Back To The Board

As robots that buddy up with kids or as challengers in a board game, AI is manifesting in offbeat consumer products. First up: A startup that lets you challenge anyone, anywhere to a game of chess on a physical board

- Monica Bathija

THE IDEA CAME FROM a project to build a chessboard for the visually impaired. In 2013, Bhavya Gohil and Aatur Mehta, then second year students of electronics engineering at KJ Somaiya College of Engineering in Mumbai, took up the challenge at their college’s incubator lab RiiDL. The result of that project—a Braille Aatur Mehta (left) and Bhavya Gohil chessboard with voice capitalised on feedback and where the commercial opponent’s pieces move on potential of their smart chess board their own—took them to the innovations fair Maker

Faire Rome in 2014 where the positive response made the duo realise the commercial potential of their board. The two decided to turn it into a smart chess board that lets the user challenge anyone in the world on a traditional board.

“We never had a conversation [on whether] we have to make this a commercial project, it was a given,” says Gohil, 24, sitting in a conference room at thinQbate in suburban Mumbai, where their company InfiVention Technologies is now incubated.