My work at IdeaShift grew beyond offering a design solution for education to help resolve another social issue. During my morning walks with my grandmother at our local park I observed the lack of basic fitness equipment for her and other senior citizens. This prompted me to engage with Depar, a Turkish design firm for fitness equipment to help provide outdoor fitness facilities. The importance of aesthetic in the design of such equipment helped me understand the balance between form and function. With the support of grants raised from impact investors like Menda Foundation and my personal fundraising initiatives at my school and city, I collaboratively installed the city first senior citizen fitness park in collaboration with the government. The fitness equipment was designed especially for senior citizens enabling them to fight a sedentary lifestyle that is becoming a norm in urban India. This pro-bono gym membership empowers them to lead a healthier lifestyle, which the prohibitively expensive gym memberships otherwise discouraged.

In my journey I have learnt that by challenging the status quo and given assumptions we focus on the real problems and solve them creatively. I do wish that someday IdeaShift will evolve into a Design Laboratory not just doing basic research, but designing and making things, based on advanced research, for deployment in the real world.