About Us
Deepak Pathania
(Founder, Director & Compulsive Inventor)
A compulsive inventor with an Industrial Design Degree from NID to back up the passion of visualising everything through a 3-dimensional, hands-on approach. He keeps coming up with mad ideas and literally can make anything come to life. Over the last 2.5 decades, he's made over 2,000 products, mockups and working prototypes, small or giant ones, some for his youtube channel, some for clients, a lot for TV shows like FAQ on Pogo and BrainCafe on ZeeQ and a few just to satisfy his innate sense of exploration. Having created the award winning Youtube channel "D'Art of Science" and the hit science stage show "FabLabShow" and with multiple Patents to his name, Deepak is keen to create a retail brand under TIY that will change the way children engage with educational Toys and Kits.
Prateek Dhruva
(Founder & Host of FabLabShow)
Prateek is a storyteller at heart, a business innovator in his soul and is as comfortable in a boardroom as he is on stage. Throughout his career, his quest for knowledge and a systematic application of learning has seen him create content and find ways to monetize it, in the kids space, across education and edutainment. On one hand, he's created curriculum, textbooks, publishing educational television, digital content, plays, events, fiction content and everything in between. On the other, he's worked in market research, he's setup and run a studio for digital content and created business verticals around education and licensing. Most recently Prateek was the Vice President of Licensing and Education at Amar Chitra Katha. Having co-created, written and performed the hit science stage show called 'FabLabShow', Prateek knew he had found his calling with STEM explorations and now he leads TIY Makers to create innovative and meaningful landmarks in this EdTech world.
Chandni Thakkar
(Co-Founder & Head of Content)
Chandni loves making things, explaining how things work and spends the better half of her day wondering why stuff works the way it does. She is passionate about teaching kids and enjoys interacting with them one on one. After high school, she had begun her journey to become a commercial pilot but Covid derailed her plans, and in June 2021, serendipity brought her to Design Intervention, where she began working on content for d'Art of Science. She had taken over the whole content production for the channel, including video hosting, within a month. As the team's youngest and then Gen-Z member, Chandni strives to keep up with current trends and packages educational content in a creative way that appeals to children. Chandni will oversee TIY Makers' video and product content, and for her, this is just the beginning.
Shilpa Salgia
(Director)
A Post Graduate Diploma in Medical Technologies, started her career after undertaking Women’s Entrepreneurship Program at SPJIMR, Mumbai. During the last 10 years, she has funded and mentored 4 ventures in varying domains, namely, Digital Restoration, Animation, Design, Medical innovation and Edu-tech. She believes in giving complete freedom to the Core Team and restricts her role to Strategy, Finance and Governance, and some of her companies employ over 200 professionals and have become profitable in the first few years. Shilpa financially backed d'Art of Science and FabLabShow in the development years to enable them to become solid brands and is now helping to consolidate the larger vision under TIY Makers.
C.H.Y.P
(Chief Robotic Officer)
In 2017 October, we came up with the Idea of doing a science Stage Show and the choice of host was obvious, Prateek, but then we needed someone to control him if he strayed too far from science, hence CHYP was born. Interestingly, CHYP was completely made in just one month and since there was no time to do the electronics and trials, the first version was actually a mobility device; there was a person inside CHYP who literally "drove" him. Since 2017 CHYP has had many iterations on the inside, while the outside has remained like the cuddly Panda bear from the beginning. Kids and Adults love CHYP. One day CHYP will be autonomous, till then he's controlled by "Silly humans" as he quips. Yes, he talks! On-stage he never stops, off-stage he never talks.
