Meet The Ingenious Inkers Who Made it to Entrepreneur India's 35U35 List
Kaushik Mudda and Navin Jain have created a first-of-its-kind 5-dimensional printer that prints just about anything in the world including a makeshift bust of Donald Trump.
By Nimisha Gautam •
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Blenders Pride Reserve Collection presents Entrepreneur's 35U35 list included some path-breaking names from the field of entrepreneurship and the co-founders of Ethereal Machines Kaushik Mudda and Navin Jain who made the cut because of their pioneering invention of an industrial printer that makes use of five dimensions.
This startup wants to gift Ivanka Trump a version of herself. Ethereal Machines has already created a bust of Donald Trump using its 5D printer Halo, a machine that its founder says can manufacture anything from a watch to a spare car part and even sculptures, giving Michelangelo a run for his pre-eminence.
At first glance, Ethereal might look like just another 3D printing company to crop up in a garage out of the startup ecosystem's spiritual home Bengaluru. After all, it fits all our cliché boxes. Founded by two engineers fresh out of college, the tech company functions in the manufacturing space and provides affordable, compact 3D printers to small-scale manufacturers. But a closer look at Kaushik Mudda and Navin Jain's operation reveals a concept so pioneering, one might even call it utopian because its first-of-its-kind attributes.
While mainstream crowds still play catch up with the concept of 3D printing, Ethereal has developed the world's first consumer-oriented 5D printer that makes use of a 5-axis modeling technique. "5-axis machining is similar to 3D printing. However, it has two additional rotary axes the printer can print around to add more depth and allow more complex structures to be made as required in areas such as jewelry design and automotive prototyping. The Ethereal Halo is also the first machine to combine additive and subtractive manufacturing, making it a one-stop solution." says Mudda. To be sure, Halo isn't the first printer to use 5 axes. However, the creation sells for 40-60 percent cheaper than most alternatives in the market and enables you to replicate the capabilities of a large factory on your desktop, making it much more accessible to and usable by the average manufacturer.
As a testament to the ingenuity of the printer, Ethereal became the first Indian company to win the prestigious CES Best of Innovation Awards in 2018 at Las Vegas. This, along with notable funding, prompted the startup to pilot international sales in Western Europe, South East Asia and Latin America in addition to adding to the plethora of partnerships it holds with Indian giants. The path to acclaim, as Kaushik describes it, was not without hurdles. "The lack of ecosystem support for B2B hardware startups and governmental red tapes were some monumental hurdles we faced. But seeing small scale entrepreneurs across the world make a living by virtue of owning our machines has made this journey all the more important." he adds.
(This article appears in the February 2019 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here. You can buy our tablet version from Magzter.com. To visit our Archives, click here.)
