TOYCATHON as you may be aware is an All-India inter-ministerial initiative announced last year under the “Aatma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ organised by the Ministry of Education’s Innovation cell along with AICTE, and 5 ministries (Ministry of Women and Child Development, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Ministry of MSME, Ministry of Textiles and Ministry of Information and broadcasting). As per the PM, Toycathon-2021 is conceived to challenge India’s innovative minds to conceptualize novel Toy and Games based on Bharatiya civilization, history, culture, mythology, ethos and aspirations of today’s generation. The purpose is to make India Atmanirbhar in Toy Manufacturing and Digital game market.

The scale of the competition can be estimated by the fact that as many as 69,764 males submitted their ideas while 49, 689 females participated. The selected participants collectively submitted 17,749 ideas out of which 2,537 ideas made it to the finale.

While there are 5 members in the team, the final physical round was showcased by a single member of the team – Mehak Singal the innovative Multisensory Interactive Puzzle ‘Tap-O- Mania’ won hearts of the judges in a physical hackathon.

The winning toy is called Tap-O-Mania. Tap-O-Mania is a multi sensory board with keyboard-like triangular keys arranged in a grid pattern. When a child clicks on a key, it raises from the surface, providing a sense of touch, vision and hearing. This single function is bound to instill curiosity within the child making them explore multiple options to play and learn simultaneously.

Children can create various objects by clicking the keys in certain patterns and enhance their creative skills by not just understanding geometrical shapes, colours and patterns but also creating shapes of their own. The board could also augment children to have better understanding of their curricular subjects like geometry, maths, factors, etc. Moreover, it could work as a platform to play board games! Functionality is only limited to one’s imagination.

Having won the runners up title in the previous Toycathon and now bringing home the winner’s prize, students of World University of Design are only soaring high. The very undertone of this institute is to improvise upon itself has been well imbibed by the students and they see no one else but themselves as their contenders in this vast ocean full of possibilities.