Anant National University’s Saina Shankar, a 5th-semester Product Design student with minor in Health and Well-being, designed a toy Twist-a-Maze, which won the 3rd Prize at the 16th Toy Biz International B2B Exhibition, India’s largest trade fair for the toy industry, where she was felicitated by Hon’ble Chief Minister of Delhi, Smt Rekha Gupta, for her innovative toy design concept, Twist-a-Maze.
Saina’s design was first shortlisted among the top 15 designs at a national-level Toy Design Innovation Challenge, which saw more than 160 entries from across India. These shortlisted designs were exhibited at Toy Biz 2025, where Saina’s concept received an overwhelming response for its originality, user-friendliness and uniqueness.
As a Product Design student at Anant, Saina has always been keen to design user-friendly, functional and meaningful products. Apart from conceptualising creative solutions and working with different materials, she also uses her strong sense of visual design sensibility to develop aesthetically sound designs.
Throughout her journey, Anant’s Aarambh Incubation Centre played a crucial role by mentoring her during the initial application phase and preparing her for the competition. Aarambh helped refine her idea and design, ensuring that her concept met the competition’s requirements. Currently, Aarambh is actively assisting her with filing for intellectual property rights (IPR) and commercialising her design.
Anant’s Aarambh Incubation Centre promotes entrepreneurial spirit using design thinking to devise innovative solutions for problems across domains. The centre helps young innovators prototype their ideas, get mentorship, interact with investors, government and non-government agencies and receive support in the journey from concept to market. Aarambh has supported more than 79 budding entrepreneurs from Anant and has helped with filing more than 126 IPRs.
Saina’s achievement reinforces Anant’s commitment to preparing ethical, future-ready design thinkers who innovate for a sustainable world.