Hi All,
I’d like to introduce everyone to my new company, MakeWhale. And by new I mean, we literally launched last week!
Who are we?
I’m Siddharth, the founder at MakeWhale. We are a design firm at heart and use 3D printing to produce unique one-of-a-kind products. While India so far has been exposed to 3D printing predominantly for prototyping and plastic products, we work with a variety of materials that consumers didn’t have access to before. We work with corporates and individuals both to create beautiful products which are 100% bespoke.
The problem
Sick of giving the same old gifts? Wanted to gift a product that was truly unique? So far consumers can only ‘customize’ to the extent of putting images on products or the usual etching on corporate gifts.
We aim to change this by offering consumers the chance to design their product, from scratch.
What can we make?
Pretty much anything. Really. We use the best 3D printing technology available internationally and empower the consumers to convert their vision for their perfect gift into reality.
Have a look at some of the products we have designed and made already. These are actual pictures and not renders!
Our take on Lord Ganesh
Customized key-chains for a rock band – Each band member got his own key-chain with his name as well as the instrument he plays!
How we work
We work broadly in 2 ways. If the customer has an idea of what they want, they can either write it in or send us reference images which we use as a base to develop the product. Alternatively we do get requests such as ‘I want a gift for my fiance as a sign of our love..i’m just not sure what I want’ . In such cases our designers work with the customer to understand the reason for gifting, the personality of the person who will receive the gift and various other points which will help us come to a final product.
The gamble
When I started working on MakeWhale I knew that assuming people will be ready to sit and design products and also wait more than 2 days (in todays click and buy world) for products to be delivered, was a gamble. The reason why I took this gamble though was, unlike say the U.S or Europe, there are not many people in India who have knowledge of product design to make their own products (yet). Plus those who do have the knowledge might not have the time or resources for it.
3D Printing is still very much in its infancy in India and a large part of our business will also be educating the consumers on the fact that they truly can make *anything* and also getting them to understand the various materials available.
Did it pay off?
We just launched a week ago, it would be foolish of me to assume anything just yet. I will say though that we already had queries and customers from the first day of launch and the response on social media has been great, without spending a dime on advertising.
Like I mentioned before, this industry is still very new in India and more so in the consumer market. So far consumers have mainly read about its application in architecture, medical uses or industrial prototyping.
They aren’t aware that it can be used at the individual gifting level as well.We hope to change that.
Thanks for your time! Please do check us out on www.makewhale.com as well as @MakeWhale on Facebook,Instagram and Twitter. My personal handle is @siddsah on Twitter.
Not sure if other 3D printing folk are around – if so would love to connect!
And would love everyone’s inputs either way 🙂
Siddharth
UPDATE, MAY 4TH, 2016:
May the 4th be with you Rodinhooders! Check out this fun video made by my extremely talented team at MakeWhale. 3D Printed in-house as well!
For those interested, growth continues at a steady pace. This industry is still extremely nascent hence we cannot expect anything else! The good thing is that even 8 months after launch we are still getting traction simply by word of mouth! Something I thought might slow down after the initial excitement.
As some people had initially recommended, we have also started selling a few products online via Engrave.in & PropShop24. More updates soon!