Dublin-based inventor Damini Kumar talks to Catherine Reilly about her creative childhood, her role as an ambassador for innovation - and the non-drip teapot that launched her exciting career
At the age of five, Damini Kumar was telling anyone who’d listen that she was going to be an inventor. And less than 20 years later, as global headlines lauded the young woman for inventing the world’s first non-drip teapot, no further convincing was necessary.
The 32-year-old multi-award-winning inventor, who now lives in Dublin, tells Metro Éireann that she kept a “book of ideas” in her childhood bedroom, sketching fun products that she’d like to see rock our worlds.
“A few of the products in the book I could still develop now,” reveals Kumar, who is a 2009 European Ambassador for Creativity and Innovation and programme director of NUI Maynooth’s product design degree.
Some diamond ideas from that book remain top-secret, but Kumar – born in London to Indian parents – can share a few with Metro Éireann.
“I had rotating wallpaper to change the colour of my room,” she recalls. “I had a slide idea going from the top of my bunk-bed down to the kitchen, so in the morning I could wake up and just jump on this thing.”
She continues: “I remember when my granny came to stay from India, when I was a bit older I wired up this little doorbell switch with a tiny bulb at the end on a long wire, and she had it by her bed because she was quite elderly. I’d be downstairs and if she’d need me, she’d press this button. This tiny bulb would go on, and I’d go running up. I loved creating and my imagination was vivid.”
Kumar was born in Hillingdon, west London, in 1976. Her parents had migrated to the UK from the Punjab region of India, and Kumar grew up with a strong dual identity.
“I always kept my Indian roots, I can speak in both languages [Hindi and Punjabi], I can read and write Hindi,” she explains. “I went to India every year as a child to see my grandparents, my aunties and uncles.”
As a youngster, she “never faced any problems” over her ethnicity, and flourished in school, her favourite subjects being maths, art and science. Kumar insists that it’s important for school systems not to draw a line between practical prowess and creativity, as some tend to do.
Upon finishing school, she took a degree in mechanical engineering at Imperial College London, but her creative talents were better cultivated through a Master’s in Engineering Product Design at London’s South Bank University.
It was there that a mentor encouraged her to invent the world’s first non-drip teapot, a much-talked of but elusive feat, and she spent months working with a potter at London Bridge, making all types of teapot spouts – “bendy ones, curvy ones” – and testing them.
“In the evening I’d go home and study the fluid velocity and science, all the maths, and between that I came up with an idea, a very simple one – a shape change of a spout.”
It was tested and re-tested, and eventually Kumar was granted the patent for the world’s first non-drip teapot. The spout’s shape ensures that all the tea ends up in your cup, and not on the table.
Media interviews, awards and speaking invitations followed, but 10 years on, Kumar hasn’t made a penny from her invention. Some companies wanted to buy the patent just to prevent others from using it (“To me, that’s like selling my soul”, says Kumar) while others argued that if the product wasn’t in the market, it mattered little to them. Some thought that Kumar, then in her early twenties, would not follow through on her intention to patent it – an expensive, complicated process – and that they would get it for free.
So the non-drip teapot – a product that would surely be a welcome addition in cafés – isn’t in production yet. And unless Kumar can attract financial backing to begin manufacturing it herself, it will remain so. “It’s been 10 years now since I invented the product, and to this day I get letters and e-mails asking where they can buy one,” she remarks.
Nevertheless, her accomplishment was a notable notch on her belt, and her profile grew exponentially.
She visited schools in the UK, encouraging children to believe in their creative powers, and she later became event director for the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World Roadshow, which was reaching 100,000 kids every year. Kumar has also worked as a freelance inventor.
“Inventing something and seeing it on the shelves, those two feelings are inexplicable,” she explains. “I worked for Conran and Partners; Terence Conran is a very, very famous British designer, he designs hotels and used to own Habitat, so I designed some products for the Habitat store – all household appliances really, that was my thing.”
She originally came to Ireland in 2004 working for Media Lab Europe, and further opportunties popped up that have kept her here, including a second Master’s at UCD.
Another string to her bow has been lecturing, and since 2007 she has been programme director of the Product Design, Marketing and Innovation degree at NUI Maynooth, which is only in its second academic year.
“What I’m trying to do is create the best product design degree in the country. Product design brings the maths, science and marketing, all the skills you need, plus the design and creativity,” she explains.
“People come to the degree without ever having done art, for example, and you can see the difference between first and second year – now they’re artists, as well as scientists, as well as everything.”
She adds that, on the evidence of Irish Government documents, the powers-that-be are slowly realising that innovation is the “key to the future of the economy”.
“I think now they are realising the importance of it,” says Kumar. “I’ve seen lots of documents where they are saying Ireland needs innovation, Ireland needs more innovative people, more product designers. It’s suddenly being expressed and in that way I hope they show more commitment to it, because it has to be done, there’s no two ways.”
She is also hopeful that through her role as a European Ambassador for Creativity and Innovation, she can become an influential role model for children across Ireland. In fact, Kumar has already begun to reach out to youngsters through the Imaginate competition for schoolchildren, organised by NUI Maynooth, in association with Intel and RTÉ.
This year’s entrants were asked to design an object for “the classroom for the future”, and presently the 1,600 entries are being assessed. Kumar has been pretty impressed, remarking: “There is a lot of talent among Irish students.”
And overall, she feels that Ireland is just the right place for her.
“I think I’ve a lot of work to do in Ireland. The UK is ahead on design, creativity and innovation and I think it’s fate that I’m in Ireland and I can really make a difference this year. I think everything happens for a reason.”
For further information visit productdesign.ie.
deputyeditor@metroeireann.com
