 2019 to build ideas and prototypes of fashion tech products for a few use cases like love/ relationships, cycling/ commute, disabilities to name a few. H&M has launched one product and the others are in works, more details will be released by the team in a staged manner.
Or how would you improve sex education in your school? Or If you could engineer/genetically modify your children, what would you do? Or If all jobs had the same pay and hours, what job would you like to have?
Spark It is a multiplayer card game for social good. We’ve all got big ideas and we’ve all wanted to save the world, haven’t we? Spark It’s here to get you ready for that big day!
I had the opportunity to play Spark It several times. It is an interesting and easy-going game, that makes you think about world issues in a fun and engaging way. The game brings out unique answers and new perspectives everytime. The nature of the game makes it perfect for ice-breaking with new people.
Discoveries that leave you in reflection or put a smile on your face. From everyday experiences and emotions to once-in-a-lifetime moments and inspirations. Bridging aesthetics and emotions. You’ve seen these images before - but what does it mean to feel them?
Pixtory (acquired by YourStory) was a mobile storytelling platform with commerce weaved into it in the form of experiences, suggested products and print-to-postcards features.