When Prayas Innovation’s Alok Kumar presented the bright yellow sling bag he has designed to a bunch of school children at a village 30 km from Pune, it induced far greater curiosity than he had expected. “About 50 excited children surrounded the Yelo bags made of corrugated sheets of yellow plastic. They were all so eager to know more about them,” recalls Kumar, a 24-year-old product designer who co-founded Prayas with Udaipur-based Manish Mathur.

School children use the desk, with the attached solar-powered lamp, at night

The children, who were to test Yelo, weren’t disappointed. The sling bags can be transformed into a desk and also have a solar-powered LED lamp to help them study after dark. “It’s been a couple of months since we gifted them these bags and we’re still receiving great feedback from them,” reveals Kumar.