Our story
Our roots are in Makeitlab, a hackerspace in Ekaterinburg that our team helped run. In the early 2010s, growing interest in tools such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi and 3D printers was bringing people together to experiment, share ideas and build projects. Makeitlab was part of that community.
Alongside the hackerspace’s other activities, we ran classes and workshops for children. Most Makeitlab members worked at Naumen, a major Russian software company. With the agreement of its management, Naumen sponsored our educational work as a charitable initiative.
Teaching gradually led us into product development. We moved from running classes to creating educational hardware as a commercial product, and Naumen became our investor. As Makeitlab’s activities wound down toward the end of the 2010s, two educational hardware projects emerged from the community: Tapanda and robotclass.ru.
Tapanda took its current form in 2020. We launched the product in early 2024.