Lego — Silicon Valley entrepreneur’s building block to technical innovation | Technology | The Guardian

Shubham Banerjee created a low-cost Braille printer with a toy. Now, the 13-year-old’s startup is attracting investors and shaking up an industry

Shubham Banerjee works on his Lego robotics braille printer at home. He devised the idea as a school project after he asked his parents how blind people read. “Google it,” they replied. Photograph: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

hen not disrupting an industry, growing his company or pitching prospective clients, Shubham Banerjee can be found meeting his board, brainstorming with engineers or knocking on the doors of venture capitalists. Such is the life of a

“Yes, I started young,” he said this week, as his father drove him from school, still in his navy blue uniform, to meet a potential investor. “But you see, I’ve been playing with Lego since I was two years old.”

The eighth-grader used Lego to create a low-cost Braille printer that he designed over long evenings at his family’s kitchen table in Santa Clara, an hour south of San Francisco. The idea is to print Braille reading materials from a personal computer or electronic device on to paper using raised dots instead of ink.

Shubham wants to develop a desktop printer that costs around $350, rather than the usual $2,000, and weighs just a few pounds rather than 20. He also hopes – though this remains science fiction for now – to develop refreshable digital Braille, so the blind can read tablets and laptops.

The founder and public face of Braigo Labs is too young to sign documents or write cheques so his mother is the official chief executive. His father, Niloy, originally from India, serves as the board.

Curated from Lego — Silicon Valley entrepreneur’s building block to technical innovation | Technology | The Guardian