Oswald Labs

Oswald Labs
Formerly
 Oswald Foundation (2016–2017)
Private
Industry
Founded 15 August 2016 (2016-08-15) in New Delhi, India
Founders
  • Anand Chowdhary
  • Nishant Gadihoke
Headquarters New Delhi, India
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
  • Anand Chowdhary (CEO)
  • Nishant Gadihoke (CTO)
  • Mahendra Singh Raghuwanshi (COO)
Products
Services Startup accelerator
Website oswaldlabs.com

Oswald Labs (formerly Oswald Foundation) is an India and Netherlands-based accessibility technology company that builds products for individuals with disabilities.[1][2] It was established in 2016 by then 18-year-old Anand Chowdhary and 15-year-old Nishant Gadihoke after their product, Oswald Extension, won an event at the AngelHack hackathon in New Delhi.[3][4][5] In an interview with The Huffington Post, Chowdhary said that he believes "Oswald [Labs] can enable a Web 4.0, a web centered around accessibility and equality".[6][7]

Oswald Labs is named in honor of Oswald Berkhan, the German physician who first identified dyslexia in 1881.[8]

History

Chowdhary and Gadihoke started working together as students at The Mother's International School, as part of their computer club, MINET, of which Chowdhary was President.[9] Chowdhary shared his idea of developing an accessibility tool with Gadihoke, and they decided to develop the extension during AngelHack Delhi 2016.[10]

After the development of the tool, Chowdhary and Gadihoke purchased the domain oswald.foundation on 14 August 2016 and founded Oswald Labs as Oswald Foundation on India's Independence Day on 15 August 2016 along with Mahendra Singh Raghuwanshi, Chowdhary's partner in previous ventures.[11] Oswald Labs won an award at Startup India Rocks in Bengaluru and is a part of IBM's Global Entrepreneur Program.[12][13] They are also incubated in the London and Berlin-based EyeFocus Accelerator, a startup accelerator program for companies developing for living with visual impairment.[14]

In November 2016, Oswald Labs announced that they switched to wind-powered servers for their online services and content delivery network.[15][16]

On 8 April 2017, Oswald Labs qualified to the finals of The Economic Times's Catapoolt Changemakers Challenge after winning the first round in Delhi.[17] On 17 and 18 June 2017, Oswald Labs organized BharatHacks, a hackathon to solve India-specific problems, in collaboration with DigitalOcean, IBM, the Delhi-NCR chapter of Facebook Developer Circles, HackerEarth, and other technology companies.[18][19] In June 2017, Oswald Labs raised ₹100,000 in a crowdfunding campaign.[20][21]

In September 2017, Oswald Labs moved parts of their operation to Enschede, Netherlands[22] and in December 2017, Oswald Foundation was renamed to Oswald Labs to focus on research and development.[23][24] In December 2017, Oswald Labs launched a startup accelerator for early-stage startups.[25] In January 2018, Chowdhary was featured by Het Financieele Dagblad's list of 50 most-innovative entrepreneurs under 35 in the Netherlands.[26][27][28] In March 2018, Chowdhary and Gadihoke were featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2018 list in the Social Entrepreneurs category.[29][30][31]

Products and services

Agastya

Agastya is a cross-platform JavaScript library and web accessibility plug-in for websites.[32] It automatically adds WCAG 2.0-compliancy with support for keyboard navigation, automatic generation for alternate text for images using computer vision, and font adjustment.[33] It also includes a mode that adjusts the color temperature of the display to reduce eye strain and disruption of sleep patterns (like the program f.lux), a night mode that converts a webpage to a dark theme, and a dyslexia-friendly mode that uses Open Dyslexic and dyslexia-friendly colors.[34] For uses with visual impairment, it has a built-in screen reader with summarization.[35][36] Websites can also access analytics about their user's disabilities. It is available for free for websites with less than 10,000 pageviews per month, and has a subscription model for larger websites.[37]

Shravan

Shravan is an operating system for smartphones and tablet computers based on the Android mobile platform. It uses vibrational and speech feedback as its primary user interface and is more accessible than regular smartphone operating systems.[38][39] It can be used by people with dyslexia or visual impairment, senior citizens, and illiterates.[40] It is also reportedly the first smartphone operating system with built-in Digital India technologies like Aadhaar integration and Unified Payments Interface payments. It works in over 25 native Indian languages.[41][42] Shravan is expected to part of a publicly-available hardware device in 2018.[43]

Valmiki

Valmiki, formerly known as Oswald, is a browser extension based on independent research done by the British Dyslexia Association and the World Wide Web Consortium to allow people with dyslexia or visual impairment access the web.[44][45] Users with dyslexia can change the typeface to Open Dyslexic and colors to dyslexia-friendly colors, and visually impaired users can listen to the content available on a webpage.[46] It also allows users to customize a webpage's typography and design based on their reading preferences.[47][48] It is a free and open-source software available in the Chrome Web Store.[49]

Accelerator

In early 2018, Oswald Labs announced Oswald Labs Accelerator, a startup accelerator for early-stage startups.[50][51] The program is equity-free and offers coworking spaces, legal support, business development and technology consultancy, and partnerships with universities and companies. Oswald Labs has partnered with Amazon Web Services to offer cloud credits.[52]

References

  1. ↑ "Oswald Foundation". oswald.foundation. Retrieved 2016-09-01.
  2. ↑ "Oswald Labs · Made with Love in India". madewithlove.org.in. Retrieved 2017-12-31.
  3. ↑ "Learn How Two Teens From Delhi Are Coding To Make The World A Better Place!". AngelHack. 2016-06-18. Retrieved 2016-09-01.
  4. ↑ "How Two Teenagers Are Helping People with Dyslexia & Visual Impairments Access the Web". 2016-08-01. Retrieved 2016-09-01.
  5. ↑ ScoopWhoop. "These Delhi Teens Created A Reading App For People With Dyslexia. Bravo!". Retrieved 2016-09-01.
  6. ↑ "These Delhi Teens Want To Change The Web With Their Reading App For Dyslexics". Huffington Post India. Retrieved 2016-09-01.
  7. ↑ ParentHerald (2016-08-04). "Special Needs Technology Devised By Teens: Web Reading App For People With Dyslexia, Learning Disabilities And Visual Impairments". Retrieved 2016-09-01.
  8. ↑ "Anand Chowdhary on Twitter". Retrieved 2016-09-04.
  9. ↑ Goel, Anushka (2016-08-11). "WOW! These Delhi Teens Want To Device A Reading App For The Dyslexic!". Retrieved 2016-09-01.
  10. ↑ Roy, Himanshu (2016-08-03). "Developed By School Kids, This App Makes Reading Easy For Dyslexics". Jaipur Women Blog - Stories of Indian Women. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
  11. ↑ "oswald.foundation whois lookup - who.is". who.is. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  12. ↑ "Startup India Rocks! 2016 - Building Value to Exit". startupindia.rocks. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
  13. ↑ "Oswald Foundation Wins Startup India Rocks 2016 | delhi.techStartUp.in | All about the start-up scene in India". delhi.techStartUp.in | All about the start-up scene in India. Retrieved 2017-02-03.
  14. ↑ "EyeFocus India Startups: Oswald Foundation (Anand Chowdhary)". Vimeo. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
  15. ↑ "Oswald Labs". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2018-01-20.
  16. ↑ de Heide, Thomas (2018-01-18). "Duurzaamheid hoort erbij voor jonge beloften". Het Financieele Dagblad.
  17. ↑ "Oswald Foundation Wins Delhi Round of The Economic Times Presents Catapooolt Changemakers Challenge Season 2". bbcrecordlondon.com. Retrieved 2017-04-10.
  18. ↑ "BharatHacks – Programmers, Designers, Engineers, and Entrepreneurs Joining Hands To Make Lives Of Billion Indians Bettter - Bizztor". bizztor.com. Retrieved 2017-06-12.
  19. ↑ Bureau, BW Online. "BharatHacks a Hackathon to Solve Problems for India". BW Disrupt. Retrieved 2017-07-28.
  20. ↑ "Oswald Foundation | Catapooolt". www.catapooolt.com. Retrieved 2017-07-01.
  21. ↑ "Oswald Foundation Raises INR 100K in Successful Crowdfunding Campaign". BBC Record London.
  22. ↑ Bureau, BW Online. "Oswald Foundation 10 Month Old Startup Goes Multinational". BW Disrupt. Retrieved 2017-10-09.
  23. ↑ "Oswald Foundation Rebrands to Oswald Labs and Launches A11Y.co Web Accessibility Platform". BW Disrupt. 2017-12-11. Retrieved 2017-12-11.
  24. ↑ "Oswald Labs- Technology for the next billion users. - Launch Story". Launch Story. 2018-07-13. Retrieved 2018-07-13.
  25. ↑ "Oswald Labs Accelerator". oswaldlabs.com. Retrieved 2018-01-15.
  26. ↑ "Deze vijftig talenten zetten de toon". Het Financieele Dagblad. 2018-01-18. Retrieved 2018-01-19.
  27. ↑ "News | CreaTe student Anand Chowdhary in the top 50 talents of Dutch Financial Times | University of Twente - Enschede". Universiteit Twente. Retrieved 2018-01-19.
  28. ↑ Bureau, BW Online. "Oswald Labs CEO Anand Chowdhary Listed in FD Persoonlijk Talentenspecial 2018". BW Disrupt. Retrieved 2018-01-20.
  29. ↑ "30 Under 30 Asia 2018: Social Entrepreneurs". Forbes. Retrieved 2018-04-05.
  30. ↑ "UT student in Forbes list". Retrieved 2018-04-05.
  31. ↑ "Anushka Sharma, PV Sindhu make it to Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list". Zee News. 2018-03-27. Retrieved 2018-04-05.
  32. ↑ "Delhi teens start company to make accessible products". newzhook.com. Retrieved 2017-07-09.
  33. ↑ "Sponsors – Made with Love in India". madewithlove.org.in. Retrieved 2017-07-09.
  34. ↑ "Oswald Foundation | Catapooolt". www.catapooolt.com. Retrieved 2017-07-09.
  35. ↑ "Chaaipani". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2017-07-09.
  36. ↑ "At Just 16 And 18, These Delhi Teens Are Using Tech To Make The Web Accessible To Dyslexics And The Visually Impaired". www.news.viralkick.in. Retrieved 2017-07-09.
  37. ↑ DesiredWings (2017-05-19), Catapooolt: Oswald Foundation, retrieved 2017-07-09
  38. ↑ Chowdhary, Anand (2016-09-09). "Machine Learning in 6 Lines". Oswald Foundation. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  39. ↑ "Anand Chaudhary - Necessity Leading To Innovation". Humans of Entrepreneurship. 2016-10-25. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
  40. ↑ "Oswald Foundation Wins Delhi Round of The Economic Times Presents Catapooolt Changemakers Challenge Season 2". Press Release Net. 2017-04-10. Retrieved 2017-04-10.
  41. ↑ "Shravan - Oswald Foundation". Oswald Foundation. Retrieved 2017-02-03.
  42. ↑ "BBC Record London".
  43. ↑ Desk, BWW News. "Oswald Foundation Gets Into IBM Global Entrepreneur". Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  44. ↑ "DAISY Consortium's News Brief - # 2016-10b". DAISY Consortium. 2016-10-01. Retrieved 2017-01-05.
  45. ↑ Homegrown. "Thanks To Two Indian Teenagers, Dyslexic Internet Users Can Now Surf The Web With Ease". Homegrown. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
  46. ↑ "7 Indian tech startups with a vision for the disabled". TECHSEEN. 2017-04-12. Retrieved 2017-04-13.
  47. ↑ "Teens create tool to help dyslexics access web". Inshorts - Stay Informed. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
  48. ↑ Tarana (2016-09-14). "Two Indian Teenagers Built an App To Help Dyslexic People Use the Internet". The Timeliners. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
  49. ↑ "Valmiki - Oswald Foundation". Oswald Foundation. Retrieved 2017-02-03.
  50. ↑ "Oswald Labs Accelerator". oswaldlabs.com. Retrieved 2018-06-12.
  51. ↑ "Oswald Labs". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2018-06-12.
  52. ↑ "Partners · Oswald Labs Accelerator". oswaldlabs.com. Retrieved 2018-06-12.
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