At Thumbi Labs, we put research to work for a sustainable future.

By leveraging our interdisciplinary expertise in technology, social sciences, and the arts, we provide both consulting services and build, design, and deploy products.

The Team

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Yashwin Iddya
Director

Yashwin Iddya is a data analyst and designs and builds tools that help planning for a sustainable future. He has worked in the domains of urban resource planning, and energy efficiency. He has a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from NITK Surathkal, and a Master’s in Sustainable Resource Management from Technical University of Munich, where he majored in Environmental Economics and Policies.

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Bharath M. Palavalli

Bharath M. Palavalli is a tool builder. He works at the intersection of technology and social sciences to design and develop tools to address societal challenges in a collaborative manner. His work informs both the theory and practice of game and simulation design. He has served on the jury of international gaming competitions and conducts Masters’ level game design courses in different universities. He has extensive experience in conceptualising, designing, and implementing games and agent-based simulations that have been used for scenario planning, learning, and participatory planning. Bharath was elected to the prestigious Ashoka Fellowship in 2018. He has published research papers in Nature and other journals.

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Karthik Natarajan
Director

Karthik’s interest lie in finding cross-industry applications of research tools and the use of them in advocating for systemic change. A trained architect and product designer with 18 years of working in various industry verticals from FMCG, Construction, to scrap metal recycling and Plastic recovery. in the past his primary area of work has been in sustainable resource management, material recovery and research communication.

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Sridhar Raman

Sridhar's interest lies in software, technology and modelling. He has more than 15 years of experience working in technology, transport modelling and web development. He has worked on public policy as part of non-profit organisations as well as being part of local governments. His interests focus on sustainability, active travel and tool building.

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Sruthi Krishnan

Sruthi Krishnan is a writer and researcher who is interested in how technology and culture shape each other. She works on designing and implementing participatory media, tools that allow diverse people to critically engage with complex information and collaborate. She has co-authored "We are not users - dialogues, diversity, and design", published by MIT Press in January 2020. The book describes the pitfalls in adopting a ‘one size fits all’ approach, and elaborates on a vision of designing where diverse voices can come together to shape our world. She has a degree in computer science and engineering and a postgraduate diploma in journalism from the Asian College of Journalism, after which she worked at The Hindu, a national newspaper, covering technology and culture.

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Srinidhi Santosh

Srinidhi Santosh’s work combines urban planning and participatory design. She has expertise in designing tools for participatory planning at the community-level and planning for large-scale urban infrastructure. She holds a bachelor's degree in architecture from NIT, Tiruchirappalli along with master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning from CEPT University, Ahmedabad.

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Vaibhav Dutt

Vaibhav Dutt’s work lies at the intersection of law and data analysis. He has expertise in designing and implementing tools for urban planning and governance, with a focus on participatory planning. He is a graduate from National Law University, Delhi. He has previously worked on projects to address violations of civil liberties such as custodial torture and death penalty. His research interests include law, human rights, and urban infrastructure.

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A. Selva

A. Selva’s work focuses on organisational infrastructure and administration. He has around a decade of experience in various industries including information technology, hospitality, and handicrafts. He works on designing physical artefacts, such as woodworks, and on visual and audio media.

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Ursula Uday

Ursula is a Narratives and Visual Designer who holds a Bachelor of Design degree from Srishti Institute of Arts, Design and Technology, Bangalore. You will mostly find her playing tabletop games or reading about mythology or young fiction.

She is passionate about breakthroughs in AR/VR/XR possibilities. She challenges herself to always make her creations, designs & tasks simple to perceive, retain and practice with inclusivity. Her ideologies are circular economy-driven & DIYs. She pursues Game Design and study of Experience & Social Economy to explore dimensions of learning in Education, Community, Health, Family & Financial Planning and Spirituality. Being part of World Oneness Youth Changemaker, Ekam Mithras & learning from the stories of people, she aspires to be a compassionate human coming from a beautiful state of consciousness.

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Kavitha Singh

Kavitha has experience of more than ten years in the field of finance and accounts. She has experience in different sectors such as telecommunications, education , advertisement, manufacturing industries and hospitality. She enjoys baking and traveling.

Our Work

Our work helps improve immersive learning, planning and decision-making processes across a wide variety of domains, including resource security and urban planning.

Products

Cantor's World is a game to learn about the trade-offs in using different indicators to plan for sustainability

At a juncture in human history when we are faced with an environmental crisis, it is critical to understand what impact development has on the environment. Indicators such as GDP and HDI that are used to measure a country’s development do not take into account the environment. To address this gap, in 2012, a trio of organizations under the UN umbrella released a report that spoke about an ‘Inclusive Wealth Index’ (IWI). The IWI is a way to acknowledge and articulate the interconnectedness of the economy, environment, and human well-being.

The game Cantor’s World has been designed for students and policy makers to learn how the IWI complements other indices. In the game players can experiment with different policy choices and experience first hand the tug-of-war between short-term results and long-term sustainability.

Who is it for?

The game is designed for Masters’ students of economics, public policy, and sustainability studies, and mid-career policymakers.

Modes of engagement

The game comes with a course syllabus. You can engage with us to:

  1. Conduct the game over a semester
  2. Conduct a workshop with a 1-day session of the game
  3. Train facilitators so that you can conduct the game

Simulation platform for resource management

We offer agent-based simulations for resource management. Agent-based simulations allow us to model both the micro and macro aspects of a system. We can model the physical, as well as institutional infrastructure, and people’s preferences into the simulation. The applications of agent-based simulations for resource management are multifold. They include:

  • Simulations for energy efficiency: Our simulation models both the physical infrastructure of a large campus, and the preferences of people to explore and come up with appropriate strategies for energy savings.
  • Simulations for land-use, waste, and water governance: Our simulation models both the natural and physical infrastructure (land, water bodies, artificial lakes, etc), and the institutional model that governs these resources. Using the simulation, we can then ask different what-if questions about the future.
Who is it for?

Government agencies, and private industry in energy and governance

Modes of engagement

You can engage with us to:

  1. Design a simulation for a context
  2. Modify existing simulations to plan for different scenarios

Courses and Masterclasses

The game design course brings together different disciplines related to game design, including economics, mathematics, literature, and critical theory, to weave together a comprehensive curriculum. Participants will be taken through both theory and guidelines and frameworks. Through the course, participants will work on a game and come up with a prototype.

Who is it for?

Students of game design and practitioners from different fields who want to use games as tools in their disciplines. Civil society groups, training, HR, consultancies have participated.

Modes of engagement
  1. If you are a university, we can offer the game design course as part of a winter/summer school
  2. We can offer the longer version of the game design course as a semester-long program for Masters’ students of design

Games can be used as tools, to achieve a particular objective. The objectives can include:

  • Games as data collection tools
  • Games as learning tools
  • Games as participatory planning tools
  • Games as scenario testing tools

The masterclass on games as tools takes participants through the following themes:

  • How to decide whether a game is useful
  • Challenges of using games as tools
  • Case studies
Who is it for?

Practitioners from different fields who wish to use games as tools.

Modes of engagement

If you are a university, we can offer the game as tools masterclass as part of a winter/summer school

Contact Us

If you'd like to partner with us, use our tools, or simply want to know more about us, please write to hello@thumbilabs.com.

Our office address

1st Floor, Suite #925, No. 677, Spacelance Office Solutions Private Limited,
HSR Layout Sector-01, 13th Cross
Bengaluru - 560102, Karnataka, India