There’s a word in India that encapsulates the idea of getting things done without having a lot of resources.
“Jugaad: It means, more or less, you make things work,” explained Suraj Kamble, an engineer at Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE Lab in Pune, India.
Kamble, who always wanted to be an engineer, exemplifies jugaad.
He started at Dassault Systèmes just two years ago, originally working as an intern in the lab and then becoming a full employee. Since joining, he’s been fully immersed in the start-up ecosystem, lending his expertise and mentorship to start-ups in the lab’s accelerator program.
While most Dassault Systèmes employees volunteer themselves to work in the mentorship program, Kamble was nominated for participation by senior members in the lab. They saw him rise through the ranks and decided he was a natural fit for the program.
Inspired by jugaad and powered by the Open Frugal Innovation community on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, Kamble is helping start-ups make a significant impact, including one he’s gotten the opportunity to see with his own eyes.
His first foray into mentoring at the lab was with Tigoona, an Indian start-up and member of the Open Frugal Innovation community.
The company designs solutions for mobile entrepreneurs to overcome last-mile challenges. Put simply, they create bikes that can power entire on-the-go businesses. While it might seem like a simple product, the company needed assistance in making its latest version modular so that it could be easily shipped and assembled by the end user. To do so, they enlisted Kamble’s help.
He analyzed the company’s design using simulation tools and conducted testing with SIMULIA’s structural analysis and dynamics solutions. The modeling and remodeling processes took six months, after which Kamble saw the fruits of his labor, spotting the design he’d worked on out on the street.
After that project wrapped up, Kamble was hooked and eagerly awaited his next assignment. Soon, it came in the form of a green hydrogen technology company.
Galaxy FCT, a Malaysian start-up dedicated to making the logistics industry more sustainable by deploying solutions powered by green hydrogen. The company needed to digitize its story and product into an interactive web experience. The project was all hands on deck, creating storyboards and designing the user interface with CAD models, testing and reviewing them on short deadlines. Collaborating cross-continentally, Suraj worked in conjunction with members of Galaxy FCT’s staff and representatives from the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab in Paris to get the job done.
Aside from working with start-ups in the lab, Kamble also mentors the interns, a job he’s well suited for seeing as he started out as one. Mentoring has taught Kamble a bit about collaboration, but it’s also taught him a lot about himself. Naturally shy, he’s now coming out of his shell.
“In the beginning, I used to do my work all by myself, and I wasn’t interacting too much with other people,” he said. “But then, once I started to train the interns and mentor them and teach them something new, I opened up a bit more.”
Kamble’s taken that newfound openness and is using it to get more young people excited about engineering. As part of his job, he goes to colleges in India to teach workshops about the lab and the Dassault Systèmes suite of technologies, and even to participate in hackathons. While Kamble was in college, he was introduced to SOLIDWORKS while working on an ATV racing team, ultimately competing and placing 6th in a national competition.
But not all students in his home country, particularly in rural areas, have the same sort of opportunity that he did. So, in addition to doing outreach and traveling to schools, he also brings students to the lab so they can learn and interact with the tools he uses on a daily basis.
“You see a lot of jugaad projects coming out of these rural areas,” he explained. By bringing those innovators into a space that’s outfitted with enabling technology like SOLIDWORKS, CATIA and 3DEXCITE, he’s helping to usher in a new era of home-grown innovation.
Despite all the work he does with the lab’s start-ups and interns and with external students, Kamble still manages to find a bit of free time. Sometimes, he fills it by playing table tennis and working out at the gym. Other times, unsurprisingly, he fills it with engineering wonders.
He likes to make 3D-rendered art and participate in challenges and competitions where he showcases his work. Kamble produced a short animated video for a competition, and though he didn’t win, he was proud of the work he produced and remembers the experience as a learning opportunity.
He also did some work for the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab Open Codex Community, creating a virtual rendering of a drawing done by none other than Leonardo da Vinci. The rendering, a replica of a drawing of a human shoulder and arm, was featured in an exhibit at the Château du Clos Lucé in France.
“It was the best modeling job I’ve ever done,” he explained humbly.
Suraj Kamble is part of a cohort of Dassault Systèmes employees lending their knowledge to ground-breaking start-ups. Check out how some of his other colleagues are driving progress.
Shoshana is a Senior Communications Manager on the Corporate Publishing team here at Dassault Systèmes. With experience in journalism, marketing, and PR, her work has been published around the world and across the internet.