Anirudh has conceptualized and developed new ventures in fields as diverse as Augmented reality, Wearable Computing and Technology for Environmental Impact. For his work, Anirudh has received the MIT Technology Review 35 under 35, Innovator of the Year Award, a Forbes 30 under 30 award, and a Foreign Policy global thinkers award amongst many others.
His startup Graviky, is currently trying to sequester air-pollution by recycling it into other materials such as ink. Graviky's AIR-INK has sparked a global art movement with artists from around the world using it to create beautiful narratives of protest to spread awareness about the environment. Anirudh loves problem-solving and building technologies that have a real visible impact on people's lives. He uses augmented/ mixed Reality, art, cybernetics, wearables, and materials to create new impactful concepts.
He graduated from the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT Media Lab, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he worked on Augmented Reality/2D/3D using transparent OLED displays. After spending many years at MIT his passion for design-led innovation brought him back to India, where he led the MIT Media Lab India Initiative with the goal of perpetuating self-organized design innovation into the country’s grassroots.
Prior to the MIT Media Lab, Anirudh founded Ducere - the first wearable tech start-up in India, making wearable computers embedded within shoes for athletic tracking. Ducere's first product Lechal was a navigation aid for the visually impaired. Before that, he worked at Imagin Group, at Hewlett Packard Labs, on an intuitive multimodal speech+ touch based CAD interface for large displays. The prototype ‘MozArt’ is a permanent installation at HP Innovation Center in Zurich and Dubai.
Anirudh also loves magic. In an alternate universe, he is probably undergoing an apprenticeship with a sorcerer.
Selected Talks, Podcasts, Awards
- TED, Toronto, 2018: inks from air pollution;
- Podcast: Mining unnatural resources, 2018: Kickstarter HQ, New York;
- TED India, 2017: Star Plus ;
- INK Fellows 2015: Smart shoes, and Augmented Rulers;
- Tiger AIR-INK: Hong Kong; Cannes Innovation Festival- Gold Lion, France, 2017;
- Winner, D&AD Graphite Pencil Award for Creativity and Innovation for AIR-INK; Shell.
- 'Make the Future’ Award 2017 (Most disruptive impact startup in India);
- Foreign Policy 100 Global Thinkers Award, Washington DC 2016;
- Panel, Sankalp Forum, Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi 2015;
- MIT TR35 ‘ India-Innovator of the Year’ 2011, 35 Innovators under 35;
- ‘Top Achievement Award’ by Industrial Design Center IIT Delhi Design Degree Show;
- 2011 Google Summer of Code, 2009 and 2010 scholarship to lead open source NUIGroup and Mozilla projects
Creativity, Technology, Invention
Keynote, The Goa Project 2015; Aspen Ideas Festival 2013, UIST 2014, St. Andrews, Scotland; INK Conference, Kochi 2014;
Policy and Government
Sankalp Global Summit 2015, Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi 2015; US Foreign Policy: Global Thinkers Panel, 2016, Washington DC; Confederation of Indian Industry(CII), Innovation Panel 2015; CES 2014;
Non-Profit
Indian Institute of Science/IISc Bangalore; Aspen, Colorado; Board of Cricket Control in India(BCCI) 2012. ‘Simple embodied sensors to track sportsmen’; 2012 ‘3D User Interfaces & Technologies’ at National Institute of Design campus, Bangalore; ‘Bits, the eyes and the senses’ at FOSS.in 2010- Organized Prototyping session (45 members); ‘Tangible UI and Multitouch’ at RajasFOSS 2010 ‘Minimalist HCI Interfaces’ at FOSSGN09; Keynote,IIT Bombay, E-Summit 2014;