A few days back, an interesting mail from some ‘Sagar Jage‘ hit our mailbox. It read ‘Finger Wiper for Helmet Visor’. The mail talked about a very simple but innovative product – Finger Wiper. We went through the files shared and found the product interesting and here we are sharing it with you.
See, if it is helpful for you and makes some sense. A reminder – Monsoons are approaching!
So, let us hear Sagar’s story on this interesting product. It includes images as well as a short video.
Disclaimer: We have NOT used the product and whatever you read below is a claim by the manufacturer. We are in no way related to them and nor are we endorsing it to anyone. This is just for your information. If there is a financial transaction involved, do it at your own risk.
Sagar Jage:
My intro –
My name is Sagar Ashok Jage, I have done diploma in Automobile Engineering and B.E. in Mechanical Engineering and interested in Product and Transportation Design.
Intro to Finger Wiper –
Finger wiper is a small and simple product designed for wiping water from helmet visor while riding through rain. It is so designed that even the mud water also gets wiped off from the visor and the visor becomes clear giving the proper vision to the rider.
Concept design & testing –
I used to travel by bike everyday from Badlapur to Thane for job. Distance is around 40 kilometers. One day I was on the way to office and it was raining heavily. I was not able to ride properly as mud particles were also getting splash on my visor because of passing by trucks and cars. At that time I marked one thing that I was continuously wiping my visor by my left hand and the idea got struck in my head.
First I thought for some hand glove with wiping material on it. But then I thought it will be difficult to manufacture and will be costly too. Many people don’t like to use hand gloves, few already have it and they will not buy another one only for rainy season. Keeping all these points & Indian user in mind, I felt the product should be portable, easy to manufacture and most importantly it should be cheap.
Then I came up with concept ‘Finger Wiper’. Finger wiper is so designed that you just have to mount it on your finger and you can use it on your existing hand gloves too. Because of its simple design it’s easy to manufacture and at cheaper rate.
All these points and final concept design of my product I did while riding and completed till I reached my office.
For testing, I need a sample so I brought one car wiper, took its rubber part, cut it, attached elastic and hand stitched & made two sample pieces at home. One I used and tested it for few days one given to my friend to test it.
After testing I found it was working very nicely and cleaning the visor properly, got nice feedback from friend also. Now I came with a conclusion that my design is working successfully and started using it daily. One day I felt that if my design is working so nicely then every rider should get benefited from this product. So me with my two Mechanical Engineer friends Tejas Paldhe & Pravin Dalvi started one engineering consultancy and planed to manufacture this product and sell it in the market.
Features –
- Simple Design – Easy to mount and easy to use.
- Best quality rubber – long life and not harmful to visor.
- Adjustable – Can be mounted on any size of finger.
- Perfect Design – Clears water from visor properly and even wash out mud particles.
- Low cost – Affordable to every biker.
- Flexible – Do not create problem to finger while pressing clutch lever.
- Portable – Can be kept in pocket or with bike keys.
- Light in weight – Negligible efforts required to use.
- Can be used for any type of helmet or visor.
- Can be used for Car mirrors and specks also.
How to use –
Mount it on left hand index finger no matter you are lefty or righty as it is easy to leave clutch than accelerator. Mount it in such a way that it’s wiping edge is parallel to ground. While using it, slightly bend your finger, wipe the water and enjoy your ride even if it’s raining.
Manufacturing –
In testing sample we use elastic to mount wiper on finger, but is become so tight that it stops blood circulation of finger. To overcome this we used combination of Velcro & elastic so that we can adjust tightness of elastic and can be easily mounted on different size of fingers of different people.
We planned to manufacture 500 pieces, but for this we cannot buy car wiper for rubber as this will cost us much more. And after cutting finishing was also bad, so we decided to make new design of rubber wiper as per our requirement. Then we designed die for rubber molding and get it manufactured from one vendor.
For stitching Velcro on elastic we were not getting any vendor as it was very small job, so my mother helped me for this and around 300 pieces we stitched at my home. After few days we met one person for this work and he agreed to do at lower rate.
Packaging –
We lost so much time in manufacturing that we didn’t get time for proper packaging design and quantity was also less so we decided to pack it in small polyethylene bag with our company details and instructions paper in it.
Sales & Marketing –
Now everything was ready and our product was ready to hit market. We decided to approach bike accessories shops and people who sell products on petrol pumps and local trains.
We thought it would be easy to sell like this. But, people selling in local trains and petrol pumps refused to sell our product because there profit margin was less and it was new product so they felt no one will buy this product.
Some shopkeepers took sample product but there was no response from anyone. We designed this product mid of monsoon and took lots of time to manufacture. So now monsoon was about to end and we wanted to sell our product. So we decided to sell this product directly to end user. For this we use to go on petrol pumps and signals every evening after our office and sell the wipers. In this way we sold many pieces in and around thane. Then we used social networking site i.e. Facebook and this also helped us a lot. And finally we successfully sold around 250 pieces in Mumbai, Thane and Pune.
Where it’s available –
Till now it’s not available at any shop. My consultancy I.e. Pioneers Engineering solutions manufactured & sold those wipers last year on petrol pumps in Thane. And this year also we are gonna sell on signals and petrol pumps in Thane, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai. This year we are also planning to sell through different distributors in different cities.
Problem is people are not aware about our product so distributors are not interested to keep our product and we have to go on petrol pumps.
Cost –
Last year we sold at Rs 40/- per piece.
This year we are gonna do mass production and change packaging, so there may be difference in price this year. It’s not fixed yet but we are planning to sell it at rs 50/- (Retail price) this year.
How to get it –
To get this product you can call us on
Sagar – 9890523152
Tejas – 9029819150
Or mail on: 3creativepioneers@gmail.com
Helmet Finger Wiper Video:
