Gauri Nanda
Few would deny that the first thing they do when the alarm clock goes off in the morning is to hit that snooze button and go right back to sleep.
An ingenious creation by inventor and entrepreneur Gauri Nanda is aimed at making the alarm clock a little bit harder to ignore. The clock has a mind of its own, so to speak. After it goes off, if the user hits the snooze button, it literally jumps off the table, rolls away, and hides elsewhere in the room, forcing the user to get out of bed and find it when the alarm sounds again minutes later.
Born in Rochester Hills, Michigan in 1980, she earned a BS from the University of Michigan and entered MIT’s media arts and sciences program, where she focused on electronics-embedded clothing. She completed her SM in 2005.
Nanda came up with the product, dubbed “Clocky,” as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she participated in the MIT Media’s Lab’s Object-Based Media Research Group.
Nanda created Clocky in 2004 when asked to create a practical product for an industrial design course. She was somewhat taken by surprise when the device attracted a great deal of attention after its description was posted, along with dozens of other student projects, on the Media Lab website. Several trend-watching blogs and websites, such as Engadget, took note of the Clocky concept and quickly introduced thousands of potential customers to the device through photos and links online.
Nanda designed Clocky to be able to roll off a bedside table to the floor, buffered by rubber wheels and shock-absorbing materials. She gave it the ability to bump into objects and find its way to a resting place several feet away from the owner’s bed. A computer chip inside the device randomly programs its route each time the user hits “Snooze” so that it won’t end up in a predictable spot. She also gave it a fuzzy outer covering and a face in an attempt to “humanize” the technology.
After her project appeared online, Nanda began receiving emails from people around the world interested in buying, distributing, or investing in Clocky. She’d originally had no intention of developing it for distribution. The response from the public convinced her that she had a potentially very successful product on her hands, however. She secured patent protection with the help of MIT and set out to start her own business.
She founded Nanda Home with support from her family and began preparing Clocky for mass production. Improving the product meant working with engineers to find strong yet light, shock-absorbing materials, refine function and durability, and redesign the product’s exterior to make it as appealing to customers as possible. She also outsourced production and manufacturing to a facility in Hong Kong.
Just two years after she started, Nanda sold more than 35,000 Clocky units. The device retails for around $40-$50 and is available through NandaHome.com as well as a variety of boutiques and local retailers.
Nanda has received national media exposure in newspapers, magazines, and on television programs such as “Good Morning America.” She continues to design products that bring technology into everyday life in unexpected ways. In 2013, Nanda created Toymail with her best friend with a mission “to create technology for kids that doesn’t put them in front of another screen.” Toymail has been featured in the New York Times, Wired, TechCrunch, and Cool Mom Picks.com.
Nanda frequently speaks at New York University, Columbia University, MIT, and technology and entrepreneurship conferences.
