We’ll let teacher Maya Kamat’s endeavours towards her student Usha Kumawat’s robotics competition, answer this.

The months of March, April and May this year were a buzz of activity at The Progress High School in Panjim, Goa. Not just the school, but the entire town watched in awe as the teacher showed an exemplary commitment to ensuring that her student reached the international round of the Codeavour 5.0 AI Robo City Challenge — a robotics competition where school students are expected to solve real-world challenges that align with the United Nations SDGs (sustainable development goals).

By its very nature, the event challenges conventions, pushing the students to broaden their scope of thinking.

It wasn’t just Usha’s performance — she won gold in the senior category — that is inspiring, but also the circumstances amid which she managed the feat. Born into a humble family in Goa — Usha’s father is a tile fitter and her mother is a homemaker — her first foray into the fascinating world of robots started last year when her teacher Maya took the class to a robotics camp. She was hooked.

So, when the Codeavour 5.0 AI Robo City Challenge was announced in March this year, naturally, she saw it as a perfect opportunity to play to her strengths.

And she did.

In Dubai, the 15-year-old competed against 60 countries while displaying stellar control skills. Her win put India on the robotics map. The laurels are many but at the heart of them is a young girl’s desire to prove that girls can achieve anything they put their minds to.

“So what if we do not play video games? We can still be good at robotics,” she smiles. As her teacher Maya and she break down the details of this journey to success, I must agree it makes for a very vivid story.

An aspiring innovator

In March, Maya put together a team to compete in the regional round which was to be held in Goa. The team comprised Usha and two of her male classmates. Time was of the essence as the three, led by their teacher, bent their heads over a prototype. Despite oozing confidence in controlling the robot, Usha backed out on the day of the competition, letting her classmate go up on stage instead. “Boys are good at these things,” she had told her teacher at the time — a statement that she disagrees with in retrospect.

Her win at the finale shows Usha could have handled the robot just as well as any boy, or even better. While the team managed to scrape through the regional round, they decided to make more calculated decisions at the nationals in Gurugram. “I told Usha to go on stage and handle the controls,” Maya shares.

This paid off well and Usha was selected for the international round set to take place in Dubai in May. The young girl saw her win at the national round as significant. It made her face her fears, she says. “I was able to do what I had said no to in the regional round.” Once the results were in, the goal in sight was clear to both teacher and student — win gold at the international round.

The next few weeks became a test of Usha’s adeptness as she juggled piles of homework, training for the competition, other extracurricular activities at school, and the looming challenge of arranging funds for the trip. But needless to say, she excelled at this balancing act.

Letting us in on her strategy, Usha says, “I had a few days to practise. I knew I had to make the most of them.” She explains that the robot named ‘Quarky’ was designed to perform tasks within a stipulated period of time. “The competition required the robot to perform 11 tasks within five minutes. So, I set aside two hours for practice every day and would put a timer on my father’s phone to measure how long I was taking for one task. Every day I would try to reduce this time.”

The 11 challenges, she says, were designed to test the robot’s proficiency in matching colours, judging directions, navigating through a set of obstacles, segregating between items, and piecing together an order. And she delivered phenomenally!

Recalling the moment her name was announced as the winner, Usha calls it surreal. “It made me very happy to see my parents and teachers feeling so proud. They did so much to bring me to this stage and winning felt amazing.”

While the audience was cheering Usha, there was one person to whom the victory felt like a battle won.

A teacher who went beyond

From March through May, Maya has been Usha’s biggest cheerleader. The relationship was reciprocal, she maintains. “Usha is a student who listens carefully to feedback and performs accordingly. This willingness to learn helped her succeed.” While many factors blended to make Usha’s win a reality, Maya recalls the biggest challenge as arranging funds to finance Usha’s trip to Dubai, where the international round was scheduled.

“It was Saiesh Gandhi, the mentor for LegoGoa — a Goa-based organisation that trains students in STEM and programming — who guided me with the idea of crowdfunding. He explained to me that people would understand our cause better through a video that explained Usha’s family background, her interest in robotics, her dream to participate in the competition, and the financial crunch being the obstacle,” she says.

There were 20 days to the competition, and time was running out. “We decided the video was a good idea. But Usha had never faced a camera before, so we had to do multiple retakes.” The problem was exacerbated by the young girl falling ill. But Maya says her resilience to achieve her dream motivated her to oblige with all the requirements.

Yet another hurdle was the passport as Usha did not possess one. “I asked Usha to get her documents to the school the next day so we could begin the process of applying for her passport. But when I saw the documents, the details were erroneous,” Maya says. She explains, “In the school entry, Usha’s name was registered as ‘Usha Kumari’, but her birth certificate data did not match this. So we decided to apply for a corrected birth certificate. But we were met with a setback there too as we required the parents’ marriage certificate for this.”

Usha’s parents did not have a marriage certificate. Procuring the documents from the village of Guhala, Neem ka Thana, Sikar, Rajasthan, where the parents had married, would be a long-drawn hassle, they discovered.

Time was running out.

Since conjuring a marriage certificate was not an option, they decided to get a PAN card made for Usha. But first, they had to get her Aadhar Card corrected. This process along with getting Usha’s PAN card, and numerous visits to the passport office and then the visa office, occupied much of the teacher’s after-school hours.

In the bargain, her eight-year-old son Vedang — who had also aced the national round in the junior category and was preparing for the Dubai internationals — felt neglected. “Why are you helping another student succeed so much?” his innocent question shocked Maya. While he did comprehend the urgency of his mother’s work, Maya says she felt conflicted. But despite this, her commitment towards Usha’s success remained unflinching.

In May, as Vedang Anay Kamat from Saraswat Vidyalaya and Usha held their awards at the ceremony in Dubai, the proudest person was Maya. She cherished the moment, as a parent and a teacher.

The double win felt personal. Maya was also awarded ‘Champions Change Maker’ for Mentor of the Year at Codeavour 5.0. She smiles with pride as she tells this story.

Meanwhile, Usha pipes in, “My teacher’s motivation made me win.”

We agree. And for anyone who thinks girls and tech do not make for a great combination, Usha has a message for them: “Girls can do robotics. They can do anything, sometimes even better than boys.”

Edited by Pranita Bhat.

The baby had hypothermia for the first few weeks of her life.

The doctors suggested that the couple take the baby to the closest district government hospital for better care and attention. The nearest hospital with a Special Newborn Care Unit (SNCU) was three hours away, and the baby would have to be transported in an ambulance. The couple borrowed money from family and friends as they were determined to provide the best care possible for their precious baby.

After staying in an incubator for almost 45 days, their baby girl, Kavya, is a thriving toddler today. This, however, came at a huge financial cost for the couple, as it included their travel and stay. 

Two years later, they are still repaying this money. 

Tears roll down the young mother’s face as she recounts those 45 days of having to be away from her daughter and the emotional strain it caused her. 

“I could see her only during certain times of the day when I was called in to breastfeed her. Just seeing this tiny human with so many devices attached to her was harrowing; to say the least,” she shares.

In the neighbouring state of Karnataka, Manoj Sanker saw his parents go through a similar trial when their second son was born premature. He recounts seeing his middle class family going above and beyond to ensure that he got the best treatment. Years later, when 32-year-old Manoj had to think of a startup idea in healthcare, neonatal care was his first choice.

Pratyusha Pareddy hails from a family of doctors and grew up in a household where healthcare was dinner table conversation. After completing her engineering, the 37-year-old did a masters degree in Industrial and Product Design from the National Institute of Design. 

During a project at NID, she learnt about how design could transcend beyond aesthetics and be used to create a difference. She wanted to use her designs to create impact and improve lives at the grassroot level. 

The duo shared a common vision of using technology and design to build solutions for the most vulnerable population, i.e. babies. 

The two engineers launched Raksha, a wearable device that monitors vital parameters of a newborn and helps nurses and doctors provide timely intervention through their medtech startup NemoCare Wellness. 

Launched in 2022, this device has helped over 20,000 newborns so far. 

On a mission to reduce newborn mortality

The World Health Organisation (WHO) released a report called ‘Born Too Soon: Decade of action’ in May 2023. According to this report, India recorded the highest number of preterm births — 3.2 million — in 2020. Almost 1 in 10 babies born is preterm, and the neonatal mortality rate is 24.9 per 1,000 live births, according to NFHS-5 (2019-21).

The first step to improve newborn survival is to provide essential newborn care to identify and treat high risk newborns. This includes early initiation of breastfeeding, skin-to-skin contact (kangaroo mother care), timely intervention, facilities with special newborn care units, amongst others.

The gap which Pratyusha and Manoj found during their fellowship in 2016 at the Centre for Healthcare Entrepreneurship, IIT-Hyderabad, was in neonatal care, particularly in their monitoring devices. 

“We wanted to create something impactful to save newborns, who are the most vulnerable. We felt that technology and support could play a huge role in this segment,” says Manoj.

They did a detailed six month clinical immersion where they shadowed doctors and visited different hospitals in Telangana during their fellowship.   

“During the immersion process, we tried to understand the problems faced by doctors, nurses, and gauge the gaps in the system. We came across several premature babies who were super vulnerable. There was an acute shortage of monitoring devices or any kind of support mechanisms for the nursing staff and the healthcare workers, especially in the government facilities,” Manoj tells The Better India. 

After their field visits, the duo spoke to various stakeholders and worked on building a solution with their expertise in engineering and design. While there was an acute gap of monitoring devices, the infrastructure where such a solution could be implemented was ready. 

They immediately started building their solution, and the first prototype of Raksha was ready and tested before they even graduated in 2017. They followed it up by launching Nemocare Wellness in July 2017.  

A device that can save a newborn’s life

The NemoCare Raksha device is fitted on a baby’s foot like a smart sock, explains Manoj. 

“The device captures vital parameters of the baby, the heart rate, respiration rate, body oxygenation and body temperature. Other key vitals that help a doctor, including the heart rate variability and perfusion index, are also tracked. These help a doctor/nurse identify if a baby is doing fine,” adds Manoj.

This device is connected wirelessly to a central platform that helps a nurse monitor babies and alerts when a baby is distressed. This information is paired with a tablet or dashboard through an application. The entire set up of the device, including a bedside tablet, training is given by the company.  

“This vital information is relayed on the display and pushed on the cloud and central monitor which helps a healthcare provider monitor 40-50 babies in one shot,” he adds.

This solves the problem faced in most government and smaller hospitals of resource constraints and also helps in remote patient monitoring. It provides ICU grade monitoring even when the baby is with the mother, providing an advantage of Kangaroo mother care as well.

With initial grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the entrepreneurs started testing their products and developed different prototypes over 4.5 years, before they launched the final product 18 months ago.

They conducted initial studies at private hospitals like AIG Hospital, Kamineni Hospitals, and at government hospitals like Niloufer Hospital in Hyderabad. After this, they tested their device in hospitals across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Punjab.

Their goal is to ensure that their product provides every baby the right treatment at the right time across the world. 

“Our idea is that whenever babies across the world, despite their economic status and background, need healthcare, our device should be able to provide the right intervention. It should reach all hospitals across the world,” says Pratyusha.

Currently, the founders have identified three avenues of sale. The first is to government settings through CSR (Corporate social responsibility), second to small and mid-sized nursing homes, and the third to large private hospitals.

“For government hospitals, we provide a bundle of products, which include five devices, chargers, a tablet for each device, and a central monitor if the hospital doesn’t have one already. If they have a monitor, we share the credentials that can be used to see the data,” explains Manoj.

Small and medium-sized nursing homes aren’t charged for the device, but for every baby monitored.

“These hospitals don’t pay for the device, but charge the patient Rs 600 per baby. The patch, which needs to be changed once every 2-3 days, costs Rs 200. The hospitals charge the patients as per their paying capacity, which is typically less than 10 percent of the total delivery cost,” adds Manoj

Each device can be used for up to 200 times in a year, is rechargeable, reusable and comes with a patch that keeps it clean.  Each baby gets a new patch.

To the large corporate hospitals and boutique maternal and child care centres, they plan to charge the entire cost per device.

So far, they have helped monitor over 20,000 neonates and possibly saved their lives. 

The duo are now working on building an AI platform for neonatal units, with grants from BIRAC (Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council) , ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research  Department).

“This platform will help predict when a newborn is going to fall sick and any long term complications he/she may face. While the wearable is a real time problem solving device, the platform will talk about trends and the future health of the baby, predicting whatever is done manually today. It will also work as a decision support tool for doctors,” says Manoj.

NemoCare Raksha also has plans of going global. The founders have applied for a US FDA approval as well.. The device has two granted Indian patents and a US patent around business management. 

“We also plan to use our global profits to save babies in India. For every device sold to a western audience, we plan to invest $5in India,” shares Manoj.

As part of their fundraising for their AI platform, they raised Rs 1 crore on Shark Tank India Season 3 from Aman Gupta. 

So, what’s their best memory?

“I found my purpose as a human and an engineer on the first day of our trial in a hospital. When I saw a tiny life getting impacted by our product, it was the best feeling in the world. Seeing a baby getting the best care due to a product you created is what keeps us going,” smiles Manoj.

Edited by Padmashree Pande, Images Courtesy Manoj Sanker

Delhi-based Monish Siripurapu has come up with an affordable natural air cooler that not only keeps you cool in summer but also helps cut down on electricity bills by up to 65 percent! 

The architect has designed CoolAnt which harnesses the power of nature to keep spaces cool and comfortable. Interestingly, its terracotta design is inspired by the efficient cooling techniques of beehives and brings together sustainability and functionality in one package.

The system utilises terracotta cones arranged in a beehive pattern. Water is allowed to flow over the terracotta cones which acts as a natural cooling agent, absorbing heat from the surroundings. It then uses the process of evaporative cooling to release a gentle, refreshing breeze into the living spaces.

“It is the re-adaptation of traditional methods, combining ancient systems with modern technologies. We are opening buildings to nature instead of building installations for conventional urban structures that shut their inhabitants into these closed boxes,” says Monish.

The startup observed that this structure can comfortably reduce the temperature up to 30 degrees Celsius. “At the factory, we reduced the temperature from 45-47 to 32 degrees Celsius because the water temperature was 26-27 degrees Celsius,” informs Monish.

In 2019, CoolAnt was among the 12 winners in the Asia-Pacific Low-Carbon Lifestyles Challenge. It bagged a $10,000 grant from the UN Environment.

Learn how CoolAnt is helping homes and commercial establishments reduce their power load.

Edited by Padmashree Pande.

According to a press release issued by IIT-Madras, the project to develop NeoStand was led by Professor Sujatha Srinivasan, Head of R2D2, who also led the development of Arise, India’s first manual standing wheelchair, and NeoBolt, the country’s first motorised add-on for wheelchairs. 

In an encouraging development, the NeoStand is being taken to the Indian market through NeoMotion — an IIT Madras-incubated startup founded by alumni from the institute.

Redefining the wheelchair experience with its user-centric design

Besides heading R2D2, Prof Srinivasan also teaches at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Madras. Articulating the vision of this project, she said, “Integrating standing function in a wheelchair provides health benefits as well as functional and psychological benefits to the user. Our first standing wheelchair was Arise, a low-cost mechanical design, specially designed for rural users, enabling standing and outdoor mobility for short distances.”

This compact standing wheelchair with an easy-to-use actuation system makes everyday activities — like engaging in eye-level conversations, reaching for a book or enjoying a meal standing by a counter — much easier for wheelchair users, and also provides real health benefits.

For most wheelchair users in India, the ability to stand is a real luxury. But standing is essential for better blood circulation, digestion, preventing pressure sores, etc. Besides physical health, there is also a real mental health and economic element to standing for wheelchair users.

According to this November 2013 academic paper published in Physiotherapy Canada, “Prolonged standing has been shown to have beneficial effects on various body functions and structures. In addition, time spent in a standing position can give wheelchair users a sense of confidence and equality through face-to-face contact with the non-disabled community.”

“Using a standing device can provide opportunities to connect with the outside world, enhance memories from the past, and promote hope for the future,” it adds.

Justin Jesudas — head of operations at R2D2 with 14 years of lived experience as a tetraplegic and an elite para-athlete — says, “Wheelchairs enable us, and it is a safe space for our mobility and to perform daily activities. The ability to stand with just a push of a button makes the wheelchair even more inclusive, helping tetraplegics to stand independently.”

Currently, wheelchair users are often dependent on external help and some need to use orthoses to stand. For users with compromised upper body strength, this is a significant challenge, and a manual standing wheelchair is inadequate, notes the press release issued by IIT-Madras.

That’s why in a conversation with The Better India, Professor Sujatha Srinivasan recalls, “The idea for NeoStand was fueled by encounters with individuals who, despite their desire for independence, found themselves reliant on others due to their physical limitations. The journey to developing NeoStand began in August 2021 with our observation that users of the Arise Standing Wheelchair, despite its innovations, were limited by the requirement for upper body strength to operate the arm and hand-powered standing function. This limitation sparked our determination to design a solution that could bridge this gap.”

“NeoStand, with its electric standing function, was conceived to empower a broader spectrum of users — including those lacking the upper body strength for manual operation — and to facilitate caregivers in providing support with less physical strain. Its compact design further addresses the need for a practical, space-efficient solution in urban environments,” she adds.

Besides putting less strain on the shoulders of caregivers or therapists in the hospital, the NeoStand also carries importance from a therapeutic standpoint. Caregivers or therapists can help the user practise standing gradually since NeoStand allows the user to stop at intermediate positions. This is very useful from a therapeutic standpoint.

Elaborating further, she describes how it promises users the freedom to sit for prolonged hours and stand comfortably when needed, reducing the risk of secondary health complications. “Its compactness ensures easy manoeuvrability through tight spaces, enhancing accessibility. The seamless transition between sitting and standing, with an option to pause midway, underscores its innovative approach to improving users’ quality of life and social participation,” she claims.

Developing the NeoStand

As stated earlier, the conceptualisation of NeoStand took root in August 2021 driven by a clear vision to enhance mobility solutions. As Professor Sujatha recalls speaking to The Better India, “The development process was marked by rigorous testing and refinement, with our team completing four design iterations to perfect the NeoStand. This iterative process was crucial in evolving the prototype into the market-ready product we are proud to introduce today.”

However, developing the NeoStand did pose challenges, particularly in achieving a sleek, compact design suitable for indoor use without compromising on smooth propulsion and functionality.

“Our team tackled these challenges through a blend of systematic engineering and thoughtful industrial design, ensuring that the final product not only met but exceeded our objectives. This process was a testament to our dedication to innovation and our relentless pursuit of solutions that enhance the quality of life for our users,” she claims.

Understanding NeoStand

NeoStand is engineered with four key systems: the seating system for comfort, the manual propulsion system for mobility, the electric standing system for effortless transition from sitting to standing, and the safety system to ensure secure use.

“The seating system offers tailored adjustments — including seat width, depth, and backrest height, for prolonged comfort. The manual propulsion is enhanced by ergonomic design elements, facilitating smoother mobility. The electric standing system employs a battery-powered actuator to smoothly transition the user to an upright position, while the safety system includes features like wheel locks and chest harnesses for added stability and security,” says Swostik Sourav Dash, Co-Founder and CEO at NeoMotion, speaking to The Better India.

“Powering the NeoStand is a Lithium-ion battery, chosen for its reliability and performance. This battery enables users to seamlessly transition between seated and upright positions up to 200 times on a single charge. Furthermore, the battery’s quick recharge capability — fully recharging within just four hours — ensures minimal downtime, enhancing the user experience by providing consistent support throughout the day,” says Professor Sujatha.

Priced at Rs 89,900, the NeoStand is positioned to make advanced mobility solutions more accessible, argues Swostik. “It is currently available for purchase directly through NeoMotion, with contact details provided on their website for ease of access. Our commitment to affordability extends beyond the price tag, as we explore various strategies to make devices like the NeoStand more accessible to wider communities, ensuring that advanced mobility solutions reach those who need them most,” he elaborates.

Corporate collaboration

The project to develop NeoStand was sponsored by the corporate social responsibility (CSR) arm of Tata Elxsi. Development and design, meanwhile, were led by the TTK Center for Rehabilitation Research and Device Development (R2D2) at IIT Madras and NeoMotion.

According to the press release issued by IIT Madras, Sudhakar Rao — IAS (Rtd); Member, Board of Directors, Tata Elxsi; and Chairman of CSR committee, Tata Elxsi — said, “The launch of a new product…for the differently abled signifies a turning point in our endeavour to foster inclusiveness and empowerment for individuals who face mobility challenges,” he said.

Speaking to The Better India, Professor Sujatha says, “Our collaboration with Tata Elxsi’s CSR arm provided not only financial support but also invaluable expertise in industrial design for some of our projects. Our partnership model extends beyond financial grants, aiming to encompass support for the extensive R&D work conducted at R2D2, as well as backing for the initiatives undertaken by the National Center for Assistive Health Technologies at IIT Madras,” she adds.

Moving forward, Professor Sujatha speaks of the “pressing need” they’re addressing — the provision of an adapted bus service.

“This service is crucial for transporting persons with disabilities to and from our centres, especially during the sports and cultural events we organise. Given the lack of accessible public transportation options in our cities, this initiative represents a vital link in ensuring participation and accessibility for all attendees. This kind of [corporate] support goes a long way in amplifying the impact of our work and underscores the multifaceted nature of the assistance we seek from our partners,” she adds.

(Edited by Pranita Bhat; Images courtesy IIT-Madras)

Every day India produces 31 billion litres of grey water. Wastewater from non-toilet fixtures like sinks and showers, excluding sewage, suitable for non-potable purposes like irrigation is called greywater.

In Indian households alone, more than 50 percent of the water used is grey water of which only 5 percent is recycled. 

Realising this issue and wanting to make a difference in how water waste is managed, he decided to quit his decade-long engineering career. 

He started JalSevak India in an attempt to help Indian households recycle their grey water. 

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The company installs a recycling system in household and commercial buildings that recycles the grey water using a six-step process. This water can be used to water plants, landscaping and flushing in the toilet.  

The system helps to save up to 40 percent of freshwater by using recycled grey water. Abhijit has installed setups in 12 cities across the country. Additionally, Abhijit claims that his system is 50 percent cheaper than the ones available commercially. The company recycles 1.25 lakh litres of greywater every day! 

With a city like Bengaluru suffering from a water crisis this year, such an innovation might be what it needs to survive the crisis. 

(Edited by Padmashree Pande)

Speaking to The Better India, Issac recalls, “It began with involuntary shaking of his hands without anyone taking note of it. We waited for months before seeking medical input. He was put on a medicine called Syndopa that continued throughout the rest of his life along with certain vitamin supplements. While he worked for another year after his first diagnosis, driving a car was one of the first things he had to give up, and subsequently, his job as well.”

After some time, Issac’s father was compelled to move to a small town in Kerala and live with their joint family. Since then, they had to engage in ‘steady management’ of his condition.

“We received little guidance on what diet or lifestyle would help him cope better. Living in a small town in Kerala, access to high-quality neurological experts was also limited. Our family and I accepted the status quo and slowly he withdrew from other social activities. He wanted to resume work in some way, but the shaking of the hands transferred to the legs as well in a couple of years, and he had to have someone around for mobility around the house,” he recalls.

Beyond a point, the medication did little to improve his father’s quality of life; seeing it deteriorate like that despite the medication had a profound impact on Isaac. Tragically, he passed away in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, Rahul Krishnan, who comes from a large joint family in Ernakulam, Kerala, also witnessed firsthand the struggles of loneliness and isolation among his older relatives, particularly those dealing with neurodegenerative conditions. With the added strain of the pandemic, there was news every day of someone’s cognitive health in the family deteriorating.

Speaking to The Better India, Rahul notes, “I come from a large joint family in Kerala. Like me, many of my cousins and friends ventured away from home in pursuit of better educational and career prospects. With the rise of nuclear families, meeting elders became a yearly affair at best. But witnessing the rapid ageing and forgetfulness of our loved ones has always made me wonder why there are no tools for early detection of memory decline.”

“While I encouraged my father to play sudoku and solve puzzle books to keep his mind sharp and active, I recognised a latent concern in almost every family like mine. The realisation that there is a significant gap in awareness and access to resources aimed at understanding and arresting cognitive decline served as a key driving force behind the inception of ‘Ivory’,” he adds.

After meeting each other for the first time in July 2022 during a residency programme for aspiring entrepreneurs run by Antler, an early-stage venture capitalist (VC) firm, Issac and Rahul would come together to establish ‘Ivory’.

Founded in October 2022, this Mumbai-based ‘age-tech’ startup is working towards redefining “the ageing experience” by focusing on “better brain health through neuroscience-backed assessments, interactive games, and personalised solutions.”

Finding common ground

Rahul and Issac hail from different small towns in Kerala. Their shared experience of being away in metropolitan cities for their careers while their parents stayed back in Kerala became a key reason for them to bond over the problems of the elderly that led to Ivory’s founding.

“Our starting point was to build something that would help parents feel less isolated and lonely as they stayed away from their children. During the course of our research, we understood that loneliness and isolation increase risks of neurodegeneration by over 50%, especially in collectivist societies like in India,” says Issac.

“This made us look into this space more closely. The more we spoke to people, we realised losing memory was a widespread concern that many people vocalised but had little direction on what to do about it. That’s how we zeroed in on the pain point of cognitive decline, which when not arrested early can quickly lead to dementia,” he adds.

“Just like how natural ivory embodies resilience, durability, and timeless elegance, our startup empowers seniors to lead fulfilling lives in their later years. It also is a homage to Kerala, our home state, where majestic elephants are treasured as part of our rich heritage,” says Rahul.

The scale of the problem

According to a September 2023 report in The Hindu, “Estimates based on a recent multi-centric study reveal a dementia prevalence rate of 7.4% among those aged 60 years and above, translating to nearly 9 lakh Indians currently living with dementia.”

The report goes on to add, “From an estimated 88 lakh in 2016, the prevalence of dementia is projected to increase to 1.7 crore by 2036. The study titled ‘Prevalence of dementia in India: National and State estimates from a nationwide study’ was published in July this year [2023] in Alzheimer’s and Dementia, the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.”

According to experts at Ivory, “Latest research estimates show that one person in India faces the risk of dementia every 20 seconds. Contributing factors such as loneliness, increased nuclear families and sedentary lifestyles have added to the problem.”

As per their research, “Latest reports show that cases have increased from an estimated 5.3 million in 2020 to 8.8 million in 2023. Furthermore, adults aged 50 to 70, even with mild cognitive impairment, face a 1 in 3 chance of progressing to dementia within five years, underscoring the urgent need for heightened dialogue and action in neuro health.”

Speaking on the subject, Issac, co-founder and CEO at Ivory, said, “Historically, there has been insufficient attention and understanding of dementia, especially in India. The lack of symptom identification tools combined with scant access to high-quality neurological advice at the right time makes this a pressing problem for every Indian household with an ageing parent. Urban seniors, particularly those living alone, face challenges in monitoring their cognitive health, exacerbated by [COVID-19] pandemic-induced isolation.”

Rahul, co-founder and chief product officer, Ivory, goes on to add, “At Ivory, we’re developing a pioneering platform dedicated to the cognitive wellness of seniors and cultivating healthy brain habits. We offer a diverse range of interactive content, social games, neuroscience-backed assessments, and comprehensive wellness programmes aimed at enhancing cognitive well-being and mitigating the risk of brain-related ailments such as dementia.”

Getting to this point, however, hasn’t been easy. As Issac recalls, “When we first met, there were few ready reckoners and research available for companies who are building in age-tech, particularly in India, so it was not possible to take any existing learnings and apply them to the needs of seniors. That meant that we had to experiment with multiple product concepts parallelly before zeroing down on what would find mass pain-point resonance.”

Entrepreneurship in the field of brain health is still at a nascent stage. “As we built these learnings, we also realised that the VC ecosystem was still warming up to this sector,” he says.

“While in the last six months, many funds have stepped forward to support AgeTech companies, 18 months ago, we had to build conviction about the opportunity of the AgeTech space in the venture ecosystem,” he adds. Suffice it to say that Ivory successfully raised $500,000 (Rs 4.13 crore) in a funding round led by Capital A, an early-stage VC fund, in February 2024.

“With this fundraiser, we aim to bridge these gaps by offering a tech-driven platform that makes clinical tools and expertise for better brain health accessible to millions,” says Issac.

Helping seniors navigate brain health

Dr Sumiti Saharan, a neuroscientist with over 15 years of experience in neurodegenerative disorders and dementia research, says, “By 2050, one in five individuals will be elderly in India. The urgency for innovative solutions for dementia detection and management has become undeniable. Evidence-based solutions like Ivory offer a scalable and accessible mechanism for redefining the dementia care journey and empowering the elderly to live a healthy life.”

So, how does Ivory help senior citizens navigate their brain health?

According to Rahul, “For the concerned users and their families who want to understand if their memory lapses are stress related or something which warrants more attention, Ivory provides the equivalent of your annual health checkup for your brain. This checkup is done through cognitive assessments and neuro-psychological evaluations, which help you profile your brain health status and potential cognitive impairment or dementia risk.”

“Towards this end, we’ve partnered with Cognifit — a scientifically validated and leading brain training and cognitive assessments company — to provide a starting point for tests. Their battery of tests have been developed with more than 20 years of inputs and research,” he adds.

But, as Issac goes on to explain, “A cognitive test is just one of the many inputs which go into assessing someone’s cognitive decline, as every user is unique in terms of their cultural and sociological background. These assessments provide a cognitive report across various skills, and post that, more focussed assessments are carried out. Hence, every report that goes to the user is combined with a human interaction with a neuro counsellor to give a holistic risk assessment. Neuropsychologists then use these reports in consonance with their subjective examination of the patient to propose alternative lifestyle-based interventions.”

“Every neuropsychologist does employ a third-party assessment mechanism like a Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), or a Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), or an ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research)-NCTB (Neuro Cognitive Tool Box), or Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination (ACE)-III test. It is the combination of the test used along with a subjective interpretation and continuous tracking that makes for a more definitive assessment,” he adds.

Following these cognitive and neuro-psychological assessments, counsellors hired by the startup suggest the next course of action which could include further clinical assessments.

As Rahul notes, “For proactive users, who would just want to ensure they are keeping themselves mentally active and take a preventive approach towards brain health, we have our app which offers daily quizzes, brain games, and daily tips for an active lifestyle leading to reduced impairment risk. We have also developed a personalised brain workout daily, calibrated to improve the skills they lag in. The daily workout currently consists of 2 games and a mini-assessment to measure progress. Going ahead we will be developing our proprietary workouts as we understand more about these users.”

“Depending on how the user performs, either the difficulty level or the games are then changed on an ongoing basis. The user will also get charts of progress that they can see across the skills he is being tested for,” he adds. A good starting point for this is the current cognitive age test that they have live that can be accessed here on mobile. Meanwhile, the daily tips they offer are live on their social media pages, which can be accessed here.

“There are close to 50 different games with different levels of difficulty that will also be live on our app. These test different skills, such as auditory skills, hand-eye coordination, visual reasoning, focus, planning, and short-term memory, among 23 different skills. The app is currently in its beta version slated for further testing but contains various games ” notes Rahul.

“For example, we have a game which tests processing speed, estimation, and spatial perception. Apart from these cognitive games, Ivory also has a gamified quizzing experience in version 1 across topics of interest for our target group (TG) apart from ongoing brain-teasers that we will soon drop on the app,” he adds.

As Jwala Narayanan, a consulting neuropsychologist at Annaswamy Mudaliar Hospital and Manipal Hospital, notes, “Currently, we understand that dementia risks are diverse, making prevention a crucial strategy in the battle against it. Given the considerable challenges of behaviour change, Ivory’s role in the healthcare ecosystem becomes essential, harnessing technology’s advantages to inspire a positive shift in people’s habits”.

Looking ahead

As Issac notes, “We see Ivory with a deep-rooted foundation in making better brain health accessible for the majority of Indians. One of the recurring themes coming from every neurologist or neuropsychologist who treats dementia patients is ‘We are 10-15 years late’, and Ivory seeks to bridge that gap. The new technologies in detection, and recovery and rehab of Dementia patients that will come in the next few years is what will define Ivory’s journey.”

In the medium term, however, Rahul says that Ivory intends to bring together “the power of high-quality cognitive assessments” and make them accessible for Indians to take better care of their brain health. As he goes on to add, “Timely response to cognitive decline can improve the quality of life as people age. Our objective is to make this a reality for every Indian household with an ageing parent.”

(Ivory’s beta version of the app is available on the Google Play Store.)

(Edited by Pranita Bhat; Images courtesy Ivory, Shutterstock/WESTOCK PRODUCTIONS and Shutterstock/Raushan_Films)

Additional Source:

‘India needs to gear up for the emerging dementia epidemic, say experts’ by Afshan Yasmeen for The Hindu, Published on 8 September 2023

“As EVs and Renewable energy sources become more common, there’s a growing demand for energy storage. This means more batteries are needed, which leads to increased mining for materials. This puts further strain on the planet as we extract more resources for battery production,” Akshay Jain, co-founder of Cancrie, tells The Better India.

To find an optimum solution, Akshay (36) along with his co-founder Mahi Singh (35) innovated nanocarbon for batteries from coconut shells. The patented technology is claimed to increase battery performance by 125 percent, thus reducing the need for raw material extraction for battery production.

“We are using waste to make nanocarbons, and by adding it as a component into the existing batteries, we are increasing their efficiencies. This reduces the need for mining of rare earth metals and makes the planet more sustainable,” he adds.

Extracting useful carbon from agri-waste

Akshay and Mahi grew up together studying in the same school in Jaipur. In 2010, Akshay went on to pursue PhD in chemical engineering at the National University of Singapore. Two years later, Mahi also went to Singapore to pursue her master’s at Nanyang Technological University.

It was during the same time that they started brainstorming about this technology.

“During this period, we tried to upcycle agricultural waste into fertilisers, low-cost fuels, and absorbents. After a year and a half of research, we achieved a major breakthrough by turning agri-waste into high-value nanocarbon for use in batteries. That marked a turning point for our project,” says Akshay.

Mahi points out that “more people are adopting EVs, alongside a growing interest in adopting renewable solar energy, both of which rely on batteries. By speaking to various people, we understood that existing batteries, which are made with carbons derived from fossil fuels, face challenges related to lifespan, charging, warranty returns, and safety. We saw this as a huge plug-in for our innovation.”

Akshay and Mahi decided to marry both concerns of growing agricultural waste and rising demand for batteries, and kill two birds with the same stone! In 2020, Akshay and Mahi launched their startup ‘Cancrie’ to commercialise their patented innovation.

Initially, they used 15 different varieties of waste — including coconut shells, coconut husks, fruit stones, paper waste, palm kernel shells, and human hair waste — to upcycle them into useful nanocarbons.

“But from a business perspective, we found coconut shells as the right precursor because of their commercial feasibility and their wide availability and abundance. These precursors possess certain properties like high carbon content, hardness levels, and ash content, which makes it a better choice,” says Akshay.

After the thermal treatment of agricultural waste, the startup extracts black-coloured powder, known as nanocarbon. Compared to existing incumbent solutions used in batteries, it is claimed to have a better surface area, pore network, surface wettability, and functionalities — this enhances the electrochemical reactions on electrode plates at a molecular level in batteries.

Enhancing battery efficiency and lifespan

After safely conducting the BIS standard testing for batteries using their nanocarbon at an industrial scale, the startup commercialised their product to leading battery manufacturers in the country. Mahi informs that at least 3,500 batteries with Cancrie nanocarbon have made it to the domestic market in Delhi, and Navi Mumbai and Pune in Maharashtra.

Interestingly, these nanocarbons have proved to increase energy density for lithium-ion hybrid batteries by 125 percent. Explaining in simple words, Akshay says, “With this, any two-wheeler user can run the same vehicle for 225 kilometres instead of 100 kilometres because the range has gone up. If somebody is driving their two-wheelers at the speed of 40 to 50 kilometres per hour, with ours, they can run it at a much better speed of 60 to 70 kilometres per hour.”

“We have other advantages for the lead acid batteries like household investors where our nanocarbon has proved to improve the life cycle of the battery. When such batteries are charged, a significant amount of electricity is lost in heat dissipation. Our material causes lesser internal resistance thereby storing a majority of the energy in the form of chemical energy. This translates into faster charging and improving the life cycle of batteries that use our nanocarbon,” he adds.

Cancrie has observed higher capacity retention thereby showcasing higher life that can go up to 50 percent, thereby minimising the losses due to warranty returns.

Kiran Chinchane, owner of Mumbai-based Laurus Batteries, has been using nanocarbon in the manufacturing of their lead-acid batteries for the past year and a half. He tells The Better India, “After incorporating their nanocarbon into our lead-acid batteries, we have successfully extended the lifecycle of our batteries by 20 to 25 percent. Laboratory tests indicate a reduction in warranty returns as well. Currently, we have replaced 20 percent of our batteries with their nanocarbon component, and I aim to integrate it into all our batteries in the future.”

Meanwhile, Amitej, head of product development at Cancrie, tells The Better India, “As the performance and the life cycle of the batteries have gone up, you don’t need to manufacture more batteries than what was needed to meet the rising energy requirements. This will also cause lower CO2 and GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions. By 2050, we would be annually reducing four Giga tonnes of CO2 emissions by simply switching the material.”

In 2023, Cancrie was also awarded the National Energy Efficiency Innovation award by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Ministry of Power.

Personally, this journey has been extremely fulfilling, shares Akshay. “When I started this work, I was not sure how it would turn out. It requires a lot of patience as it takes years to reap the fruits. We have built nanocarbon from scratch and above all, from waste. It took us almost 10 to 12 years before we started selling. It gives me immense contentment that we have brought this product to such a level,” he adds.

(Edited by Pranita Bhat; All photos: Mahi Singh)

Kanpur’s Chaitanya Dubey found a unique biodegradable alternative to traditional thermocol using mushroom mycelium and agricultural waste.

Chaitanya says his eco-friendly solution is lighter and sturdier, and has the same feel as the polystyrene. “In terms of strength, it compares favourably to high-density thermocol; however, weight-wise, it leans a bit on the heavier side,” he adds.

Talking about the elements used to create the alternative, he explains, “Mycelium, or the roots of the mushroom, serves as a natural adhesive. Additionally, we utilise a combination of agricultural waste and natural fibres, contributing to the durability and longevity of the thermocol. The inherent properties of mushrooms make for a robust material.”

This biodegradable thermocol also doubles up as a fertiliser and decomposes in 60-90 days. “Once its purpose is fulfilled, just crush it and add it to your plant pots; it will act as a natural fertiliser,” he shares adding that the product is now accessible to packaging businesses.

It was while pursuing a small business course that Chaitanya got interested in mushroom farming and discovered its potential. With guidance from IIT Kanpur, he launched his startup ‘Kinoko Biotech’ to make bio-materials from mushrooms.

“With this, green innovation, I hope to provide people the opportunity to contribute positively towards the environment,” he shares.

Watch this video to learn more about this eco-friendly thermocol:

Edited by Pranita Bhat

Could Artificial Intelligence be channeled to drive wildlife conservation? From healthcare to civil issues and more, AI has benefited every field creating tremendous impact in people’s lives. Isn’t it time then to use AI for social good for all Indians living in the rural parts of the country, which sees major human-animal conflict? 

What better time to dive deep into this subject than on World Wildlife Day! 

Rapid population growth and infrastructure expansion have led to encroachment into once-safe wildlife habitats, particularly in India, home to 80 percent of the world’s wild tiger population, resulting in significant human-animal conflicts. One such example came up a few years ago when a ‘maneater’ tiger RT-1 — notorious for killing eight persons and 25 cattle — was on the loose in Chandrapur, Maharashtra. Kushagra Pathak, Deputy Director (Buffer) of Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve points out that the town has witnessed 225 deaths resulting from altercations between the locals and tigers in the last eight years alone.  

A 2022 report also revealed that the year saw the highest number of man-animal conflicts in Maharashtra with the loss of 100 human lives. This paints a worrying picture. Even as the country celebrates the ambitious 1973 Project Tiger, an initiative that has been successful in raising the number of big cats from 1800 in the 1970s to 3167 in 2023, an accompanying rise is seen in cases of human-animal conflict and mauling.    

Could technology help solve this issue? The United Nations urges that wildlife and technology do not have to be kept at arm’s length anymore, but they should rather be tied together. With the official theme of World Wildlife Day 2024 being ‘Digital Innovations in Wildlife Conservation’, we are shining the light on a ground-breaking innovation in this space. 

Championing AI for social good in Chandrapur and beyond

‘Valiance Solutions’, a Noida-based company, is leading change on this front with the help of their AI-powered solutions focused on social good. 

Helmed by Shailendra Singh Kathait, Valiance Solutions is dedicated to using AI to empower businesses. ‘Wildlife Eye’, their innovative platform is testing new waters by trying to mitigate human-animal conflict in over 13 villages of Maharashtra. Their brilliant initiative was also appreciated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a recent episode of ‘Mann ki Baat’.

Applauding how digital gadgets are now working to ensure coexistence between humans and animals, the PM cited how this innovation in Chandrapur is an excellent example. “The innovation is protecting people as well as the tigers,” he noted.  

To an outsider, the Sitaram Peth village in Bhadrawati, Chandrapur, Maharashtra, would seem picture-perfect. The landscape is dotted with temples, and lakes and rests against the backdrop of the lush greenery of the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve. As one of India’s 47 Project Tiger reserves, the area is a stronghold for the majestic tiger, along with other wildlife such as the leopard, sambar, marsh crocodile and striped hyena. 

The village does seem like a beautiful place to be living in. But only an insider would know the other side of the story. 

As locals go about their daily routines, a sudden spotting of pugmarks is enough to cause havoc. It is no surprise as to where these prints came from. As the sun sets, its four-legged striped owners can be seen strolling through the village roads, occasionally drinking their fill from the Tadoba Lake. And as their numbers have been increasing — the current count of tigers is 248 according to the Status of Tigers 2022 report — the villagers have been worried. 

With some of their family members and cattle being mauled by the tigers, the equation isn’t cordial. Tolerance is beginning to fray. 

The solution? ‘Wildlife Eye’  

“Tigers, known for their territorial nature, were once commonly observed as solitary creatures occupying a 100 sq km area. However, the rising tiger population, coupled with the diminishing forest cover and a decline in herbivorous prey, has posed challenges for these majestic beasts in their hunting endeavours. This has resulted in an elevated occurrence of tigers venturing into human settlements in search of easier prey,” explains Shailendra Singh Kathait.

In response to the pressing issue, Valiance developed ‘Wildlife Eye’, an AI for Bharat initiative aimed at addressing real-world challenges in rural areas. This patent-pending, innovative, and first-of-its-kind solution utilises a combination of computer vision and artificial intelligence to identify potential animal encroachments and dispatch early alerts to first responders and villagers.

Imagine a smart camera installed on the periphery of villages and human habitats that sends out alerts whenever it senses an approaching beast. That’s exactly how this innovation works. 

Through a blend of computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI), potential animal encroachments are identified. The setup’s smart AI cameras, hooters, red lights, LED lights, edge analytics, and power and communication panels facilitate the meticulous tracking and monitoring of individual tigers to such a degree that even specific behavioural shifts are identified. 

“This involves situations where tigers start targeting livestock like cows and sheep, unintentionally resulting in direct conflicts with humans. The system can also identify signs such as broken canine teeth, physical injuries, or the onset of ageing – factors that make these animals less effective in hunting in their natural habitat,” shares Kathait. He adds that one noteworthy feature of this innovation is its predictive analytics for the wildlife behaviour of various animals, including tigers, leopards, and bears.

This, he says, helps predict when a tiger might become more prone to conflicts. 

Smart cameras transmit images through an IoT platform to a cloud server, where data gets processed. The algorithm identifies species, followed by the unique identification of tigers by using a proprietary algorithm-based deep neural network, enabling real-time tracking in instances of human-tiger conflicts. The alerts are then sent to forest officials through mobile app notifications. 

To this end, it permits the officials to take action promptly, while also permitting the village-level public response teams to get alert. Kathait points to the innovation’s feature of detecting jungle violations by humans between 7:00 pm to 6:00 am as its success. 

“This system not only alerts but also records and captures those involved, ensuring a vigilant watch over the restricted hours and reinforcing the preservation of the jungle’s integrity,” notes Kathait, adding that the hooters and red lights placed at various strategic locations in human habitats contribute to a comprehensive safety network. 

A success story

As India’s first tiger reserve to adopt an AI-based virtual wall system, the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve is seeing huge success. 

Where human-wildlife conflicts were once a prevalent concern, Kathait says they have relayed over 650 alerts to officials in the past nine months, effectively averting subsequent attacks. “Till now, no incidents have been reported, testifying to the system’s efficacy,” he notes. He cites an example that highlights the success of the innovation. 

“A couple of weeks ago, reports reached us regarding a tiger encroaching upon human habitat at approximately 7 am, significantly heightening the potential for conflict as villagers carried out their daily tasks. At that specific time, the virtual barrier detected the presence of the tiger, calculated a substantial risk of conflict, and promptly issued alerts. This well-timed warning, coupled with the sound of a hooter, effectively diverted the tiger’s attention, prompting it to move away immediately.”

These stories hold personal meaning for Kathait who grew up in Dehradun near a famed tiger reserve. He would often hear heart-wrenching stories of locals being mauled to death. Being able to now be a part of a smart solution is a victory for him. It isn’t just about protecting humans, but also wildlife, he emphasises. As a testament to Valiance’s commitment to using AI for social good, the Wildlife Eye is community-centric in that it prioritises local community benefits. 

Elaborating on this, Kathait says, “The value of human life is immeasurable, and assigning a numerical figure to it is beyond consideration. The loss of human lives or livestock in animal attacks not only bears a substantial financial burden on the exchequer running into crores, but it also creates social unrest. Our solution endeavours to avert such incidents, thereby enhancing overall safety and mitigating the economic and emotional toll associated with these unfortunate events.”

Though the model has experienced success, it hasn’t been without its challenges. The lack of a robust network in the villages of Chandrapur posed a hindrance in transmitting images to the algorithm. To overcome this issue, Kathait and his team had to develop a technical breakthrough in the Edge AI algorithm. This innovation now enables the deployed algorithms to operate with reduced consumption.

“Initially, data was transmitted at a rate of 121 GB per day for a single-camera operating 24 hours. To tackle this issue, edge devices were employed to selectively transmit the data only when some object was detected. Now the data transmitted was 2-3 GB per day for each camera,” he notes. 

The villagers too are seeing the host of benefits of the virtual wall system. This, too, was a process, Kathait says, adding that acceptance was soon gained through workshops and talks. 

“We helped them understand how this technology will save lives and their livestock, which will further improve their livelihoods. To add to this, support from forest officials and the village panchayat also helped and today everyone is a backbone in this,” he elaborates.  

As for Kathait, he urges people to judge the performance of the innovation by its numbers. “We judge the success of our system in terms of the lives saved.”

Curious to know more about this solution? Read more here. 

Chemotherapy, an essential part of cancer treatment, not only targets cancer cells but also damages rapidly dividing healthy cells, including hair follicles. Studies indicate that approximately 65 percent of patients experience significant hair thinning or loss as a result of chemotherapy.

“This problem has been persistent since the advent of chemotherapy. There is an immense stigma attached to hair loss and cancer. If a woman goes bald suddenly, then people are quick to gossip about it. Besides, there are so many social or personal obligations where people wish to retain hair — from keeping the condition private from society to wanting a sense of normalcy for their family to name a few,” Raghuveer Surupa tells The Better India.

“If a patient has an upcoming wedding or big event, then also they tend to delay their chemotherapies. It is unfortunate that people delay life-saving treatment for the fear of hair loss,” he adds.

To tackle this unavoidable problem, Raghuveer has developed a unique scalp cooling system that alleviates the trauma of chemotherapy-induced hair loss. Currently, his innovation ‘Eva Scalp Cooling System’ is installed in 18 hospitals across Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Delhi. He says more than 3,000 successful sessions have been conducted so far.

We sat down with Raghuveer to understand more about the novel device and how it can solve one of chemotherapy’s most challenging side effects.

Understanding the scalp cooling mechanism

An engineer by education, Raghuveer pursued his higher education at the Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi. In 2013, he joined the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and later worked with Roche where he was a launch lead for the breast cancer drug in India.

Inspired by his work experience in oncology, he founded his own startup ‘Dignite’ for cancer care. Although it did not succeed, Raghuveer learnt about the urgency of handling the side effects of chemotherapies — hair loss.

“I remembered the experience of my aunt when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I saw her losing confidence and being unable to get by with her life. That really triggered me. I started looking for solutions and that’s when I came across the scalp cooling method,” shares the 34-year-old.

Talking about the availability of scalp cooling devices, he says, “A company had made silicon-based caps that come in three different sizes — small, medium, and large. The disadvantage of such caps is that they cannot fit all kinds of scalps perfectly, as scalps have a very complicated anatomical structure.”

“Chemotherapy destroys all fast-growing cells like cancerous tumours. Along with this, it also destroys fast-growing hair follicles as it can’t differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells. So, if the cap doesn’t fit properly, then the entire scalp will not be cooled, causing high chances of hair loss in that area. This destroys the main purpose of the system,” he explains.

So, Raghuveer decided to design a cap that could accommodate all head sizes. In 2020, he launched his company Stemtech Medical Devices and innovated ‘Eva Scalp Cooling System’ where a universal cap was designed to protect hair follicles from chemotherapy damage.

“Our design was inspired by a lotus or a crown. Just like they can be entirely closed, our cap is wrapped around the head of the patient, and the cap can be adjusted using the velcro as per the need,” he adds.

Raghuveer informs that a patient needs to wear this cap 30 minutes before the chemotherapy infusion, during chemotherapy infusion, and between 30 minutes and two hours post-chemotherapy. The device reduces the temperature of the scalp from 35 to 16 degrees Celsius.

While working on the device, Raghuveer also focussed on reducing the cost of the device. “Our competitors charge about Rs 25 lakh for their device. We reduced the cost drastically so that patients in developing countries could also afford this care. Hospitals can buy our device for anywhere between Rs 13 lakh and Rs 16 lakh depending on the variant of the device. The hospitals thereafter charge between Rs 1,500 and Rs 4,000 per patient per session,” he informs.

Received Rs 30 lakh Investment in Shark Tank India

Raghuveer says his goal is to ensure that patients can get through the therapy without using a wig or a scarf.

“Post-chemotherapy, almost all patients experience complete hair loss. Even if the patient loses 30 or 40 percent of the volume of hair in terms of density, they still can get by with their day-to-day life. So the goal is to get to that point where a patient doesn’t rely on wigs or scarves to cover their hair,” he shares, adding, “Around 50 percent of our patients have experienced positive results with our device, and some have even experienced a better rate of hair regrowth.”

Recently, Raghuveer’s startup featured in Shark Tank India Season 3 and bagged a deal of Rs 30 lakh. “It was great to appear on Shark Tank. We got three sharks on board — Aman Gupta, Namita Thapper, and Ritesh Agarwal,” he says.

More than the deal itself, what excites Raghuveer is the success of the device. “Four years ago, there was no clear solution available to this problem. Now, I can see that patients have a solution in at least 18 installations,” he says with pride.

“It is not just a cosmetic device. A cancer patient already deals with a plethora of problems. Being able to remove one burden and add certain value to a cancer patient’s life gives me a huge sense of contentment. My role is small but the satisfaction that I get out of it is immense,” he adds.

(Edited by Pranita Bhat. All photos: Raghuveer Surupa)

“Questions like which university to apply to and where one holds the most chance of getting through haunt us. While there are counsellors who might help you, they charge impossibly high fees to walk us through the process,” recalls Dirghayu Kaushik, the founder of Ambitio.

Nearly half a decade ago, Dirghayu too found himself in a similar situation. “I wanted to pursue a masters but did not know which college to choose from. The paperwork, the anxiety of it all was making me very tense,” he shares with The Better India.

When he went out looking for help, all he found was an overpriced option. This led to the foundation of Ambitio — India’s first AI admissions platform, to help applicants secure admissions to top global universities.

Dirghayu explains in detail how Ambitio uses AI to help students secure admissions.

Not his first try at entrepreneurship

After completing his graduation from IIT-BHU, Dirghayu Kaushik got a job in a startup.

He recalls, “I got hired as a founding member in a startup. For about two years, I spearheaded their entire product development, overseeing the creation of both the tech and product teams from scratch. We started with just a four-member team, including the founders, and expanded significantly during my tenure.”

While he was working at the startup, he was also looking for colleges to further his education.

“I completed my graduation and started to look for foreign universities to apply for an MBA. The process was tedious and I realised that there was no platform to help students,” he says. 

He adds, “There are counsellors who help students get into universities but they charge a lot of money which might not be affordable to everyone. Additionally, they can help you with particular college admission and not with a variety of colleges,” he says.

Dirghayu wanted to create a platform that did it all for students — college applications, personal essays, and finding the right college for the students.

“I went to my college buddies — Vikrant Shivalik and Vaibhav Tyagi — and told them about my idea. They were enthralled and we joined hands to create the platform,” he says.

The trio developed the platform and launched it in 2023. “We began by assembling a cohort of 25 students and then assisted them in securing placements at top institutions. Prior to developing any product, we focused on refining their profiles.”

“We initiated this process by leveraging notion templates, air tables, and other local tools to create a small MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Through these means, we meticulously analysed how we could enhance their chances of gaining admission to reputable institutions,” he adds further. 

Among various students who have availed of their services is Prakhar Kamal who got into Warwick Business School. “I was already working with a counsellor before I knew about Ambitio. My experience with the counsellor was not very good and I lost motivation. When I started to use Ambitio, I started to regain confidence in myself. I was able to use their services to find the colleges that suit me and then choose the right one,” he says.

Since its operation, the platform has helped over 175 students get into international universities such as Carnegie Mellon University, NYU, Imperial College Dundon, UC Berkeley, etc.

Using AI to find the dream college

Ambitio began with a core challenge we aimed to address: simplifying the admissions process for students using AI.

“To achieve this, we developed a platform product designed to support students throughout their entire admissions journey. Our ultimate objective is to establish a comprehensive global AI admissions platform,” he says.

He adds, “Regardless of a student’s background or location, our aim is to provide equal opportunities and access to the right guidance, a privilege often reserved for the affluent or those able to afford expensive counsellors. We leverage cutting-edge technology, including AI, to achieve this goal.”

Explaining how AI comes into play with the process, he says, “We employ AI in two primary areas. Firstly, we utilise it to assist students in determining the most suitable program or university currently available in the market. While there are existing filtration tools enabling students to filter courses they are eligible for and view them, we’ve taken an additional step forward. We incorporate preferences into the equation.”

In other words, the AI strives to understand and integrate the individual preferences of each student into the recommendations that it provides.

“We accomplish this through our proprietary recommendation engine, which has been trained on over 15 million acceptance and admit data points. While it’s certainly possible for students to conduct this research themselves by visiting numerous websites, reading various articles, and compiling the information manually, our platform streamlines this process significantly,” he shares.

By synthesising and analysing vast amounts of information, the platform can deliver personalised recommendations quickly and seamlessly, saving students valuable time and effort.

The next step where AI comes in to help the students is writing their personal essays. “Once the students know what college they want, the next step is to write a stellar essay. We trained our model with 5,000 accepted essays from across universities.”

He explains, “We begin by ensuring basic grammar and punctuation are correct. Beyond these fundamentals, we focus on delivery and specificity. Delivery pertains to how effectively the essay is conveyed as a whole, while specificity refers to its relevance to the programme being applied for and the individual applicant’s profile.”

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Think of it as a personalised Grammarly tool tailored specifically for college applications!

“The platform is mostly free for students except for the phase where they need effective management of their essays and applications. This phase comes under a small paid subscription. Before this phase, everything else from finding the right college to applying for a scholarship comes under the free subscription,” he informs.

The company has also recently raised Rs 1.5 crore in a pre-seed round of funding from First Cheque and angel investors from the US and India.

As for the future plans, he says, “We want to entail aggressive growth within the Indian market. Presently, we’re managing around 200 students in this intake, and we aim to scale up to 2,500 within the upcoming financial year. Additionally, we are planning to expand our services to include undergraduate admissions as well. This strategic expansion will allow us to cater to a broader range of students and further establish ourselves as a comprehensive admissions platform.” 

(Edited by Padmashree Pande; All pictures credit: Ambitio)

Led by Dr Ajay S Kalamdhad, a professor of civil engineering at IIT-Guwahati, researchers under the institute’s Waste Management Research Group (WMRG) have devised an efficient and environmentally-friendly technique, which combines Rotary Drum Composting with Vermicomposting (RDVC). This novel technique, the institute claims, minimises biodegradation time, yields vermicompost with 4.2% total nitrogen in 27 days (as compared to the standard 45 to 60 days) for urban waste management and reduces the volume of waste by 71%.

Going further, they also claim that this technique was also used to produce nutrient-rich soil conditioner (vermicompost) from invasive aquatic weeds like the water hyacinth.

‘Mati Dhan’ — a high-quality organic vermicompost produced by the IIT Guwahati researchers by the novel two-stage biodegradation technique — is now available in the market and benefiting local farmers, according to Prof Kalamdhad.

The institute transferred this technology to AMER Private Ltd, a startup incubated at IIT-Guwahati, which is now manufacturing Mati Dhan Organic Vermicompost Fertilizer Manure for Plants — available on Amazon and other online marketplaces.

Studying waste management

Speaking to The Better India, Professor Kalamdhad talks about dedicating his career to solid waste management. During his tenure as a professor, he has worked with many PhD students addressing a diverse range of issues related to solid waste management in the Indian context.

There are two major sets of projects which stand out according to him:

1) Studying different techniques of composting of water hyacinth (a freshwater weed) given its ubiquitous presence in aquatic ecosystems all over Northeast India.

2) Pilot-scale studies on rotary drum composting and anaerobic bi-phased baffled reactor (aka ABBR, which digests any kind of biomass) technology for the biomethanation (a process by which organic material is converted under anaerobic conditions to biogas) of industrial sludge and aquatic weeds.

Both these projects received funding from the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) under the Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology.

“We initially found that in the rotary drum composting process, accountable degradation was observed in the first seven days followed by the cooling phase of compost materials. These studies were all conducted in a batch scale,” explains Professor Kalamdhad.

“Further we had also worked on vermicomposting using various worm cultures where we observed that Eisenia fetida (a species of earthworm) was robust in degrading diverse organic wastes including weed biomass. In the process, the results demonstrated that the vermicomposting process was effective not from day 1 but from day 10 to 15 depending on the type of feed. The idea of replacing the initial period of the vermicomposting with rotary drum composting was thought of and studies were conducted accordingly,” he adds.

This effort resulted in the development of the two-stage biodegradation process.

How does this work?

Organic material often makes up more than half of the municipal solid waste deposited in open dumpsites across different Indian cities, generating a lot of heat due to long-term decomposition. This poses serious environmental challenges in the long term. 

In comparison to other waste biodegradation techniques, which require two to three months, rotary drum composting (RDC) can convert “diverse organic feedstocks into nutrient-dense compost within just 20 days and significantly reduce the municipal waste volume by 60 to 70%,” according to a recent press release issued by the institute. 

Having said that, RDC is known to generate compost of “moderate quality as compared to vermicompost ”. Vermicomposting, meanwhile, is a superior biodegradation process, which requires anywhere between 45 to 60 days. Given the time frame required, municipal corporations can’t employ it on a large scale. 

So, the WMRG under Professor Kalamdhad developed a unique two-stage biodegradation technique which combines the best of RDC and vermicomposting to reduce the duration of biodegradation. “The earthworms, Eisenia fetida, can acclimatise faster to partially degraded organic matter from the drum compost and produce vermicompost in just 27 days,” he says. 

The final product was proven to be non-toxic and safe to be used as a nutrient-rich soil conditioner (vermicompost) from waste with 4.2% total nitrogen. 

Speaking to The Better India, Professor Kalamdhad says, “The developed technique combines the thermophilic biodegradation of RDC and mesophilic biodegradation of vermicompost. The RDC time was studied to be seven days, and the requirement of vermicomposting was 20 days. We studied the response of the diverse organic waste with the technique before arriving at a conclusion. To explain in layman’s terms, if you use RDC before vermicomposting, it helps vermiculture (earthworms) stabilise the organic waste faster.” 

“We have employed all the possible biomasses for the study, majorly including vegetable waste, aquatic weeds, terrestrial weeds and sewage sludge. The experimental verification of this combined technique was conducted both in the laboratory and on a large scale at the Solid Waste Laboratory of IIT Guwahati. A 5,000-litre RDC unit and a 3,000-litre stack vermicomposting unit were established to study the large-scale effect of the process, with the moisture content controlled using horticulture waste collected on campus,” he adds.

Helping him verify this technique is PhD student Mr. Suryateja Pottipati, who experimentally proved the hypothesis. They published the results in reputed international academic journals — including the Journal of Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery, Journal of Environmental Management, Bioresource Technology and Waste Management, among others.

Can Municipal Corporations use this new technique?

In a press release issued by the institute, Professor Ajay Kalamdhad said, “This proven technique not only handles sizable quantities of organic waste but also offers immediate application feasibility for municipal corporations, industries, sewage treatment facilities, aquatic weeds and various organic waste management sectors.”

The release adds, “The scaled-up process successfully produced 100 to 150 kg of vermicompost within a month from 250 to 300 kg of daily waste fed. The increased earthworm count resulted in the secondary end product being the earthworm itself.”

Speaking to The Better India, he explains, “The study included vegetable waste and aquatic weed (water hyacinth) as prime substrates, both in mono-substrate composting and co-composting.” 

“In the entire study, we have converted 15 tonnes of waste collected from the markets and ponds around the IIT Guwahati campus (350 kg per day). The confidence that we gained through the study is the basis on which we are suggesting that the technology can handle sizable quantities. We believe this process has the potential to reshape organic waste treatment facilities globally, providing an environmentally compatible solution to mitigate contamination hazards and produce an outstanding soil conditioner,” he adds.

(Edited by Pranita Bhat; Images courtesy IIT-Guwahati)

Reflecting the New Education Policy’s emphasis on experiential learning and critical thinking, Bengaluru witnessed a dynamic two-day event where young changemakers came together to showcase their community-centric innovations.

The eVidyaloka Trust’s National Student Innovation Challenge (NSIC) once again united young minds nationwide for its seventh season on 23 and 24 January, 2024. An event that not only celebrated the spirit of connecting rural and urban India but also highlighted the integration of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the local level.

Designed to develop students’ abilities in critical thinking, leadership, and creative problem-solving through teamwork, NSIC was launched in 2017. An initiative by eVidyaloka Trust that uses technology to tackle educational challenges, this season saw more than 850 registrations.

From showcasing an innovative and affordable water purifier addressing water scarcity and pollution, and reduction of iron content in water (SDG 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation) to a remarkable AI-driven agricultural tool aimed at improving crop yields (SDG 2 – Zero Hunger), the event showcased teams sharing impactful ideas to address pressing real-world challenges.

What truly sets NSIC apart?

At the heart of the NSIC is a powerful concept — uniting rural and urban students from Classes 7 and 8 to innovate together.

Each team, guided by an online mentor volunteer from around the world, dives into localising an SDG. Over three to four months, they work online, combining their unique insights and experiences. This journey of collaboration and learning helps them transform global goals into actionable, community-centric solutions. This then culminates in a showcase of their work in various formats — documents, videos, or PowerPoint presentations — a testament to their micro-leadership skills.

“NSIC ignites a spark in young minds to embody the ‘changemaker mindset’ as it has become a platform where children are trying to bring implementable solutions for a perennial problem, and in this process have become the influencers of their community. The digital bridge between rural and urban areas, along with the guidance from online volunteer mentors, class assistants, and field teams, plays a crucial role in this transformative experience,” said Swapna Ramkumar, Project Head, NSIC.

And this growth mindset was beautifully illustrated in the innovative projects the students presented at NSIC Season 7. Their projects spanned various themes — transforming plastics into versatile jackets, engineering PVC pipe models for farming, and enhancing educational access through public transport initiatives.

The projects showcased by the teams, localised SDGs such as SDG 2:  Zero Hunger; SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being; SDG 4: Quality Education; SDG 5: Gender Equality; SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation; SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy; SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth; SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities; SDG 13: Climate Action.

The practical application of their learning was evident in projects like conducting electricity audits and promoting renewable energy while health education was delivered creatively through puppet shows and dance.

Technology became the key as teams featured innovations that included an AI model for healthcare and a food storage auto-prototype. Addressing societal issues, students also tackled gender equality and developed a career guidance website based on individual personalities — demonstrating the relevance and innovation of their ideas.

Anand Sri Ganesh, CEO of NSRCEL, IIM Bangalore, said, “There are three key aspects to consider — initiative, a skill where you believe in an idea enough to bring it to life, that goes beyond textbook learning; implementation, the practical execution of that idea; and influence, the capacity to create change and improve our communities.”

As NSIC Season 7 came to an end, with its award ceremony for the best community-centric solutions, it was evident that this event signified the beginning of a journey. A journey where every young mind, whether from the remotest part or a bustling urban centre, is empowered to make a difference.

Rajesh Patel, VP and Global Head, Low Code Unit, LTIMindtree, added, “NSIC serves as a testament to the power of education in nurturing future leaders who are ready to tackle the world’s challenges head-on.”

Edited by Pranita Bhat

Satyam, who only goes by his first name, is a resident of Ranchi, Jharkhand, and the son of a retired state government employee. His device costs approximately Rs 12,000, a stark contrast to existing integrated water quality devices from around the world that cost more than Rs 2 lakhs and are not IoT-enabled. 

Called the R-SAM-PRO, this device won the ‘Best Product Design’ award under the Water and Sanitation category at the Vishwakarma Awards 2023 organised late last month by IIT-Delhi in partnership with Maker Bhavan Foundation and the WIN Foundation. 

The device stood out for its ability to comprehensively address the critical water and sanitation needs with technological innovation, “integrating IoT, multiple sensors, and AI readiness for advanced water quality monitoring,” according to a press release issued by IIT-Guwahati.  

Going further, the release explains, “The system’s real-time data provision is crucial for environmental conservation and resource management. Its affordability and user-friendly design make it highly accessible, with potential for widespread adoption, especially in resource-limited settings, significantly enhancing water quality monitoring practices.”

Addressing water pollution

Satyam completed his master’s in biotechnology from IIT-Roorkee before proceeding to his PhD at IIT-Guwahati under the guidance of Professor Sanjukta Patra. 

Speaking to The Better India, he explains the motivation behind developing this unique device, “In a country like India, where a large population resides along many water bodies, the need for real-time sensing of water parameters becomes more urgent. Working from water stress to water health and water availability is the driving force (behind this innovation).” 

He adds, “By providing a cost-effective, multi-parametric, IoT-enabled solution, we aim to empower communities and authorities with the tools needed for effective water resource management and remediation.” 

He found that while working with one of his PhD objectives — where he was focusing on the development of an advanced bio-oxidation system for water remediation — he realised that there were very limited multiparametric devices available to promptly check the quality of water in real-time. 

“This motivated me to channel my efforts into creating a solution that would not only aid in my research but also serve the broader community by providing an affordable, real-time, and multi-parametric water quality monitoring tool,” he adds. 

How does it work? 

The key features of this IoT-enabled real-time water monitoring system include:

● Integrated GPS: Enables precise location tracking of water quality metrics.

● Diverse Sensors: Measures turbidity, Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), oxygen levels, temperature, and pressure for a comprehensive water quality analysis.

● ESP32 Microprocessor: Powers the device with efficient processing and communication capabilities.

● Hybrid Power System: Ensures adaptability to different environments, reducing reliance on a single power source.

● AI Integration: Designed to incorporate artificial intelligence, enhancing data analysis and predictive capabilities.

● Advanced Data Retrieval: Streamlines access to collected data for user-friendly interactions with various stakeholders.

Speaking to The Better India, Satyam explains, “The R-SAM-PRO is based on a microprocessor. It has a set of sensors for TDS (total dissolved solids), turbidity, dissolved oxygen, GPS, temperature, and pressure, alongside an additional sensor for component area humidity monitoring. Upon activation, these sensors relay data to the microprocessor, which processes and securely transmits it to a real-time database.”

Users can access this data through a user-friendly console, visualising it in graphical or tabular formats and tracking the sensor’s location. The device’s “hybrid power management system” ensures its operational longevity across day and night cycles, making it versatile for various applications, from municipal water monitoring to industrial wastewater treatment. 

“The work is protected by a patent,” he says.

Going further, he adds, “The device leverages the IoT for seamless communication between devices and cloud-based databases, significantly enhancing its utility and accessibility. The vast data collected can be used to train AI models to predict water quality variations, providing valuable insights for both local populations and industrial settings.” 

“As IoT and AI technologies advance, they promise to revolutionise our understanding and management of water resources and sanitation. For example, based on trained data it can predict pre and post-monsoon water parameters range,” he explains. 

What makes this device so affordable?

Speaking to The Better India, Satyam notes, “The cost reduction of our device to Rs 12,000 is a significant achievement when compared to similar products from international companies like YSI, Hanna, and WTW, which are priced between Rs 97,000 and Rs 2,63,000. The high costs of these competing products can be attributed to factors such as import duties, limited after-sales support, and high operational expenses as these products are not made in India.”

“Our approach to bringing down costs involved using industrial-grade water sensors and leveraging Google’s free web hosting and real-time database services. This strategic choice not only made our device affordable but also integrated it with cutting-edge IoT capabilities. We developed this product in-house at the Enzyme and Microbial Technology Lab,” he adds.

Challenges in developing the device

In the initial stages of development, Satyam, his mentor and colleagues encountered challenges related to power distribution, weight balancing, and maintaining a compact design. 

To address these issues, they made several adjustments, including redesigning the case and the outer structure to improve buoyancy. 

“We also integrated a 20,000 mAh high endurance battery to ensure longer operational times when solar power is not in use. Further refinements were made to enhance the smooth processing and display of data, ultimately overcoming the initial challenges,” he notes. 

The journey from concept to the current prototype spanned four years. Through successive iterations, they have refined the device, increasing the number of monitored water parameters. 

“Our current model represents the third prototype with plans to expand its capabilities further,” he says.

Looking ahead

Thus far, Satyam claims that he has received one invitation from a startup and another from a major Indian company to scale up production of this device.

“But we are still refining this device each day and planning to come up with new versions with added features. The project currently receives support from the Spring EU India project, the WIN Foundation (a US-based nonprofit), and the Maker Bhavan Foundation. Although adding more sensors may slightly increase the device’s price, we aim to keep it below Rs 20,000 with new added features (R-SAM version 2). Scaling up manufacturing is anticipated to reduce costs, potentially making the device even more affordable,” he says. 

Meanwhile, Professor Sanjukta Patra of the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering at IIT Guwahati, also notes, “It has been a remarkable journey witnessing Satyam’s dedication and innovation in developing the IoT-enabled water monitoring system. His project, a beacon of technological advancement, reflects a deep understanding of the challenges faced in water resource management, particularly in developing nations. The system’s affordability, accessibility, and real-time data transmission capabilities are not just a testament to his technical prowess but also his commitment to societal betterment.”

(Edited by Padmashree Pande; Images courtesy IIT-Guwahati)

An agricultural tricycle that can sow seeds, plough and water land; a modern waste segregating system that will tell you which bin you must throw your waste in; a hydro-electric generator that converts water into electricity; an accident prevention system for mountain roads which uses sensors to provide advanced warning in blind spots.

These groundbreaking creations are the result of the ingenuity of finalists, children ranging from Classes 6 to 9, who participated in L&T’s National STEM Challenge — a culmination of the conglomerate’s ‘Engineering Futures’ initiative.

Launched in 2020, this initiative aims to cultivate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) interest among school children. By reaching out to schools that lack access to STEM labs, children in remote corners of the country are now able to enhance their scientific knowledge, grasp essential concepts, and develop problem-solving skills for the future.

According to school teachers, the remarkable outcome of this initiative is that even children who typically struggled in exams are now able to unleash their creativity and understand science concepts — something that traditional teaching methods often fall short of achieving.

The challenge winners — Joshwa A and Sivakarthikeyan N from Class 8 at Government High School, Gerugambakkam, Chennai — ingeniously crafted the agricultural tricycle by repurposing an old cycle, scrap metal, and wheels acquired from a local scrap shop. Their teacher, Thenmughil Ramakrishnan, was initially surprised to see the boys transporting scrap materials to their homes daily. It was only later that she discovered they were constructing a device to assist farmers in performing multiple tasks simultaneously.

“These boys were in Class 6 when the pandemic started. That’s when L&T started providing online classes to teach science, arts and maths. The students were given easy ways to make simple projects at home, which kept them occupied while they learnt the important concepts,” Thenmughil tells The Better India.

She adds that despite facing challenges in writing Tamil or English proficiently, these boys exhibit a remarkable understanding of science concepts. They independently constructed the entire device, delving into areas of agriculture, engineering, and beyond — showcasing their adeptness in practical knowledge and hands-on skills.

A total of 24 teams (50 children) from Chennai, Coimbatore, Hazira, Vadodara, Talegaon and Mumbai made it to the finals, which was conducted in Mumbai on 3 February, 2024.

Building STEM activities around existing curriculums

As part of its corporate social responsibility initiatives in India, L&T has been actively involved in the education sector for over three decades. Recognising that nearly 80 percent of future jobs will require science and math skills, L&T aims to address the challenge of limited access and resources in many parts of the country.

Mabel Abraham, Head – Corporate Social Responsibility at L&T, explained to The Better India that the decision to focus on STEM was made in 2019. 

L&T has undertaken a comprehensive approach to facilitate access to STEM education in government schools and schools with limited resources. This initiative is designed to bridge the gap and ensure that students have the necessary tools and opportunities to develop skills essential for the evolving job market.

“There are different models when it comes to STEM education, including building science labs, implementing digital classrooms, and providing DIY kits, among other approaches. We did not want to focus on just one model, and instead, we decided on a blended approach, working to address the specific needs of each school as cracking just one piece of the puzzle is not enough,” says Mabel.

Embracing the Smart School concept, L&T initially focussed on furnishing schools with fundamental infrastructure before progressing to the establishment of STEM labs. However, their original plan underwent adjustments due to the onset of the pandemic coinciding with the launch.

Commencing with 65 schools nationwide, it pivoted to online classes and modules in response to the challenges posed by COVID-19. The volunteers distributed WhatsApp videos and assigned children straightforward DIY projects that could be completed using materials readily available at home.

“Children were excited to do the projects and they would share it eagerly. In fact, we even hosted an online science fair to showcase their creations. We were amazed by the projects they came up with; it fired their creativity,” adds Mabel.

L&T collaborates with local NGO partners to implement the programme in selected schools, committing to support these schools for at least three to four years. The initiative works on dual fronts — providing training to teachers in STEM education and building physical infrastructure in schools, including STEM labs or digital classrooms.

The process begins with L&T selecting a school, and conducting an orientation and a needs assessment. A key criterion is the presence of a science teacher, and the initiative is tailored for students in Classes 6 to 9.

Working through NGO partners, L&T delivers training to the district education officer, school principal, and teachers. Quarterly training sessions are conducted for teachers, with an observer present in the classroom to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching and provide guidance on improvement.

This hands-on approach not only equips teachers to impart knowledge effectively but also strives to establish a sustainable model. The goal is to empower teachers to continue delivering quality education independently, even without ongoing assistance from the NGO.

“Our idea is to improve children’s conceptual understanding of science. Based on our observation, many students lose interest in science in Classes 6 to 9. Girl students too face several biases and challenges as STEM courses are not traditionally considered a woman’s domain. If they get a better understanding of scientific concepts through innovative methods, there is a possibility of them choosing a career in science,” adds Mabel.

Adapting to the specific needs and interests of each school management, L&T enhances the physical infrastructure based on demand. What started with 65 schools has now expanded to include 208 schools.

Teachers share that the presence of these models not only allows students to showcase their creativity but also aids teachers in delivering more effective explanations, utilising the visual aids provided by the projects.

“Earlier, we would just explain concepts, with children not being able to see how it works. Through these models and kits, we are able to demonstrate how the concept works, helping in easier understanding. Children also ask more questions. The concept reaches them easily,” says Veeramuthu N, a teacher from Government Higher Secondary School, Kaliannanpudur, Coimbatore.

He adds that L&T has provided them with 75 kits, which include working models, explanatory models and charts. Children are taken to the lab, where they can experiment. Alternatively, teachers also bring the models to class, depending on the concept they are teaching.

In addition, NGO partners — such as the American India Foundation (AIF) and Don Bosco Institute of Technology — offer after-school classes for students. These sessions cover a range of topics, including mobile application development, coding, CNC machining, sensors, map making, 3D printing, and more. The knowledge gained in these classes empowers children to apply these concepts to solve real-life problems they encounter in their daily lives.

Firing the creativity in children

To boost the initiative and provide students with a platform to showcase their talents, L&T initiated STEM fests beginning in October 2023. Over 6,000 students from Classes 6 to 9 actively participated in intra and inter-school level competitions.

The STEM model-making competition featured interesting themes — such as green and sustainable energy, waste management, smart schools, and satellite and launch vehicles. From these themes, 208 teams were selected for the regional level competition, and ultimately, 24 teams from cities — including Chennai, Coimbatore, Hazira, Vadodara, Talegaon, and Mumbai — advanced to the finale in Mumbai.

L&T’s employee volunteers played a crucial role in mentoring and assisting students, helping them refine and perfect their models for the competitions.

The Government High School, Gerugambakkam, Chennai, won the challenge, while the Government High School, Velappanchavudi, Chennai and Shree Kanchanlal Mamawala Surat Municipal Corporation School (Hazira, Gujarat) emerged as the first and second runners-up.

The three winning schools received cash rewards — Rs 50,000 for the national champion, Rs 30,000 for the first runner-up, and Rs 20,000 for the second runner-up — to facilitate the upgrading of their science labs. Additionally, all three winning teams were presented with telescopes, drones and a DIY Robotics Kit, providing them with further exposure to STEM.

As a special opportunity, the winning teams were invited to visit L&T’s tech projects and engage in interactions with the leadership team, enriching their understanding and appreciation of real-world applications in the field.

In a block level coding workshop organised by AIF, Class 7 students — Santhosh M and Yuvan Shankar Raja K from Government High School, Velappanchavadi, Chennai — tackled the topic of waste management.

They developed a modern waste segregating system featuring sensors on each bin — designated for biodegradable, non-biodegradable, and e-waste. These sensors guide users on the appropriate bin for their waste disposal. Their innovative approach involves attaching sensors and cameras to each bin, aiming to facilitate waste separation at the source. Biodegradable waste is intended for composting, while non-biodegradable waste is directed towards recycling.

“Currently, only nine percent of waste is recycled. If implemented, our invention can increase the waste recycled and prevent baby sea turtles from having plastic in their stomachs,” shares Santhosh, one of the finalists.

Hailing from a farming background, Apurva Shirsat and Kausar Pathan of the Tulshet Pada Marathi Medium School have innovated a farm protector, which uses two different types of sensors to ensure farm safety without harming animals. Furthermore, Gowtham and Vijay Darshan — belonging to a hilly area with just one bus in the morning — built a hydroelectric generator that can solve the problem of electricity using waste water collected during handwash to generate electricity.

According to L&T’s assessment of a sample of 75 schools involved in its initiative, and testing of 625 students, a notable improvement in subject-wise performance was noted. More than 50 percent of the students demonstrated the ability to develop their own projects. Teachers highlight that students — ranging from those seated in the last row to the quieter ones in class — are now able to effectively express themselves through their STEM projects.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

Aryan garnered applause for his innovative AgRobot—an AI-powered rover designed to assist farmers in analyzing soil, assessing crop health, and detecting signs of pests and diseases.

Aryan was one of the awardees, comprising nine boys and ten girls from 18 states and union territories, who received the award from President Droupadi Murmu at a ceremony at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi on January 22.

My innovation is my way to support the hardworking farmers of our country who tirelessly cultivate the food we consume. I feel deeply honoured to witness the robot being recognised by so many,” he shares in a conversation with The Better India.

So, what motivates an 18-year-old to develop an award-winning robot? Aryan explains in detail.

Necessity is the mother of invention

While most of his peers would sneak ways out of their study time to play, Aryan would go on the internet to search for the newest technology in the world.

Born and raised in Kota, Aryan hails from a farming family. “I was born surrounded by farmers, gaining a real-time experience of their lives. They face numerous challenges and engage in manual labour to put food on the table,” he shares.

Closely observing his family’s lives through problems such as lack of innovation on the field, crop failure due to diseases and climate change, Aryan’s young mind would look for solutions.

“Even if there are machines and innovations to prevent diseases, monitor the crop and kill the pests, they are unaffordable for most farmers. Many try to take loans and keep repaying it, going deeper into the circle of poverty,” he says.

“I wanted to create something affordable, compact and solve more than one problem for the farmer,” he says. 

While it could have been a passing thought for Aryan, the COVID-19 pandemic gave him much more time to think.

“I was in 10th standard when I came about this idea. Thanks to the lockdown, I had plenty of time to read up about things and design my model. I was very young, so I knew there could be a solution but I was not aware of the technology available in the world,” he says.

“My interest continued to grow, leading me to pursue a B.Tech degree. This choice significantly enhanced my understanding of how machines and artificial intelligence operate,” he explains.

Moreover, the academic environment provided him with a platform to collaborate and seek assistance. “The college offers well-equipped labs and professors with extensive knowledge.”

After nearly three years of research, Aryan successfully developed the first prototype of Agrobot in 2023.

During this period, he had already established a company named Mera Saathi Pvt Ltd.

About the AgRobot

Once Aryan had a vision what he looked for was financial support. “I reached out to Istart — a flagship initiative by the Rajasthan government for startups in Rajasthan that works to foster innovation, to get financial help. They incubated me and I got a place to work, labs and support from them,” he says.

“Similarly, I also reached out to the government via Atal Innovation Mission for support. Additionally, I also got a lot of support from my college in terms of research space and support from professors,” he says.

Talking about the various unique features of his robot, Aryan says, “One of the unique features of the robot is that it can analyse the crop’s condition. It has cameras installed and when it moves on the field it can analyse the crop in real time. There is also a dropper on the top which helps in spreading the seeds in the field, reducing manual labour for the farmer.”

He continues, “There are also soil moisture sensors that help farmers to analyse the soil and look for any pests in them. The dropper can also be used for irrigating the field and spraying pesticides if needed.”

The analysis of the soil and the crop is done using Artificial Intelligence which is trained using different farming data.

“Using IoT, we have made the robot remotely controllable. For instance, if you want to use the robot from Jaipur city and your crops are in Kota, you can simply log in to the application that I have developed and use it,” he says. 

Additionally, the robot is fully run on solar energy. “There is a piezoelectric panel installed in it that uses pressure to produce electricity. For instance, the pressure created on the tyres and the panel will produce electricity that can be stored in the batteries for use when the sun is down,” he says.

“So this creates a chain of power, once the solar energy is exhausted you can switch to a piezoelectric panel. The robot will not need any external source whatsoever to work,” he says. 

The robot has garnered a lot of attention and Aryan has already set up a company to commercialise the robot.

“My aim is to reach each and every hardworking kisan of the country. I am planning to commercialise the robot to make it more accessible to the farmers.”

Recalling an incident at Krishi Mela in Kota, Aryan says, “There were a lot of innovators around me and I was very nervous. But the robot garnered so much attention that hundreds of people, mostly farmers, visited my stall and showed interest in my work. Narendra Singh Tomar, who is an MLA visited my stall and congratulated me on my innovation,” he says.

“It feels surreal but I am glad that I could bring such an innovation for the farmers,” he says.

(Edited by Padmashree Pande; All images courtesy: Aryan Singh)

A report in ScienceDirect states that air fresheners emit over 100 different chemicals, including volatile organic compounds. It adds that air freshener exposures, even at the lowest level, can cause many adverse health effects — including migraine headaches, asthma attacks, breathing difficulties, respiratory difficulties, mucosal symptoms, dermatitis, infant diarrhoea and earache, and neurological problems.

In 2022, Rajiv Kumar Sharma fell seriously ill, experiencing severe vomiting, nausea, and headaches, which led to a two-day hospitalisation. Following his discharge, he meticulously investigated the causes of his sudden illness. Rajiv attributed his health deterioration to the air fresheners recently introduced in his home.

An innovator with a background in carpentry, Rajiv resolved to craft his own air freshener using wood and tools available at home. Gathering flower waste from a nearby temple, he ingeniously created a natural fragrance for his homemade air freshener.

When his college professors at the National Institute of Design, Andhra Pradesh, heard of his innovation, they decided to help him perfect the product and make it ready for a larger audience. After eight months and 20 prototypes, the ALVE air fresheners were born.

The USP of ALVE, according to the founder, is that it’s made of natural ingredients, has a sustainable design (can be composted post-use), and includes smart technology.

Rajiv currently runs his startup from his kitchen with his mother, Sonidevi. Together, they have sold over 850 air fresheners in the past five months, earning over Rs 2 lakh.

A hospital visit that sowed the seeds of entrepreneurship

Since his younger years, Rajiv has been creating various products. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, he constructed a comfortable PPE kit suitable for extended wear. As a member of the Jharkhand Animal Welfare Society, he also developed over 50 wheelchairs for injured or paralysed dogs.

“My family practised carpentry till a few years ago, and I’m adept at tools and electrical design due to my course too,” he tells The Better India.

When he found the harmful effects of air fresheners and couldn’t find anything truly eco-friendly, his passion for creation pushed him to build one using natural ingredients.

“There are many poisonous chemicals in air fresheners. All you need to do is read the ingredient list behind any air freshener. It’s not safe for children (mentioned in the packaging) and animals to inhale. I wanted to make a freshener which was safe for the environment as well as humans and animals,” he adds.

Initially, Rajiv focused on creating natural fragrances using flower waste. He collected jasmine and roses from a nearby temple, air-dried the petals, ground them into powder using a mixer, and combined them with coconut husk waste. After allowing the mixture to air dry for a few days, the fragrance was prepared. Rajiv then placed this fragrance into a glass bottle and crafted an outer cover using wood, resulting in his homemade, eco-friendly fragrance.

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A post shared by ALVE GREEN SOLUTIONS (@alveindia)

Though it may seem straightforward, creating the final product involved numerous trials and combinations for Rajiv. With support from his mother, who is the co-founder of ALVE Green Solutions, he worked diligently for over eight months. It took more than 20 prototypes before achieving the ideal result, he informs.

“When my professors saw this, they were amazed. They said that this needs to be given to a bigger audience and is the need of the hour. They helped me perfect it with the help of machines in the college,” adds Rajiv.

A smart, zero-plastic air freshener

The air freshener is available in three variants for homes, offices, and cars, offering a choice of 15 fragrances. Each unit is equipped with smart sensors that automatically activate and deactivate based on the detection of an individual’s presence. Additionally, it is compatible with Google Assistant.

The air freshener features a biodegradable body that can be composted after use, and its refills are organic — crafted from temple flower waste.

“We use nature’s intelligence in retaining the fragrances. Chemical fresheners use LPG to retain the fragrance. We use natural ingredients for that with no chemicals. We do not use any heat, water vapour or chemicals to diffuse our fragrances. We use our own Air Diffusion Technology with sensors to diffuse aroma evenly in the surroundings,” says the designer.

Rajiv has partnered with more than 30 temples in Jamshedpur to obtain floral waste. Every day, he collects a minimum of 3 kg of floral waste from each temple. To date, he has recycled 1,500 kg of temple waste.

Another noteworthy aspect is that this freshener is safe for animals also. Working in the Jharkhand Animal Welfare Society since 2018, Rajiv was shocked by the effects of human behaviour on animals.

“We used to rescue cows and bulls. When they were operated upon, veterinarians found plastic in their stomachs, which they were not able to digest. I have been against plastic use since that day. Our fresheners too don’t have any plastic in them. Just put our device in your garden after use and it will get composted,” he shares.

Running the startup from his home currently, Rajiv hopes to expand soon. ALVE Green Solutions has collaborated with the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, where five college students will be working with the startup to develop the product. The air fresheners are currently being sold offline, at events, and through their website.

“ALVE is derived from the word Alveoli — a tiny sac-like structure present in our lungs — which is responsible for the exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen. Without this organ, the body fails to survive, thus making it a most important part of our body,” explains Rajiv.

Similarly, he explains that he wants ALVE to be an important part of each home for healthier living. “I want to create products that not only meet human needs but also leave a positive imprint on our planet. Our vision at ALVE is to inspire a world where fresh, clean air is not a luxury but a sustainable standard,” he shares.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

This infection has been reported in patients suffering from uncontrolled diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and other medical conditions up to the very recent COVID-19. 

According to this description in the Journal of Pure and Applied Microbiology, “In 1885, the German pathologist Paltauf, reported the first case of Mucormycosis and described it as Mycosis Mucorina. During [the] 1980s and 1990s Mucormycosis was increasingly seen among immunocompromised individuals.”  The term Mucormycosis, however, was first coined by American pathologist RD Baker in the 1950s. 

The team at IIT-M has joined hands with ZorioX Innovation Labs, a Chennai-based medical equipment manufacturing startup, to organise around 65 implants for patients from economically-weaker sections. This initiative is based on metal 3D printing or additive manufacturing.

The Better India sits down with the minds behind this thoughtful venture to understand its scope in depth.

Dangers of the deadly black fungus

According to an August 2023 paper published in the Journal of Medical Mycology by Gregoire Pasquier, “Mucormycosis is a rare opportunistic infection caused by a filamentous fungus belonging to the Mucorales order…The diagnosis is difficult and consequently, it is often delayed, resulting in high lethality despite appropriate antifungal and surgical treatment.”

In India, the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 led to an upsurge in mucormycosis cases known as Covid-19-associated mucormycosis or CAM. 

“Indian media, based on statements by members of the Indian government, reported 11,717 CAM cases on May 25, 28,252 CAM cases on June 7, 45,274 CAM cases (including 4332 deaths) on July 20, and 51,775 CAM cases on November 29, 2021,” notes Pasquier. 

“These precise data were available because on May 20, 2021, mucormycosis became a notifiable disease under the Epidemic Diseases Act 1897. Before this epidemic, mucormycosis was considered a rare opportunistic infection,” he adds.  

A particularly devastating effect of this disease is the loss of facial features which can have a debilitating effect on a patient’s mental health. The fungus responsible for mucormycosis can invade the tissues of the face, causing necrosis and disfigurement. In severe cases, patients can lose their eyes, nose, or even their entire face. The loss of these vital organs can seriously impact a patient’s ability to perform basic functions like breathing, eating, and communicating.  

Solutions found in 3D implants

One viable solution is reconstructive surgery for patients who have lost their facial features due to this debilitating disease. As a detailed press release issued by IIT-M last month states, 

“These procedures involve the reconstruction of the nose, eyes, and other facial structures using a variety of techniques, such as skin grafts, tissue expansion, and microvascular surgery.”

“These procedures can help restore the patient’s appearance and function, allowing them to lead a more normal life. However, patient-specific implants and procedures are expensive, rendering them inaccessible for people from weaker sections,” the release adds.  

Speaking to The Better India, Dr Karthik Balaji, a maxillofacial surgeon and CEO of ZorioX recalls, “In college, I delved into exploring advanced techniques for replacing facial structures. Witnessing the complexities and limitations of existing methods fueled my determination to find a more efficient and patient-friendly approach.” 

He continues, “The integration of 3D printing technology emerged as a promising solution, offering precise and customised implants that streamline the reconstruction process, reduce surgical time, and alleviate the need for multiple procedures.”

Explaining the process, he says, “In conventional reconstructive surgery, we take bones from legs, hips, or ribs and reconstruct the face. This has to be followed by a microvascular surgery which can take as long as 18 hours. To fix these bones, we use a plate that is going inside the body. As a medical researcher, I was working on finding ways to develop a plate in the shape of the facial bone, fix the problem, and avoid microvascular surgery, thus reducing the time taken for surgery.”

Thankfully, 3D-printing technology came to be. With the introduction of 3D-printing technology, Dr Balaji claims that they have reduced surgical time from 18 hours to 2 hours. 

“We don’t use bones from another part of the body now. Instead, we will use this titanium 3D-printed implant which is biocompatible. Unlike conventional reconstructive surgery, which allows patients to eat only two years after, followed by another surgery; in employing 3D-printed implants, we only need one surgery and the patient can eat within a month. In other words, these 3D-printed implants allow patients to return to normal life a lot sooner,” he explains.

The key differences between conventional reconstructive surgery and employing IIT-M’s 3D-printed customised implants lie in precision, efficiency, and the overall patient experience. 

Dr Balaji explains, “In conventional reconstructive surgery, the process often starts from surgical removal of facial bones and reconstruction of those defects with the use of bone grafting techniques; this adds complexity to the procedure and is highly technique-sensitive. Over these grafts, conventionally made implants must be placed and that incurs additional burden to the patient barring the procedure.”

Dr Murugaiyan Amirthalingam, associate professor at the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, IIT-Madras explains, “On the contrary, our 3D-printed custom implants offer a more tailored and precise solution. The implants are created based on detailed scans of the patient’s anatomy ensuring an exact fit, post-removal of facial bones. This level of customisation not only enhances the aesthetic outcome but also contributes to a more efficient surgical process. The use of 3D printing technology allows for intricate designs that match the patient’s unique facial features, resulting in improved functionality.” 

As Dr Amirthalingam goes on to explain, “The motivation behind developing 3D-printed face implants stemmed from the challenges faced in conventional techniques of facial reconstruction. We have developed a methodology for the use of 3D printing to design and manufacture unique custom-designed components for various biomedical and engineering applications. When the COVID-19 pandemic arose and the number of black fungus cases increased, surgeons approached us with possible solutions to develop patient-specific implants using 3D printing. We could immediately help them as the technology was already developed in our lab.”

When Dr Balaji and his colleagues started these procedures initially, they had to import the [3D-printed] implants from the Netherlands or the United States. “The cost of a single implant was around Rs 24 lakh. Working with various engineering institutions, we developed the requisite facilities and software to develop these implants, and IIT-Madras began helping us manufacture them. After bringing all the necessary facilities to India, the cost of the implant fell from Rs 24 lakh to Rs 8 lakh,” he says.

How does it work?

Dr Amirthalingam says, “Using unique in-house algorithms, a patient’s MRI/CT data is converted to printable CAD (computer-aided design) format, and custom implants are printed from medical-grade titanium using an indigenously-built laser powder bed facility in IIT-M. Extensive research activities are already being carried out in IIT Madras to commercialise this technology for printing patient-specific implants in stainless steel, Ti-6Al-4V, and Co-Cr-Mo alloys.”

Interestingly, the IIT-Madras team can print the implant exactly to match the patient’s face. 

“What sets our approach apart is the ability to custom-design and print implants that precisely match a patient’s unique facial anatomy. Traditionally, reconstructive surgeons rely on pre-fabricated implants, which are akin to off-the-rack clothing. They might fit somewhat, but rarely perfectly, and also require additional alterations to patients’ bone structures. 3D printing allows us to become bespoke craftsmen, crafting implants that are the exact size and shape of the missing facial bone. We use CT scans or MRIs of the patient directly to create a detailed 3D digital model of the patient’s face. Think of it as a high-resolution picture, but instead of just depth, it captures the intricate contours and internal structures of the missing bone,” he says. 

Next comes the magic of CAD. “Our skilled research scholars and Zoriox team take the medical image data and, using specialised algorithms, transform it into a digital blueprint for the implant. This blueprint, called a CAD STL (stereolithography) file, essentially tells the 3D printer exactly how to build the implant, layer by layer, mimicking the patient’s unique facial features,” he says. 

“Once the CAD STL file is ready, the 3D printer takes centre stage. Imagine a high-tech sculpting machine that uses medical-grade titanium powder to meticulously build the implant, following the precise instructions in the CAD STL file. Layer by layer, the missing bone structure comes to life, perfectly customised for the patient,” he adds.

A significant hurdle was the initial capital expenditure cost associated with acquiring and implementing 3D printing technology. Another challenge involved ensuring a reliable supply of titanium, the chosen material for the implants. Most medical grade 3D-printable titanium powders were imported which increased the cost of the implants manyfold. 

“We had then collaborated with an Indian supplier to help produce medical-grade titanium powders. Extensive testing was carried out in our lab to qualify the raw material produced by the Indian vendor for medical implant production,” explains Dr Amirthalingam.

“Subsequently, careful resource planning helped secure a consistent procurement of high-quality, biocompatible titanium suitable for facial implants. Establishing accurate parameters for 3D printing was a crucial step in achieving the desired precision. Our team of experts in additive manufacturing fine-tuned the printing parameters, ensuring that the implants met stringent quality standards and conformed precisely to the patient’s anatomy,” he adds.

But as Dr Balaji explains, “No project like this is complete without the invaluable input of the surgeons. Their extensive experience and meticulous feedback guided every step of the process, from initial design to post-operative care. This synergistic collaboration between engineers, designers, and surgeons was the cornerstone of our success.”

#Right2Face Initiative 

Dr Amirthalingam, says, “Our collaboration with Zoriox began in 2021, driven by a shared vision to revolutionise maxillofacial [relating to jaws and face] implants through 3D printing technology.” 

As he explains, “Initially, our efforts focused on addressing key technical challenges associated with these novel implants namely:

• Surface finish: Optimising the implant surface to promote tissue integration and minimise bacterial adhesion. 
• Machinability: Streamlining the manufacturing process for improved efficiency and cost reduction.
• Osseointegration: Enhancing bone ingrowth and long-term implant stability.”

Through collaborative research and development, they have made significant progress in these areas, paving the way for more reliable and functional 3D-printed implants.

As their technical advancements matured, the focus shifted to broader societal impact. In 2023, the effort blossomed into the Right2Face movement, driven by the following objectives:

• Raising awareness: Educating the public and medical community about the transformative potential of 3D-printed maxillofacial implants.
• Standards development: Contributing to the establishment of robust quality and safety standards for these innovative implants.
• Material exploration: Researching and developing new biocompatible materials that further enhance implant performance and affordability.
• Improved surgical outcomes: Collaborating with surgeons to refine surgical techniques and optimise patient outcomes with 3D-printed implants.

To save the lives of a patient, a lot of facial bones had to be removed. These patients are mostly breadwinners of the family and are now confined within four walls because of their facial deformity. The #Right2face movement is aimed to help these needy patients in association with oral and maxillofacial surgeons to restore their faces and “give them back their smile”.  

According to the press release, “IIT Madras researchers are also identifying patients who cannot afford costly imported implants and giving these implants free of cost under the campaign called #Right2Face.”

This campaign was started by a group of maxillofacial surgeons including Dr Balaji last year. This group began by working with dental colleges where maxillofacial surgeries were done. They started working with state-funded dental colleges in Chennai, Cuddalore, and other such colleges in Tamil Nadu and Telangana where they would find patients from economically weaker sections who needed these implants. 

“IIT-Madras also came to help us with this initiative. We also worked with local nonprofits to raise some funds for these cases. It began with two or three cases and then IIT-Madras came in to help us with the implants. Before these procedures, we conduct one-on-one interviews with these patients, following which we obtain a letter from their doctors saying that they cannot afford these procedures and need help. After this letter, we check the ration card of the patient (if it’s available) to check their credibility and then we proceed with the implants,” says Dr Balaji. 

“As a commercial entity, we have completed almost 450 implants. Under #Right2Face where patients could not afford these procedures, we have done 47 cases and in about 18 cases or so patients were able to shell out some money but not enough to cover the procedure. Medical colleges are also helping us in waiving costs for patients,” he adds.  

One such beneficiary of this initiative is a 63-year-old vegetable vendor from Coimbatore who wishes to remain anonymous. Living with a wife and four daughters, things were okay till the first lockdown. Making matters worse, he tested positive for COVID-19 and was infected by black fungus.

“After the lockdown, I was affected by black fungus because of which doctors had to remove my upper jaw. Wanting to resume work after the lockdown, I heard about facial reconstruction surgery and a doctor in Madurai who could perform it. When I reached Madurai, I approached Dr S Suraj (a maxillofacial surgeon) for help,” he recalls.

Dr Suraj then referred his case to the Zoriox team, and both sides agreed on developing 3D-printed patient-specific face implants.

“It [the procedure] was expensive, and I couldn’t afford it. But under this [#Right2Face] initiative, they supplied the implant to me [free of cost]. Dr Suraj did the surgery, placed the implant inside, and reconstructed my upper jaw, and I got my denture within one month. Now, I can eat properly and carry on with my everyday routine. I’d like to sincerely thank Dr Suraj, Zoriox, and IIT-Madras for helping me, ” he adds.

Looking ahead, they are planning to help as many as patients who require these face implants. 

“Official data shows at least 60,000 people are suffering from post-black fungus facial deformities. We are approaching various corporations for CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) funding and reaching out to other funding bodies. So far, we could manage using the existing funding from IIT Madras and CSR in-kind contributions from the hospitals. However, through The Better India, we are reaching out to your readers to support us,” says Dr Balaji. 

(Edited by Padmashree Pande; Images courtesy IIT-Madras and Dr Karthik Balaji/LinkedIn)

(If you want to contribute to this initiative, please click here.)

Beyond the delicious fungi and beautiful landscapes, the place is also becoming a breeding ground for innovation. While most of the youth shy away from farming — considering it low in profits — Gaurav Sabharwal is changing the narrative. 

“I know that many people are of the opinion that farming is not profitable but it depends on what you are growing. While most of the people in the city are into mushroom farming, I decided to do something new to make it more profitable,” he tells The Better India. 

The 36-year-old is growing saffron using aeroponics in his 300 sq ft setup in Solan. With a controlled environment and chemical-free environment, he was able to grow 500 gm of the ‘red gold’ and sell it at a remarkable Rs 500 per gram. 

Want to know how he grew Saffron that can only be grown in Kashmir? Here is his story –

‘Adversity leads to innovation’

Born and raised in Solan, Gaurav aspired to follow in his father’s footsteps.

“I come from a small place and had humble dreams. After completing my graduation, I decided to join my father in running the family business,” he recalls.

With simple dreams of expanding his father’s shoe business, Gaurav found contentment in following the path his father had paved.

“It was four years ago when things changed with my father passing away. There was a debt on our family that we had to pay, and our shoe business was not making much profit,” he says.

Struck with grief and burdened with the new responsibility of fulfilling the loan, Gaurav worked diligently to make his family business thrive.

“Call it fate, but the business wasn’t yielding much profit, and I felt the pressure to make a change. That’s when I began exploring avenues for more lucrative ventures. One thing I was clear about – I wanted to run a business,” he states.

Continuing, he explains, “I could see numerous mushroom planters in Solan who were earning substantial incomes. However, with the market saturated with producers, prices were steadily decreasing. I realised I needed to do something different.”

Looking for options online is when he found out about the precious ‘red gold’ – saffron. 

“Everyone knows how expensive saffron is and how profitable it can be. However, I always assumed that it can only be grown in Kashmir,” he says, adding that he started researching on the internet if there were ways of growing it in Himachal. 

“The internet has all the answers and that is how I found out about the technique of using a controlled environment for growing different types of crops,” he says. 

He found a few instances where people grew saffron using aeroponics. Aeroponics is a way of growing plants without soil. Instead of planting them in the ground, the plants hang in the air, and their roots are misted with a nutrient-rich spray. 

“Aeroponics can help plants grow faster, use less water, and be more resistant to certain diseases compared to traditional soil-based methods. It’s like giving plants a shower of nutrients to help them thrive,” he says. 

With his heart set on growing saffron, he set on a journey of learning aeroponics from scratch. 

Making profits and teaching others 

“I did the first thing that most people would do — go on the internet and read up about aeroponics. I found a bunch of people growing saffron using the technique, and I decided to contact them, reaching out for their help,” he says.

It was during the research that he found out the amount of money he would need to set up his farm lab.

“I did not have that kind of investment, so I sought help from the government. I got a loan of Rs 10 lakh and even got a rebate under PM Modi’s startup scheme,” he says.

With the right investment in hand, Gaurav was ready to try his hand at growing saffron in Solan.

“The greatest factor to consider was that the temperature needed to grow saffron was only in Kashmir in India. So I had to mimic that here in Solan. I used the lab whose temperature can be controlled,” he says.

“After mimicking the environment and planting the seeds, it was important for me to keep a close eye on the buds. I was not aware that they can catch fungus and was taken aback when my first crop did catch it,” he says. 

“I was able to get rid of it by drying the affected plants and separating them from the healthy ones,” he adds. 

After nearly 8 months of hard labour and planning, Gaurav was able to grow 500 grams of saffron in his aeroponics farm. 

“The produce, although not a lot, was a good sign. I was very tense because this was a leap of faith for me. Earlier, I had no intentions of doing anything and seeing those buds flower was a great feeling,” he says. 

Once ready with his produce, he was able to sell it at Rs 500 per gram. “The market rate was Rs 300 but those are not pure and are usually chemically grown. I had them tested and mine produce was sold for more than the market price,” he gleamingly shares. 

Speculating that his investment will soon get returns, Gaurav says, “The best thing about using this technique is that it does not require me to follow the seasons. This makes the produce available to you throughout the year.” 

The new technique was also very well received by the people around him. “A lot of people in my city have shown interest in learning how to use aeroponics. I have already taught it to five people and I get inquiries every day,” he says. 

Selling his produce under the name of Shoolini Saffron, he says, “I am planning to expand the production more and reach more customers.” 

If you wish to buy the saffron or learn how to use aeroponics, you can reach Gaurav at 98166 11119.

Edited by Padmashree Pande

A single tea bag can release around 11.6 billion microplastic particles at brewing temperatures. Not only is this plastic harmful to human health, but it also pollutes the environment, making its way up the entire food chain.

Two friends from Assam — Anshuman Bharali and Upamanyu Borkakoty — have the perfect solution to the problem. With their Asaam-based company The Tea Leaf Theory (TTLT), the duo has come up with a one-of-its-kind dip with eco-friendly bags that are made of leaves.

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Known as Woolah, these tea bags consist of two compressed leaves and a bud (the unopened leaf at the tip of a branch), weighing approximately two grams. They are shaped in a cylindrical form and tied with a raw, naturally grown cotton string.

These leaves enhance the taste of the beverage and can be used to brew up to four cups of tea!

Making these sustainable tea bags has helped them generate employment for 140 women from their region. They not only employ these women but also pay for their children’s education.

Woolah offers a variety of different flavours like filthy green (green tea), filthy white (white tea), dirty detox (green tea with tulsi), killer immunity (black tea with tulsi) and the brutal combo (a mix of all the varieties).

Would you like to try this unique teabag that promotes sustainabl-tea? 

Edited by Pranita Bhat

Here are five such innovations by Indians that are solving a multitude of problems: 

1. Using AI to fix potholes

When Dipen Babariya encountered a road full of potholes, he decided to develop an AI-based software that examines road health. RoadMetrics also generates reports and helps municipalities and private entities fix roads.

The Bengaluru-based startup has already analysed over 50,000 kms of roads in India

2. Using AI to keep soldiers warm

Engineers Neel Panchal and Khushboo Patel have built an AI-powered smart jacket made of graphene to help armed forces personnel stay warm and comfortable even in the harshest of climates.

3. Using AI to provide good healthcare in rural areas

Dr (Maj) Satish Somayya Jeevannavar launched AiSteth, a digital stethoscope that records and analyses patient heart sounds that can be interpreted by professionals across cities, in a bid to provide affordable rural healthcare.

4. Using AI to protect soil

Jaisimha Rao’s AI-powered spot spray robots selectively provide cover only to the plants, thereby protecting the soil from excessive chemical damage. So far, more than 500 farmers in Maharashtra and Karnataka have adopted the technology.

5. Using AI to regain mobility

John Ignatius Kujur’s AI-powered Exoskeleton uses sensor-based feedback & real-time monitoring to help the disabled gradually regain mobility. 

“It essentially acts as a mobility device for the wearer and assists in recovering the gait pattern of the person naturally, besides assisting them in the rehabilitation process. It will also help them become self-reliant, independent, and possibly increase their chances at obtaining employment,” claims Kujur.

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Edited by Padmashree Pande.

Here is a compilation of innovations that not only captivate as wonders of science but also harbour the potential to revolutionise rural areas.

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1. Uday Bhat’s inverter bulbs

Triggered by the frequent power outages in rural areas, Uday developed an inverter bulb that can provide power for around 8 to 10 hours during power cuts. When the bulb is connected to a power source, energy gets stored in the battery which is used when the power supply is cut off. 

With a cost price of just Rs 250, the innovation is currently lighting up 7,000 villages across the country.

2. Pradeep Kumar’s ‘panels on wheels’

Imagine this — solar panels that harness the sun’s energy while on wheels. Pradeep Kumar’s innovative solution allows farmers to take the panels anywhere in the field, saving both time and money.

The panels are mounted on a trolley, and easily attached to a tractor, enabling farmers to move seamlessly between home and the fields.

3. Nikky and Rashmi Jha’s fridge for farmers

The duo’s ‘Sabjikothi’ is an IoT-enabled tent-like structure designed to extend the shelf life of vegetables and fruits. This innovative solution significantly reduces farmers’ losses due to wastage by keeping the produce fresh for up to 30 days.

In comparison to a traditional fridge, these tents offer 10 times more capacity, save electricity, and cut the cost of refrigeration by half.

4. Anjan Mukherjee’s water purifier

An IIT dropout, Anjan innovated a zero-chemical and zero-electricity device that transforms contaminated drinking water into clean water within 30 minutes.

Designed to be fitted onto hand pumps, the device effectively eliminates waterborne microbes without the need for electricity or chemicals.

5. Karibasappa MG’s insect trap

The low-cost solar-powered insect trap is reducing the need for pesticides in farms. The device uses UV LED lights to trap insects and is not harmful to honey bees.

The current solar insect trap is a fourth-generation model which has an LED light connected to a solar panel which is in turn connected to a battery that stores power. It has gained a lot of appreciation and has already helped thousands of farmers across the country.

(Edited by Pranita Bhat)

Here is a list of seven such farmers whose innovative solutions are changing the face of agriculture in the country.

1. Tree scooter revolution

Ganapathi Bhat, a farmer from Mangaluru has innovated an easy-to-use ’tree scooter’ to harvest areca palms. This has helped farmers reduce dependence on labourers and harvest 300 areca palms in a day, which is thrice the amount harvested using traditional methods.

Bhat was facing problems with areca nut harvests due to an unreliable labour workforce and improper maintenance of areca nut trees. This also led to a loss of income. To solve this issue, he came up with the tree scooter, which helps farmers climb up an areca nut tree in a matter of seconds.

The machine works with a harness, seat, and seat belt, and operates using a small motor and a set of wheels to grasp the trunk without using their hands. Bhat states that the machine saves about Rs 24,000 per week in labour costs. He has sold hundreds of devices so far.

2. Desert farming innovation

Haresh Thacker’s farm in Kutch blooms with fruit orchards of dragon fruit, mangoes, pomegranates and several hundred vegetables. The enterprising third-generation farmer sells his produce under the name Ashapura Agro Fruits.

Spending all his free time on the farm since he was 14, Haresh worked with a vision of building a farming empire in the dry, arid Gujarat region. Since he couldn’t change the climate, he found innovative ways to grow fruits and vegetables hitherto unheard of in the farms of Kutch.

Currently, he uses a Vietnam-based farming technique to grow dragon fruit and a high-density fruit tree planting method to grow mangoes, which usually need up to 100 litres of water per day. He chose the dragon fruit as it requires less water and can thrive in arid areas, besides being a low-calorie fruit. Through relentless experimentation, he now grows the dragon fruits in 50 acres.

Harsh also grows off-season strawberries and broccoli using the fan and pad technology to control the climate. He also uses an automated drip irrigation system and practises organic farming.

3. Preserving agricultural heritage

Mahan Chandra Borah, a rice farmer, wanted to educate people, especially the younger generation, about India’s rich diversity in rice and other crops. Shocked by the extinction of many indigenous varieties, he started ‘Annapurna Rice Library’ to protect the vanishing legacy of his forefathers.

When he started farming, he researched and grew different indigenous varieties of rice in his field in Assam’s Jorhat. Since he couldn’t do a PhD, due to financial constraints, he spent all his time researching and looking for papers on seed saving and rice varieties going extinct.

First, he set up a rice farming library at home, before setting up Annapurna, which has over 500 types of seeds preserved and grown organically. Farmers can visit the library and take any seeds they want. He runs it all on his own funds and conducts awareness classes in schools.

If you found his work interesting, Mahan is currently seeking funds and volunteers for his library. You can reach him at 91270 69446.

4. Sustainable post-harvest preservation

Vaibhav Tidke, a farmer’s son was moved by the post-harvest loss of fruits and vegetables, which he says is close to 60 million tonnes.

The engineer developed a solar dryer using a patented food drying technology to extend the shelf life of produce without adding chemicals and preservatives. Not only for fruits and vegetables, this dryer can also be used for meats, seafood and spices, and has been installed in more than 1,200 places in India.

The solar dryer consumes less energy than regular dryers and refrigeration devices, and keeps carbon footprint to a minimum. He sells this product along with others through his venture, Science4Society (S4S) Technologies.

5. Shelf life enhancement

Haryana-based Sumer Singh started farming in 1999, using chemical fertilisers. When his family’s and land’s health deteriorated, he made the switch to organic farming, almost eight years ago.

Now, he not only grows vegetables, pulses, chickpeas and millets on his 14-acre farm but also motivates other farmers to do the same.

Singh started working on increasing the shelf life of his produce through innovative methods. For instance, he uses stubble for mulching on the land where he grows onions, which keeps the soil moist for longer, harvesting 80 quintals of onion from one acre.

He hangs the onions in bundles like one hangs bananas instead of storing them in stacks, which restricts spoilage. This also keeps them safe for three to four months. Similar innovations are followed for each crop to increase their shelf-life naturally.

6. Biofertiliser for enhanced yield

Akshay Shrivastav saw his father, a farmer in Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh, face a lot of issues, including poor yield and bad soil quality, due to excessive use of chemical fertilisers.

He took up chemical engineering to find a solution to improve agricultural yield. The 24-year-old then created a biofertiliser that, according to him, can help increase agricultural productivity by 35 percent, helping over 3,000 farmers across India.

The biofertiliser has 60 types of microbes which can enhance nutrients in the soil. He also developed a granule that increases crop yield and reduces irrigation needs by more than 30 percent.

He started selling this biofertiliser under the brand name ‘Navyakosh’ through his startup ‘LCB Fertilisers’ in March 2021.

7. Innovation in irrigation

Due to a lack of proper irrigation techniques, farmers waste gallons of water in paddy fields. Malesh T from Mandya, Karnataka, watched his grandfather and other farmers use more water than required, leading to flooded farms and fungal diseases.

To help such farmers measure the water requirement of crops sitting at home, he launched an agri-tech platform ‘CultYvate’. The technology helps them understand when to provide irrigation so the crop is not submerged in water all the time.

He says that he is cutting down 40 percent of water use in farms through his platform and increasing their yield. “Our technology helps farmers analyse the dynamic climatic conditions and plan their farm cultivation,” says Malesh.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

Whether it’s for parties, school projects, or packaging needs, thermocol frequently assumes the role of an essential guest. Its robustness, widespread availability, and lightweight nature make it suitable for various purposes, contributing to its popularity.

However, amidst its seemingly versatile applications, we tend to overlook its environmental impact. While much attention is given to the detrimental effects of plastic on the planet, there is a less-discussed culprit — polystyrene. As thermocol is composed of polystyrene, it becomes non-biodegradable and, when exposed to sunlight, produces harmful air pollutants.

The thermocol utilised in households and the expansive packaging industry often ends up filling landfills, eventually finding its way to the sea. Research indicates that burning thermocol, a practice prevalent in many households, releases not only Carbon Monoxide but also Styrene and a variety of other toxic chemical compounds, leading to a myriad of eye and lung infections.

Despite numerous studies highlighting the adverse effects of thermocol, its widespread usage continues to escalate. This raises a pivotal question: is there a comparatively effective alternative for the packaging industry?

A 29-year-old engineer Chaitanya Dubey from Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, may hold the solution to this issue. This young entrepreneur has successfully created a biodegradable alternative to traditional thermocol using mushroom mycelium and agricultural waste.

“Once its intended purpose is fulfilled, just crush it and integrate it into your plants — it will serve as a natural fertiliser for them,” he explains to The Better India.

Chaitanya’s journey began almost four years ago when he had just graduated from college and was exploring new ideas to pursue. Let’s take a look at how this biodegradable solution came to be.

Bringing a sustainable alternative 

Born and raised in Kanpur, Chaitanya grew up in a business-oriented family. “While my father was a businessman, I never really thought I would be one. Like most families, my parents wanted me to pursue engineering and secure a job,” he reflects.

The predetermined path seemed reasonable, and Chaitanya pursued his engineering degree in Bengaluru. “After completing engineering, the next step is typically to work or pursue an MBA. That was my plan too. I started working at a company in Bengaluru while contemplating the idea of getting an MBA,” he shares.

However, his plans took an unexpected turn when he enrolled in a small business course in Solan. “It was a brief course that, in many ways, altered my trajectory and led me to where I am today. The course opened up various career possibilities for me, and I could envision myself as an entrepreneur. It was during this course that I was introduced to mushroom farming and its potential for generating significant profits,” he explains.

Mushroom farming marked the initial step that eventually led Chaitanya to his innovative breakthrough. “I initiated a small business where I cultivated both medicinal and commercial mushrooms. While it was progressing well, I aspired to do more,” he recollects.

This desire prompted Chaitanya to delve into researching the diverse uses of different parts of mushrooms. During this exploration, he discovered the emerging concept of creating leather from mushrooms. 

“Although it was primarily a circulating concept at the time, it steered me towards questioning what else could be crafted using mushrooms,” he reflects.

To further his research, he also reached out to IIT-Kanpur. “It was a gradual transition and we still grow and sell mushrooms. It was after months of research and development that I was able to make it,” he says. 

In 2019, he incorporated his company under the name Kinoko Biotech — an agri-tech company that makes biomaterials out of mushrooms. 

Sturdy, lightweight and planet-friendly

The thermocol is lightweight, sturdy and has the same feel as the polystyrene. “In terms of strength, it compares favourably to high-density thermocol; however, weight-wise, it leans a bit on the heavier side,” he informs. 

Discussing the elements used to create the eco-friendly alternative, he explains, “Mycelium, or the roots of the mushroom, serves as a natural adhesive. Additionally, we utilise a combination of agricultural waste and natural fibres, contributing to the durability and longevity of the thermocol. The inherent properties of mushrooms make for a robust material.”

He continues, “Since these are technically made out of roots of the mushroom, they become a byproduct of mushroom and a subcategory. Made of natural materials, the thermocol starts to decompose in about 60 to 90 days. Besides throwing it away, one can actually use it as a nourisher and natural fertiliser for plants.” 

The thermocol takes about five to seven days to be made. “When it comes to thermocol, there exists a wide range of varieties. Our product falls on the slightly higher cost spectrum compared to low-density thermocol but remains more affordable than high-density thermocol,” he says. 

“To put it into perspective, our pricing falls in the mid-range, around Rs 20 to Rs 25 for 100g of packaging. In comparison, low-density thermocol typically ranges from Rs 15 to Rs 20, while high-density thermocol can vary widely, reaching anywhere from Rs 30 to Rs 100 or more,” he says. 

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The product is presently accessible for packaging businesses, but Chaitanya has ambitious plans to expand production and make it available for the general public as well.

“We are also in the process of developing a material using mushrooms to create idols. Many alternatives to POP (Plaster of Paris) are harmful to the environment. Currently, our plant capacity allows for the production of 200 pieces of thermocol a day, but as part of our future plans, we aim to increase this to 1,000 pieces per day,” he explains.

Being a newcomer in the market, Chaitanya is navigating the intricacies of supply chain management and persuading businesses to make this eco-friendly switch.

“While most people have some awareness of the environmental impact of polystyrene thermocol, there aren’t many substitutes available in the market. With my green innovation, I hope to provide them with an alternative and an opportunity to contribute positively to the environment,” he expresses.

(Edited by Padmashree Pande)

This city in Maharashtra is the only Indian city shortlisted for the award. It emerged amongst the top 15 out of 193 cities spanning 54 countries across the world due to its urban initiatives.

“The city’s ground-breaking initiative under the Navi Disha programme, where women-led groups manage community toilets, was pivotal in securing this accolade,” the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) administration said on X (formerly Twitter).

This award shows how the PCMC, led by IAS officer Shekhar Singh, worked hard for sustainable urban development. They’ve used innovative and sustainable methods to enhance urban life.

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The corporation’s dust suppression vehicles use recycled sewage water for cleaner roads and better air.

Residents can monitor their waste from pickup to disposal via the ‘Smart Sarthi’ app. 

Additionally, the PCMC turns waste into energy at the Moshi Waste-to-Energy plant, generating around 12 MW of electricity. Efforts also include promoting rainwater harvesting and providing subsidies to convert autos to electric vehicles.

(Edited by Pranita Bhat)

The inspiration behind this project was a 22-year-old girl who was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition characterised by a hole in the septum. The girl’s brother could not afford the surgery. The sad state of affairs prompted the doctor to dedicate his life to making surgeries cheaper for people who could not afford them.

The doctor decided to put his practice on hold in 2013 and return to India from the US. He invested his savings to set up a research and development team.

Failing to get support from government and private investors, Dr Sudhir even resorted to selling his furniture and car to fuel money for the project. “However, these challenges didn’t deter me. Fueled by a vision, my goal was to create something for my country, making essential healthcare accessible to all,” he emphasises.

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The doctor initially developed SSI Mantra, but after a while, he launched an enhanced version called SSI Mantra 2. The goal of the system was to make the robot user-friendly, ergonomic, and with more features — both for the surgeons as well as for the table-side assisting team.

The surgeries that use this new system cost one-third less than manual surgeries. Since its launch in 2022, the system has already assisted doctors in performing 500 successful surgeries in India.

Dr Sudhir is now planning to expand and modify a truck to accommodate the robotic system in it. The truck would allow them to conduct camps in the remotest areas of the country, he informs.

(Edited by Pranita Bhat)

In a small Assam village, Anusweta Deb, a determined teenager motivated by her love for science, crafted an affordable life jacket from used plastic bottles. In Tamil Nadu, Senthil Kumar Murugesan, an electronics engineer, invented a device to detect risks during early pregnancy in remote Indian areas. Dr Sudhir Srivastava, a well-known cardiologist, left his practice, sold his car, and used his savings to create a surgical robot that slashes surgery costs by a third.

These remarkable innovations benefit society and aim to improve people’s lives — highlighting how grassroots creativity and ingenuity can bring about change. Despite their greatness, often, many are unaware of such innovations, emphasising the need to raise awareness about them.

So if you think you are sitting on an innovation that could positively impact the lives of people, then, we’ve got a proposition to take your brainchild to new heights.

We’re calling all the genius minds with trailblazing innovations looking to scale their work.

Here’s introducing the ‘Quiet Innovators’ contest — hosted by Shiv Nadar Foundation in partnership with The Better India. This contest will not only showcase India’s exceptional innovators in education, health, sustainability, and social causes, but also provide these innovators with a platform to display their impactful work.

And to make things more exciting, the top four winners across the categories will be awarded a total prize of Rs 4 lakh*.

Choose a category and apply!

The innovation that you are planning to submit must align with one of the following four categories.

One winner from each of the four categories will receive a prize money of Rs 1 lakh* each.

1. Innovation in education: The innovations aimed at enhancing student learning and supporting educators.

2. Innovation for health and wellness: Innovations aimed at fostering technological advancements that promote health and overall well-being of people.

3. Innovation for social cause: Innovations that use technology to bring change in the lives of underprivileged communities and improve the social sector.

4. Innovation for sustainability: Innovations that help in promoting sustainable living and environmentally conscious practices.

Things to know

1. To participate in this contest, you have to be an Indian resident.
2. Participants must be over 18 years old.
3. The duration of the contest is from 16 November to 12 December 2023.
4. You can register and submit your innovation for free. 
5. Individuals, startups, NGOs and teams can participate in the contest. 
6. Each participant can submit only one entry. 
7. Once the entry is made, the innovators cannot make any changes to their submission. 
8. The application requires the details of the innovation, the innovator and a statement highlighting the thought and motivation behind the innovation.

Please note that a participant may be disqualified if they are not a resident of India, if their idea is not original, if they have submitted more than one entry, or if their entry does not align with the specified categories.

If you have a unique and groundbreaking innovation with the ability to revolutionise the health sector, society, education, and the environment, then this contest is just the thing for you.

So what are you waiting for? Gear up for the contest and apply now!

(Click here for more details; *TDS will be deducted. The judges’ decision will be final. T&C apply*)

(Edited by Pranita Bhat)

“But what if clean water could be conjured from thin air, materialising from nothingness to fill glasses,  water dispensers, and reservoirs as pure magic? It’s not mission impossible; it’s science — and it could very well become a not-so-distant reality.”

This is the alluring future envisioned by SOURCE, a US-based company making waves in the renewable energy sector. Founded by Dr Cody Friesen, a materials scientist, the organisation has innovated the world’s first renewable drinking water system, which can make clean, safe, potable water “entirely off-grid, anywhere in the world”.

SOURCE’s patented, one-of-a-kind Hydropanel is “a sustainable water technology that uses the power of the sun to extract an endless volume of clean, reliable drinking water from the air.” The collected water undergoes mineralization to achieve the perfect balance of composition and taste, ensuring that high-quality drinking water is easily accessible to everyone.

In simple words, a Hydropanel is similar to a solar panel, but instead of generating electricity, it produces clean and safe drinking water without needing electricity or a water source; it can be installed in almost any location.

It thereby enables companies to flourish as sustainable leaders for future generations and inspire through action – by adopting innovative renewable water solutions and preserving natural resources.

Adopting Cutting-Edge Technology to Lead the Way in Sustainable Transformation

While water production can vary depending on the weather in your location, SOURCE technology is optimised for a wide range of conditions and can even produce water in low to medium sun and humidity. Today, SOURCE is addressing conscious business practices and mindful consumers equally by providing water access in some of the most arid locations in the world. All while eliminating the need for water transportation by implementing alternative solutions. 

If making water from the sun and air sounds too good to be true, the company has already demonstrated its validity by undertaking projects spread across 52 countries around the world — the one closest to home is a boutique hotel aspiring to lead the way in providing a full-fledged sustainable experience for its guests. In the heart of New Delhi, SOURCE Hydropanels are generating renewable water from a sustainable and endless source of the atmosphere. Defying the odds of air quality, the SOURCE Hydropanel water starts pure and remains pure throughout the process.

The same high-quality premium water finds its use even in remote communities. For example, at a government school in India, students didn’t have access to safe drinking water and had to rely on low-quality water from hand pumps. The school is in an area that often experiences severe droughts, so they urgently needed a solution that relied on something other than existing surface water. A local NGO and SOURCE joined forces to provide an array of SOURCE Hydropanels. Now the school offers students clean and dependable water via dispensers connected to the classroom. 

An innovator’s quest that led to SOURCE

Now, to understand the history of how this vital innovation came to be.

Friesen completed his bachelor’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Arizona State University and got a Ph.D. in the same field from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Focused on renewable energy, he built a research group and secured energy grants. Friesen became interested in energy storage as a physical electric chemist and surface scientist.

“I was deeply contemplating the future of renewable energy, not just from a policy or technological perspective, but as an innovator, I pondered the long-term outlook. I wasn’t concerned about the next five or ten years, but rather the next 30–40 years,” he says.

“The realisation, which was like a light bulb moment, was that we have almost transitioned to renewables for electricity from governments, private businesses, hospitality and tourism, education and institutions, healthcare, and this is to name a few. It is evident that solar power will become cheaper than coal, and the rapid advancements in lithium-ion technology indicate that energy storage will become more affordable. This led me to wonder if we could extend the principles of renewables to address a different resource,” Friesen adds.

“It dawned on me that access to clean drinking water is perhaps one of humanity’s most significant challenges. The health and economic consequences associated with water scarcity far surpass those of electricity. So, the question arose, ‘Could we apply renewable principles to water and make it a universally accessible resource, democratically available anywhere in the world?’” shares Friesen.

That’s where his journey began in the early 2000s, eventually materialising into what is now known as SOURCE.

High-quality, sustainable drinking water for all

SOURCE is a B-corp, for-profit company that upholds high social and environmental performance standards, accountability, and transparency. Today, the company provides renewable drinking water solutions to commercial organisations, schools, hospitality establishments, residential communities, etc.

At remote worksites, these Hydropanels provide a reliable and affordable source of clean drinking water for job sites, regardless of their size. By installing an array of Hydropanels on-site, workers can conveniently access a continuous and self-replenishing supply of fresh drinking water. This eliminates the need for expensive and complicated transportation of potable water.

Hospitality and commercial establishments, such as luxury hotels, eco-resorts, restaurants, and business venues/offices, can help achieve their sustainability goals by providing guests and employees with an option that avoids plastic and depletion of the water table by actively helping ‘create’ more water for the region.

In communities, be they remote or water-stressed, SOURCE provides a quickly established and affordable solution for clean water, which works well alongside existing bulk water sources that may not meet drinking water standards. It operates independently from existing infrastructure since it doesn’t need electricity or water connections. Furthermore, it can be expanded to cater to communities of varying sizes, ranging from small villages to large populations of thousands.

Touching upon its impact in reducing plastic on earth, Manu Karan, the Senior Vice President, Business Development, Middle East, Asia & Africa at SOURCE Global, shares, “Producing SOURCE at a 1,000-person worksite displaces more than 30 million plastic bottles over 15 years. And a single SOURCE Hydropanel eliminates the need for 54,000 single-use plastic water bottles over its 15-year lifespan. 92% of the materials used to build our Hydropanels are also mass bulk-recyclable.”

All pictures courtesy: SOURCE

The case involved a 22-year-old female diagnosed with an atrial septal defect — a congenital heart condition characterised by a hole in the septum, the wall that separates the heart’s upper chambers (atria).

She was diagnosed quite late and was in a critical condition. The hospital was charging Rs 4 lakh for the surgery, and her brother couldn’t afford it. While the doctor volunteered to do it for free, the hospital did not.

“His brother asked for some time and tried to raise the money, but unfortunately, I never heard from them again. To be honest, it still haunts me,” Dr Sudhir recalls in a conversation with The Better India.

This incident left him with sleepless nights and a mission — to develop a cost-effective system that can help people from every background in the country.

The outcome was the creation of a surgical robot called SSI Mantra. This innovative technology assists doctors in conducting complex surgeries with precision and ease, reducing costs by one-third compared to manual surgeries.

A science company with a mission

Born in Rajasthan, Dr Sudhir moved to the US in 1972 for his postgraduate studies. He completed his residency in Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

He practised for some years in Texas before becoming the founding chairman of Alliance Hospital, a centre for cardiovascular disease in West Texas, along with 10 other physicians.

“I was always interested in minimally invasive approaches when it came to surgeries and not splitting open the sternum. This is where I got the chance to perform various robotic surgeries and 30 percent of the patients went home in a day,” he recalls. “Having performed so many robotic surgeries, I would come to India to train people in robotic surgeries. Back then, India did not have its own robotic system.”

In 2002, he performed his first robotic surgery in India. “I kept coming back to the country but in 2011, I got an offer from a major hospital to launch their robotic surgery programme,” he says.

Dr Sudhir says he had always longed to be back home, so he jumped at the opportunity, packed his bags, and moved back with his family.

“At that time, there were only six to seven robotic systems, that too exported, so there were not many patients that could afford to pay those two to three lakh rupees more for robotic surgery. It was around this time when I met the 22-year-old patient’s brother,” he says.

The whole incident made the doctor realise that the country needs a system that is cheaper. “Because of the high costs we cannot offer the best treatment to the patients, and to reduce the cost, we have to develop it in the country itself,” he says.

So the doctor made a commitment to the cause and decided to put his practice on hold in 2013. “Having done over 1,400 surgeries and with my knowledge of robotic surgeries, I decided to use my life savings of 4.5 million dollars,” he says.

“Initially, I went to Germany to meet some of their scientists for an exchange of technology. However, it was not a success. Then, I came back to India and formed a team of 10 engineers and started the development out of my home,” he says.

Why robotic surgeries and how do they work

Dr Sudhir explains why robotic surgeries are important. “Depth, precision and safety. These are three things that surmise why we need robotic surgeries. With the help of technology, the surgeon gets an in-depth picture of the patient’s parts to be operated on,” he informs.

“The high-end images make the surgery more precise and hence safer. The surgeon would have to worry to be accurate with something as simple yet risky as stitching a wound with a beating heart underneath,” he adds.

The doctor initially developed SSI Mantra, but after a while, he launched an enhanced version called SSI Mantra 2. The goal of the system was to make it user-friendly, ergonomic, and with more features — both for the surgeons as well as for the table-side assisting team.

“What we have designed is called an open-face console, featuring a large 32-inch 4K high-definition resolution 3D monitor. This design enhances magnification, providing surgeons with the capability to perform procedures with exceptional precision. It’s a remarkable advancement for surgical procedures,” he says.

Additionally, he says they have integrated safety features with a head-tracking camera. “The surgeon wears glasses with specific markers that are tracked by the camera. This ensures that if the surgeon looks away from the monitor, even while moving their hands, the system will not respond. It’s a safety measure that requires the camera view to be within sight for operation,” he explains.

The technology also has a 23-inch large monitor with all controls easily accessible to the surgeon. This allows the surgeon to retrieve any of the DICOM images from the server, whether in the radiology department or elsewhere in the hospital and display them conveniently. 

Additionally, the team has developed proprietary technology that enables them to convert these images into 3D models. Following this, a surgeon or a trainee can manipulate and slice through the images, essentially having the entire anatomy of the region you’re operating on right in front of them.

“This not only makes the procedure safer and faster but also simplifies it by eliminating guesswork,” he says.

Giving a real-life example, he says, “While performing a surgical procedure in South Korea in 2008, a nurse accidentally inserted a knife right through the heart. When I inquired later, she explained that she couldn’t accurately gauge the depth.” 

To address problems like this, SSI Mantra 2 provides a better view of the organs as depth perception is crucial in surgery for bringing in instruments and supplies, avoiding accidents, and shortening the learning curve. Since its launch in 2022, the system has already assisted doctors in performing 500 successful surgeries in India.

Talking about future plans, Dr Sudhir says, “We have developed numerous single-arm applications. Our approach involves smaller and lighter robotic arms, and the goal is to develop different types of arms that can perform different functions.”

He adds, “Our main aim is to decentralise excellence wherever possible, make the technology cheaper and easy to access so that we can reach every rural corner of the country.”

Calling their approach holistic, he opines that utilising technology is crucial for advancing medicine today. In many rural areas, the population remains underprivileged in terms of accessing the best possible medical care, often due to physicians’ reluctance to go there for various reasons.

Their team is currently in the process of expanding and modifying a truck to accommodate the robotic system in it. The truck would allow them to conduct camps in the remotest areas of the country, he informs.

Looking back at his journey so far, Dr Sudhir recalls, “There was a time when I had no money. Projects like these require millions and billions of dollars in investment while I was there with my meagre savings. Despite attempting to seek investment from the government and private investors, I struggled to make headway. Resorting to selling my car and furniture, I injected funds into the project and borrowed money from friends in the US, with the intention to repay them upon returning to practice if things did not work out.”

“However, these challenges didn’t deter me. Fueled by a vision, my goal was to create something for my country, making essential healthcare accessible to all,” he emphasises.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

Turns out, clay can be used to make air conditioners, furniture, fridges, even purify air. It can even be used to play music!

Here are five amazing clay innovations that are changing the way one can use clay:

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1. Clay Air-conditioners

Ant Studio has built an air conditioner that uses cylindrical clay cones and the concept of evaporative cooling. Using clay, they have built an economical and energy-efficient solution.

2. Clay tile furniture

Architect Manoj Patel gave a new lease of life to ‘Mangalore tiles’ (clay roof tiles) by using them in furniture. The best part – they can be used in monsoons too.

3. Clay Amplifiers

Following his father’s footsteps, Sivaprakash K became a miniature pottery artist. Innovating with what he could make, he made zero-electricity acoustic amplifiers.

4. Clay Fridges

Tamil Nadu potter M Sivasamy has built a portable and eco-friendly refrigerator using clay, which can keep vegetables, milk, curd, etc fresh for up to four days, without using electricity. 

5. Clay pots that provide electricity

Peruvian inventor Hernán Asto Cabezas has built a clay container that purifies air and lights up your space for 12 hours. He has united biology and solar energy to purify air.

Edited by Padmashree Pande

Unfortunately, all the hard work invested in the garden can be in vain when they return to find withering or near-dying plants.

Hyderabad-based Gowtham Reddy was motivated to solve this universal problem. “This may not appear as a serious issue for many, but it keeps many gardeners anxious. We cannot ignore any problem,” he tells The Better India.

After speaking to gardeners and exploring several DIY drip systems, Gowtham worked on the simplest self-watering system called ‘Osmos’ that can sustain plants for at least 15 days.

A simple yet fascinating college experiment

After completing mechanical engineering, Gowtham decided to pursue a career in industrial design. In 2016, he joined the National Institute of Design, Gujarat. Here, he says, he was encouraged to follow the philosophy of ‘learning by doing’.

As part of his semester project, he interviewed a few gardeners to understand the difficulties they face in watering plants while away. “I focussed on designing the product in a simple manner while ensuring that the functionality is viable,” he adds.

In 2017, the engineer came up with a self-watering terracotta planter, made using 60 percent soil and 40 percent of low-weight-expanded clay. “I utilised the clay’s porosity property to design the planter. As clay is a porous material, it allows for air and moisture to pass through the walls of the pot,” he says.

Gowtham further added a glass fish bowl element to this planter design to keep the water level in check. The bowl has the capacity to hold 1.5 litres of water.

The easy-to-use self-watering system called ‘Osmos’ allows gardeners to keep a planted pot inside the water-filled bowl. The clay terracotta pot absorbs water and the soil inside the pot remains hydrated. Gowtham says this system helps sustain the plants for at least 15 days. 

Interestingly, this planter is designed in a way that it doesn’t breed mosquitoes.

“I applied my design knowledge to create a planter that is both simple and optimised. At the same time, I also wanted my design to be fascinating for others,” he adds.

Awarded for ‘designing for a better tomorrow’

After receiving appreciation from the jury, Gowtham launched this product under the brand ‘Floraqua’ on Facebook. “Usually, students do not take their college-level projects forward. They get occupied in the next semester or get a job. I wanted to market this project so that people can use it,” he adds.

So in 2018, he joined the Experiencing Live Action Business Course at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad to learn entrepreneurship. “IIMA’s team approved the product. As part of the course, I began creating different versions of the planter, and the team would handle its sales,” says Gowtham, who works with a Bengaluru-based interior designer company, MIPL Global.

“I also integrated the famous Rajasthani Molela craft into my design at the rim of the pot to give the planter an aesthetic appeal,” he adds. Priced at Rs 500, Gowatham was able to sell nearly 300 planters with the help of the team at IIM Ahmedabad.

In 2018, Gowtham’s innovative self-watering system received recognition at the Lexus Design Awards under the category of Best Student Project. The international design competition calls upon young creative talent around the world to “Design for a Better Tomorrow”. The next year, his innovation was one of the three best projects displayed at the Lexus Design Awards Ceremony.

Curious about the planter? You can get in touch with Gowtham Reddy for more info here.

Edited by Pranita Bhat. All photos: Osmos (Facebook).

They give all the credit to IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal, the district magistrate of Banda, and her team who found this simple yet effective method of converting waste into wealth.

As part of the Ajeevika Mission in the village, the IAS officer trained many women to make these eco-friendly and multipurpose diyas. This initiative has helped many women to use cow dung in this innovative way that brings additional income to their families.

Apart from being environmentally friendly, these gobar diyas (lamps made of cow dung) are helpful in keeping pesky insects away. These lamps later turn into ash manure.

“These diyas are more eco-friendly and they help us earn a living. This Diwali, be the reason for lighting up someone else’s home too,” says Kamala, one of the many women diya makers from the village.

This Diwali, you can support these women by buying their produce to brighten up your home in the most sustainable way. To place your orders, contact 7457988049, 7522847918, or 9131061150.

Watch this video to learn more about the women behind this unique lamp:

(Edited by Pranita Bhat)

While speaking to the children about their life, he found that the biggest problem they faced were frequent power outages, which made it difficult for them to study. Hearing that a basic necessity like electricity, which we take for granted, is not available for 8-10 hours daily, really shook Uday. 

He came back to Delhi and dove deep into the problem. He found that Uttar Pradesh and  Uttarakhand are reeling under a power crisis. 

According to a Moneycontrol report, Uttarakhand faced a shortfall of 18 million units of electricity everyday in January 2023, which was 40 percent of the daily demand. Several parts of the state face daily power cuts from anywhere between four to almost eight to nine hours a day in some remote regions.

Uday soon understood that residents of villages like Bichpuri don’t have the financial means to afford appliances like inverters. He wanted to find and develop a solution for rural India’s power crisis. After 24 prototypes, thousands of hours, and eight months, the 18-year-old built the solution – an inverter bulb that can provide a backup of almost 10 hours in case of a power cut.

“I wanted to make a bulb that solves the problem. Speaking to those young children and seeing their troubles really moved me. Reading about the heat crisis in Uttar Pradesh motivated me to solve this problem. How could they stay without electricity in such extreme weather conditions?” Uday Bhatia tells The Better India.

A solution at Rs 250

While working hard to find a solution, Uday first realised that there was no cost-effective solution for the rural population. He says that his first thought was to build something using renewable energy. 

“After going through many ideas, I conceptualised a bulb that has the capabilities of an inverter in the event of a power outage. I designed it specifically for remote villages in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand,” he adds.

Then in April 2022, the Class 12 student who is passionate about computer science, set up a workstation on his terrace with a soldering iron and a couple of wires, beginning his experiments. 

“I learnt how to assemble a bulb and the pulse modulation algorithm after watching YouTube videos,” he says.

Initially, he built a bulb with a four-hour backup. But he wanted to provide an 8-10 hour backup, which he was able to do thanks to computer science.

“I use a lithium ion battery, which has a backup of four hours. Now, I had to increase the backup time, without increasing the size of the cell. I applied the concept of control systems to increase the backup time. I did various trials using the pulse width modulation algorithm to achieve the desired result. This algorithm helped me optimise energy consumption,” he says.

Explaining the algorithm further, he says that he developed a way to adjust the bulb’s brightness, which extends the time of backup. If you lower the brightness, you get a longer backup. The bulb comes with settings to change the brightness.

Explaining how the bulb works, Uday states that the technology used is very simple.

“When the bulb is connected to a power source, energy gets stored in the battery. When the power supply is cut off, the bulb uses the energy stored in the battery to glow. I have done this using a rectifier, to make it glow during a power outage,” he explains.

Illuminating over 7,000 households in 5 states

He started selling this through his venture, ‘Uday Electric’ at Rs 250 a piece from May 2022. The bulbs come with a 1 year warranty. The tagline of the company is ‘Bijli gul phir bhi ujjala full’ (Even with the power cut, there will still be light).

He bootstrapped the venture with Rs 30,000, which he used to buy the table and supplies needed for 50 bulbs. For the sales, he initially started visiting a few markets and doing the sales himself. Since that was not feasible in all areas, he worked with local farmers and villagers to sell his bulb. This also provides them with an extra income. 

He has so far sold over 7,000 units in Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and to the outskirts of Delhi. Of these, 950 units were donated to households in the Kabadi Bazar, Dehradun, through Aasra Foundation.

“This particular area had no electricity for most part of the day. When I saw the joy on people’s faces when their houses were illuminated, I felt on top of the world. No feeling can come close to it,” smiles the 18-year-old.

Amit Balodi of Aasra Foundation says that many in the slums of Kabadi Bazaar didn’t have access to electricity and these bulbs have been of great help to them.

“Many of these labourers live in slums and these bulbs have been very useful to them at night. They charge them during the day and use them at night. It greatly helps in energy conservation too,” says Amit.

Uday won the Diana Award 2023, which is set up in memory of the late Princess of Wales, and honours ‘outstanding young people selflessly creating positive social change’. 

Starting with making the bulbs on his terrace, he now outsources manufacturing. He wants to continue illuminating more households in rural areas and wants to make a tubelight using the same design.

“I want to make a tubelight that will help factories located in rural areas. This will help them save cost and decrease inverter usage,” he adds.

Uday wishes to bring light to as many households as he can in the coming years. 

(Edited by Padmashree Pande)

Sources

‘Crisis-hit Uttarakhand struck by power shortage; Centre increases state’s quota’ by Sweta Goswami for Moneycontrol, Published on 12 January 2023

To regain some control over her health, she started with just a workout but found it hard to control the sugar spikes. Working with a dietician and doing a deep dive into what is really needed to manage life as a Type 2 diabetic, Nishita found the secret sauce to be a combination of working out, a rich diet, and managing stress. 

Now her day starts with a 45-minute walk/run, followed by a breakfast of millet upma/dosa/idli with a glass of black coffee. Lunch is a jowar/bajra bhakri (flatbread) with a large amount of salad, dal and subzi (cooked vegetables). 

She keeps her dinner light, with soup, salad and an occasional whole wheat roti/brown bread or some quinoa. Staying away from our usual staples like rice/whole wheat roti (flatbread), and completely avoiding junk food and sugar, has helped her keep her blood sugar under control, she says. 

Like Nishita, several Indians live with diabetes every day, making India infamous for being the ‘diabetes capital’ of the world. 

A recent study published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology found that India has more than 101 million people living with diabetes. Another concerning finding in the Indian Council of Medical Research–India Diabetes (ICMR-INDIAB) study was the fact that 15.3% of the population is pre-diabetic.  

As is the case with many illnesses, diabetes is directly linked with being a lifestyle disease, which is often an outcome of poor diet, work-life balance other than being genetic. The key to managing such diseases is managing its symptoms and our approach to it.

The Glycemic Index (GI) is a rating system used to classify foods that are safe to eat from a blood sugar perspective. It is a measure of how quickly a food can make your blood sugar (glucose) rise. 

To help diabetic patients live an easier and stress-free life, the researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati (IIT-Guwahati) have developed a device to instantly detect the glycemic levels in food. This sensor can determine the GI of different food sources in real-time which is crucial for diabetes management. 

“Disease management becomes crucial, and an important part of that, especially for diabetics, is knowing the glycemic index of what they eat,” says Professor Dipankar Bandyopadhyay of IIT Guwahati, one of people from the research team behind this important innovation of the department of chemical engineering, along with Prathu Raja Parmar, who explained to The Better India what went into this Point-Of-Care-Testing (POCT) prototype.

How the sensor took birth

In 2014-15, Nestle India was in a soup when food safety regulators found that Maggi Noodles had high levels of monosodium glutamate (MSG) along with lead, which was much above permissible levels. 

Prathu, who has a food engineering background and is pursuing his research on different issues in food, started researching lead contamination in rice and other starch sources. It was his research on the synthesis of nanoparticles in different foods that led them to innovating this sensor for diabetes.

“There was a lot of controversy then about lead and arsenic contamination in rice and other starch sources in fast foods. While working on that, we found that the other major aspect was the glycemic nature of these starch sources. We wanted to create awareness on the GI of these fast food items which are consumed so much by the younger generations,” says Professor Dipankar.

This sensor was developed at IIT-Guwahati’s sensor hub. While some sensors work on disease identification, this one works on disease mitigation, explains the professor. 

“Complications due to diabetes, like chronic kidney and liver diseases, really affect the quality of life. We want to show the correlation of junk food to GI to help the next generation become free of diabetes. One can follow a personalised diet thanks to our high precision sensor and manage diabetes better,” he adds. 

What’s the role of GI?

The team explains that high-GI foods stimulate an increased demand for insulin, contributing to the risk of developing type-2 diabetes, while low-GI food helps to prevent diabetes, heart disease and obesity. Foods with low GI increase glucose slowly and can help you control your blood sugar. High GI foods, on the other hand, increase blood glucose quickly and make it very hard to control diabetes.

There are three major components in the food we consume – carbohydrates, fats and proteins. A large part of Indian food consists of carbohydrates. 

“Carbohydrates contain a large amount of starch. Starch gets broken down into glucose, which we then burn to generate energy for work. The scientific name of starch is amylose, which is broken down by an enzyme called amylase to maltose (small chain sugars), before getting converted to glucose,” says Professor Dipankar.

He further adds that there are three different types of starches, which digest differently and knowing which food item contains which starch, can transform the way you manage your diabetes. The three types are – Rapidly Digestible Starch (RDS), Slowly Digesting Starch (SDS) and Resistant Starch (RS).

“RDS is easily digested and is found in highly glycemic food, which can increase your blood glucose level. Fast foods like noodles, crackers and biscuits contain a lot of RDS. SDS takes time for digestion and will not increase your glucose level immediately. It can help mitigate diabetes. RS doesn’t get digested easily, keeps your stomach full and helps in diabetes management,” he adds. 

Nishita says that the game changer in her life was when she found out about tracking GI and started her research on which food helps her the best. “Not all carbohydrates are bad. Some make your blood sugar shoot up, while others work slowly. GI assigns a number to these foods and shows how fast a particular food item increases your blood glucose,” she adds. 

Professor Dipankar adds that since there is a need for large-scale diabetes mitigation, they wanted to find a way to classify various sources of food to help diabetics avoid those items for better management. He adds that seeing the trend of increased fast-food consumption, they felt the need for a portable device that could immediately isolate high-glycemic foods. 

Detecting GI in five minutes

The Point-Of-Care-Testing (POCT) prototype developed by the IIT-Guwahati team can detect the GI of common food sources in real-time with the help of a high-performance nano bio-sensor indigenously developed by the IIT-Guwahati team.

Prathu explains that all we need to do is dispense a drop of the food source on the sensor. It will tell you whether it contains RDS, SDS or RS using an electrochemical sensor.

“You can classify the food before eating it, whether it is high GI or low GI. You can find out right at the source. Say you are preparing a roti, you can test this with the dough itself and know if it will spike your blood glucose or not,” he adds.

The team adds that when they tested the device on fast foods like crackers, biscuits, chips and bread, they found that crackers had the most RDS, followed by potato chips and then brown bread.

“Notably, the SDS/RS of brown bread releases maltose slowly, causing a gradual increase in glucose levels and a lower response from insulin in the body,” explains Professor Dipankar.

The sensor is made of gold nanoparticles coated with amylase, the same enzyme that digests carbohydrates in our bodies. This amylase breaks the starch in the food into maltose. The sensor detects how much maltose is produced. The amount of maltose produced is then electrochemically detected to classify the food sources into RDS, SDS and RS. 

Professor Dipankar and Prathu, along with other researchers on their team – Jiwajyoti Mahanta, Saurabh Dubey, Tapas Kumar Mandal – have filed a patent for their real-time glycemic index sensor. The research findings have also been published in the journal of Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering by the American Chemical Society. The research, which took over five years, has been funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

The team wants to translate their research into a final product, which would be a point of care testing device. Their goal is to lower the disease burden of diabetes in our country.

“We classify vegetarian and non-vegetarian food with a green and red dot. You immediately know which food is vegetarian or not. Similarly, our final goal is the point of care testing device, which will convey at the source level, to your mobile, whether the food is good for diabetes management or not. You will get a message on your phone whether it is in the red zone, yellow zone or green zone for diabetics. We want this device to help in colour coding foods according to their glycemic index. Knowing which food is good for diabetics should be that easy,” adds Professor Dipankar.

Nishita sounds thrilled by the idea as well. She says that knowing this would make life very easy for diabetics like her. 

“If I’m able to find out if a food has a low or high GI at the source, it would be great. I wouldn’t have to worry about what I’m consuming then and calculate the GI myself. This will provide precise information and actually tell you if a food item, which we consume outside or at home, is good for you,” she says. 

Edited by Padmashree Pande. All pictures courtesy to the research team at IIT-Guwahati.

Sources

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Metabolic non-communicable disease health report of India: the ICMR-INDIAB national cross-sectional study (ICMR-INDIAB-17)

But life put a damper on his plans.

“I did not get in,” he says.

Siddharth thought his avenues were shut. But months later, the inauguration of a brand new NID campus at Kurukshetra in Haryana proved that life works in mysterious ways. Siddharth was one of the first students to get admitted into the course here.

In retrospect, the ‘Forbes 30 under 30 2023’ prodigy says the years he spent in Haryana chiselled his design career in ways that would have never been possible in Ahmedabad.

We catch up with him as he rushes for an early morning lecture at Harvard University, where he is currently pursuing his master’s. In the course of the chat, the design maestro takes cognisance of the journey that was and is still shaping up.

Using design to bridge gaps

The brief for the first project assigned to Siddharth’s batch at NID was crisp — design a product that is simple in nature. The unusual ask gave him the freedom to explore the world beyond his campus, and it was during this time that he came across an organisation for the blind.

To Siddharth, this was an opportunity to know more about the community. “In the months that followed, I began spending a lot of time with them,” he shares adding that it introduced him to the many day-to-day problems they face.

One of the most common problems they faced was measuring medicine. While pouring the syrup into the measuring cup that came with the bottle, the markings were often indecipherable, leading to them taking an extra dose. In cases of patients with tuberculosis, whose medication spanned months, this was a grave problem.

But not for Siddharth, who is used to turning every roadblock into a solution. “I came up with an inclusive device to be attached to the medicine bottle. Now, the person pouring the syrup would easily be able to pour only the amount they needed.”

The ease of the solution prompted Siddharth to realise, “The most overlooked problem is in fact the most important step while designing something.”

What was once a whimsical fascination was now turning to be a deep calling for Siddharth, who wanted to integrate social impact into every one of his future projects. And he did.

Elaborating on the heart-lung machine ‘Enable’, Siddharth says it resulted from a brainwave during a visit to one of the hospitals in Kurukshetra.

Five days spent watching eight open heart surgeries familiarised him with the nuances of the machine’s working. “It’s like a mock heart used by a perfusionist. It takes over the function of the heart and lungs during surgery to enable circulation to continue. It’s an integral part of the operation,” he shares.

But what shocked Siddharth was the ergonomics of the device. One wrong slip of a finger and the controls changed, increasing the blood flow rate. The faulty knob was to blame coupled with the regulator on the device that needed a number of clicks to perform a function. Patients in Kurukshetra deserved more, he thought, and this inspired his next idea.

The next six weeks saw Siddharth working on an alternative machine with better ergonomics. He was guided by perfusionists and doctors at every stage. ‘Enable’ is still in the concept stage and needs FDA approval.

Automating traditional solutions

As Samson Samuel, senior experience lead at Philips — where Siddharth worked for a couple of years — shares, “Siddharth is constantly looking to contribute to humanity through his designs. What sets him apart from other designers is that he is always willing to embrace feedback. He looks for actual problems that exist and takes inspiration from what’s around him. These problems are not being solved by other organisations. He takes it upon himself.”

‘Enable’ was a testament to this.

Likewise, Siddharth’s next project ‘Survive’. The target group this time was the farmers in Kurukshetra. Elaborating on this, Siddharth says, “Farmer suicides are very common in the town. The five doctors I spoke to while researching said they handle suicide cases almost every day.”

The doctors shared that the most common form of suicide was consuming poison. “By the time an antidote is administered, the poison has already entered the circulatory system and the patient dies.”

‘Survive’, explains Siddharth, is a first aid device which can be used by healthcare workers for gastric irrigation — also known as stomach pumping. The procedure works to remove ingested contents. Since time is of the essence in such cases, Siddharth worked to innovate a device that could do this in a short time. “The traditional process takes 45 minutes but ‘Survive’ reduces the time taken to five minutes.”

But even as he is powering through more ideas while at Harvard, Siddharth is in awe of the course life has taken him on.

“It all started in school,” he recalls.

For 13-year-old Siddharth, school days meant a tantalising amount of homework, something he wasn’t a fan of. But the minute the bell went off for the art class, Siddharth was rapt with attention.

“Since those early years, I was passionate about working with something creative. I had a limited attention span for other subjects, but when it came to creative stuff, I’d put my heart and soul into it.”

When he wasn’t taking electronics apart to study how they worked, he was glued to the TV show MAD, which aired on Pogo TV. Borrowing inspiration from the crafts taught by the host and director of the show Rob, Siddharth would participate in art competitions. It was during one of these events that he met Rob, who studied at NID.

“In that moment I knew this sounded like the place I could go to and build my experience in design.” But, it all happens for the best, he says, referring to NID Ahmedabad not panning out. “While it was a major shift in the plan, it changed a lot of my perspective.”

Kurukshetra was a world in itself with rural issues that Siddharth slowly began discovering as he roamed the town post-college hours. “The kind of societal imbalance I heard of urged me to create social impact here. Usually, design is looked at as something luxurious or artsy. But I want to change the world through my design,” he shares.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

1. Thiruvengadam Rajendram Seshadri 

Seshadri was a pioneer in chemistry with his research spanning numerous topics such as work on antimalarial drugs, plant chemistry, flavonoids, lichens, and pigments of cotton flowers. Though nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1966 for his work on organic compounds, Seshadri did not receive the honour. That same year, the prize was awarded to Robert S. Mulliken for his “fundamental work concerning chemical bonds and the electronic structure of molecules by the molecular orbital method”. 

2. Gopalasamudram Narayanan Ramachandran 

He was said to be a remarkably creative individual with an active mind that never relaxed. Ramachandran lived up to this title through his work in molecular biophysics and the study of protein structures. Though nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry by Sir C V Raman, Ramachandran did not receive the honour. 

3. Dr Upendranath Brahmachari 

The Bengali doctor’s discovery of urea stibamine — a drug with the potential to treat kalaazar with a 90 percent success rate —got him a Nobel Prize nomination twice, once in 1929 and again later in 1942. But he did not win. This did not deter Brahmachari from furthering his research in malaria, leprosy and influenza. 

4. Satyendra Nath Bose 

The Indian physicist was nominated for the Nobel Prize for his contributions to Bose-Einstein statistics — which helps study a collection of indistinguishable particles. However, despite the value of his work, he did not receive it. It is said that Oskar Klein, an expert on the Nobel Committee did not see his work worthy of a Nobel Prize.

5. Homi Jehangir Bhabha 

Though touted as one of the greatest scientists that India has ever seen and nominated for the Nobel Prize five times, Bhabha did not receive the honour. However, his work as the architect of the country’s nuclear energy program got him international recognition as did his contributions to quantum theory and cosmic radiation. 

6. Meghnad Saha 

Saha was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1930, 1937, 1939, 1940, 1951 and 1955. His Saha-Langmuir equation, which helps astronomers determine how much the various elements of a star have been ionised, was seen as an integral development in Physics. However, a shortcoming was that the equation was limited to astrophysics. While Saha attempted to publish in the famous Astrophysical Journal his theory of selective radiation pressure that would better explain the equation, he couldn’t due to financial constraints. It is often said that this missed opportunity may have been the reason for the missed Nobel Prize. 

Edited by Padmashree Pande

In 2019, Piya Bahadur went on a trip through the Indian countryside, which offered her a window into the lives of numerous small business owners concentrated in these areas. Two realisations dawned on her — crores of Indian families are supported by individuals running small businesses and that running a small business is complicated.

On returning from the trip, Piya resolved to come up with a solution to help small and micro-business owners understand, plan and grow their ventures, which was christened MeraBills.

The journey to building a startup is often a tough road, but Piya never found herself alone. At every step, she was mentored by the experts at AIC-ISB — a business accelerator empowering early-stage founders to build high-impact investable startups. Along with Piya’s startup, it has provided a launchpad for numerous other founders to get their ideas to fruition.

While Piya’s startup was in fintech, another founder Samiksha Ganeriwal’s ‘Kagzi’ focused on the environment, offering eco-friendly bamboo alternatives to PET bottles.

“It’s a mixed bag,” says Isha Handa, Assistant Vice President at AIC-ISB, referring to the range of businesses that the six-month-long accelerator programme has seen. Through the months, founders are equipped with the acumen to strengthen their business models.

As Isha details the programme, she emphasises that the first three months lay a keen focus on capacity building. “We help founders with go-to-market strategies, getting the building blocks of the business right, and conducting need assessment workshops. This gives them a clear picture of where they stand along with envisioning where they wish to be in the next six months in terms of the business goals.”

“The fourth month is dedicated to investor readiness,” says Isha, adding that this phase sees the founders receiving personalised guidance on their business pitches. Finally, the last phase of the programme spanning two months is designed to introduce them to ISB’s rich network pool of investors and corporates for exploring funding and pilot opportunities.

Startups are connected with foundations and philanthropic organisations from whom they receive customised support in their ventures. A post-programme support design is also in place to ensure no startup finds itself in the dark and can always access ISB’s pool of resources.

Here are six more startups that tasted success through this model:

1. Minbo Health

Perplexed about the rise of health conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension, among millennials, founder Ashish Vijh brainstormed on a solution. “In a world where everything is digitised, why can’t healthcare be too?” he wondered.

Minbo Health was the culmination of this idea. Through a personalised approach, the venture maps and tracks the data of patients. It then couples traditional bio-hacks with yoga therapy — all in an attempt to improve the users’ quality of life.

2. Green Hermitage

The cruelty-free fashion house helmed by Gayatri Varun is a step towards a greener planet. Modern-day tanneries (factories that treat animal skin to produce leather) pose respiratory hazards through the dust they emit, while also contributing to pollution.

The vegan leather alternatives by Green Hermitage aim to combat these problems.

3. Purple Ribbon

A report by the NIH indicated that a whopping 70 percent of the Indian population resides in Tier 2 and 3 cities. Ironically, 95 percent of cancer care facilities are concentrated in urban India. The gap is significant.

When founder Ratul Lahiri noticed the increasing rate of dropouts in cancer treatments from rural India, he probed to find the cause. He discovered that the looming expenses of travel to metro cities coupled with chemotherapy costs were a permanent cloud over these patients.

So, Lahiri started PurpleRibbon as a way of bringing cancer care to the patients’ doorsteps by turning existing under-utilised nursing homes in every neighbourhood into quality chemotherapy daycare facilities.

4. Neoperk

The end-to-end soil testing solution is the brainchild of Satyendra Gupta who forayed into this area after noticing how sample mismanagement, unreliability of results, and readability issues were impacting farmers in India. With one lab per 88,000 land-holding farmers, the problem was severe.

Today, Gupta’s comprehensive solution deploys standard operating procedures for the collection, processing, and testing of soil.

5. EcoOrbit Solutions

Though India generates a magnanimous 50,000 tonnes of dry waste per day, only 50 percent gets segregated and processed. The rest goes into landfills. This, founder Abhishek Gorle noted, was because material segregation is manually driven and thus labour-intensive. Since the process takes longer, waste continues to pile in landfills and recycled products continue to be priced high.

Gorle’s EcoMonitor uses a deep learning-based machine vision system that identifies different waste materials. Whereas the EcoArm, a smart robotics solution, segregates it as per colour and type of material.

6. Solinas

The problem of wastage and contamination in the water pipeline industry is huge. It is highly unorganised and manually managed, creating lots of problems for the end customers as well as for the pipeline companies.

Moinak’s solution caters to both water and sanitation sectors, which helps in pipelines, manholes and sewer lines. His product Endobot is a pipeline crawler robot that inspects 90 mm to 1,000 mm pipelines to collect data like cracks, dents, deformed pipe joints, pipeline inclination, etc. It can also predict the C-value and ovality of the pipeline using laser profiling and mounted sensors.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

In the uninterrupted hours they had until Aditya’s parents returned from work, the duo made some great memories. The fondest of these, according to Aditya, were their daily chit-chats. But in 2017, their world shifted following his grandfather’s Parkinson’s disease diagnosis. 

In the years that followed, the condition rapidly advanced. The stiffness in muscles coupled with difficulty in talking put a damper on the daily activities that the two had come to enjoy. “It was around 2020 that he found even basic conversations tough,” Aditya shares, adding that his grandfather passed away in 2021. 

The grief of losing a grandparent, one who had grown to be close company, was coupled with introspection. “I wish in those last days I could have understood what he was trying to tell me,” the grandson explains. 

For someone who spent hours in his school’s ATL (Atal Tinkering Lab) — labs set up in schools across India to foster curiosity among students — Aditya was now driven by a new afflatus, one that involved coming up with an innovation to help patients with Parkinson’s disease.  

The ache in him to do more for society built a roadmap to innovation, one that eventually led to Aditya’s ‘Kalam’ initiative in early 2023, which aids students in India with information about funding, scholarships, grants and more.

When ingenuity fills gaps 

For the next several months after his grandfather passed away, Aditya barely emerged from his room and the lab. But when he finally did, it was with a research report — one that won acclaim from The Hong Kong Academy of Sciences — and a prototype device he called the ‘NeuroSight’. 

The non-invasive headset would one day help paralysed and neurological patients convert their thoughts into text and images, he postulated. 

NeuroSight prides itself on the science of neuroimaging, which is a branch of medical imaging that assesses brain health. By deploying a host of microcontrollers, sensors and electrodes, it collects information from the patient and relays this to an app that the family member can download. Through a real-time processing module, the patient’s thoughts are converted into text. 

NeuroSight and its potential were recognised by Aditya’s school much before it made it to international platforms. Vineeta Garg, the head of the department of computer science at Aditya’s school commends the device for its multifaceted approach. 

She notes how people with various kinds of neurological conditions can be helped. “A patient who has had a stroke can use NeuroSight to control a robotic arm, while a child with cerebral palsy could use it to play video games.” 

But that said, she notes the best feature of the device is being able to deliver “high technological assistance even with low-level neuroimaging”. This is possible due to AI integration, she adds. 

When one idea leads to another

Every new project that Aditya undertakes has an undertone of impact to it. So, even his second innovation ‘VacciVan’ —  which he came up with in 2021 on the heels of NeuroSight’s success —  was in a bid to help. 

During the second wave of COVID-19, Aditya chanced upon a World Health Organisation (WHO) report that highlighted shocking figures, ones that formed the base for VacciVan. 

Sharing these, he says, “The report suggested that up to 50 percent of vaccines are wasted globally every year because of lack of temperature control and logistics to support an unbroken cold chain.” 

If only there was a way to ensure optimal temperatures during the last-mile delivery, he thought. Once again the ATL Lab at school was occupied for hours in the months to come. 

The result that Aditya produced this time was a thermoelectric device that offered controlled refrigeration. Called VacciVan, the “novel low-cost vaccine transportation and storage system” is powered via bicycle pedalling. This eliminates the need for ice packs or external electricity. 

Aditya elaborates on the mechanism, “When the bicycle is pedalled, current is generated through electromagnetism. The current is then stored and used to freeze the vaccines at the designated 2-8 degrees Celsius.”

Calling the innovation “a remarkable solution to a critical issue”, the headmistress at Aditya’s school, Vinita Kapoor, applauds him for his ingenuity. “VacciVan’s versatility can benefit not only healthcare but also food security in low-income or remote areas with unstable electricity supplies,” she notes while talking about its potential once it is scaled. 

The innovation not only propelled Aditya closer towards his goal of solving societal issues but also gave him financial impetus. VacciVan was finalised by the jury at Oxford University’s Rhodes Trust and Schmidt Futures, the initiative by Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, for a scholarship and $10,000 prototype grant. 

It was also selected by the department of science and technology of the Indian government for prototype development in Inspire-MANAK. This flagship programme fosters a culture of creativity and innovative thinking among school children aged 10-15 years. 

Things were now looking up and Aditya decided to apply for the ISEF 2022 (International Science and Engineering Fair) which is also the world’s largest international pre-college science competition. But, he recounts, “I couldn’t apply. A prerequisite was to first compete in the IRIS National Fair held in India.” 

This disappointment led him to another revelation. Despite the scores of opportunities and funding available for student innovators, there was a lack of information available on these. “Why isn’t there a platform where all of this is consolidated?” he thought. Then he decided to create one. 

Today, Aditya’s ‘Kalam’ helps students in accessing the assistance they require to bring their ideas to fruition. As for the intent behind the name, it has a dual purpose. 

“First, was the inspiration of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, who spent his entire life advancing our knowledge of science. He served as a role model to millions of young students, including me,” he says. 

The second meaning, he adds, is borrowed from the Hindi word for ‘pen’. “A pen gives us the power to tell our story and write our own destiny,” he says.

But to scale Kalam from a brainwave he had in class one day to a formal platform, he needed time. An otherwise terrible situation proved to be a blessing in disguise. Aditya met with a road accident which led to a surgery and months of rehabilitation, which, he says, provided him with time to do just that. As he narrates the incident, he smiles at destiny’s funny ways. 

‘I was bedridden for three months with nothing to do but scroll the internet.’

Aditya was in the midst of his Class 12 board exams when the accident occurred. But that did not deter him from spending the next several months getting together the tools he needed to spearhead Kalam.  

He says, “I wanted Kalam to be a launchpad for students from government schools. They could be those unaware of opportunities for student innovators or for those who were aware but unable to collate information.” 

The team at Kalam comprises Aditya’s peers also intent on ironing out the wrinkles in the system through their platform. They lend their expertise pro bono. 

“A friend of mine who is studying law is helping us with the legalities of registering the company, while another who is studying agricultural science in Agra is helping us with the finer nuances of the app,” he says. The friends believe that this is a platform for students, by students. And they don’t shy away from helping.   

Kalam presently is also engaged in conducting workshops for students at various branches of Delhi’s Kendriya Vidyalaya who have ideas but lack resources. “We conducted sessions at my school where 20 kids from the neighbouring public schools were invited to a talk revolving around topics of innovation. The sessions were all about encouraging them on the various ways ideas can occur,” says Aditya, who shares that currently nine students are being helped through Kalam.  

For a Class XI student of Aditya’s school, Veerjyot Singh, Kalam has been a boon. Veerjyot, who is conceptualising a real-time app that can act as an image-to-text translator and vocaliser, says he got tailored guidance from Kalam. 

“Aditya provided me guidance and support on a regular basis to understand otherwise unknown avenues to develop and pitch my ideas and look for development support,” he notes. 

While Aditya is happy that the platform is serving its intended purpose, he takes a broader view of things. “When it comes to applying to Ecells at IIT Mandis (entrepreneurship hubs in IIT institutes that support innovation), students often face a dilemma as to whether their ideas will be funded in the face of established startups founded by graduates with top-class degrees.” 

But things are changing, he says, and hopes that Kalam will be that beacon of light for someone with an equal passion and vigour towards innovations for the betterment of people. 

Edited by Padmashree Pande.

The affected families, however, go through a devastating time, looking for their loved ones, often for years at end. Even in the digital age, with various wearable tracking devices available, 64,851 people go missing every month in India, according to the World Population Review of 2023.

But what if there was a way in which we as citizens could do more than just sympathise for the missing people or their families? Moved by these reports, a young student decided to do something about it. 

Akshay Ridlan, who was a UPSC aspirant in 2019, would read the newspapers every morning as part of his preparation for the exam. That’s when he would come across these reports. He was only 20 years old then. This shook something in the youngster and left him deeply disturbed as well.

In a chat with The Better India, Akshay talks about his motivation to do something about this grim reality. “Some stories of the missing children haunted me, particularly of an autistic kid, Tarun Gupta, who went missing on 1 October, 2019. The 17-year-old was made to board a train by an RPF officer, instead of getting him help. I felt devastated for that child and his parents. I felt like this problem has to be addressed,” he says.

Most people who lose their way or forget their identity are usually suffering from illnesses like dementia, age-related incapacities, or other mental disabilities. Young children with disabilities, and ones on the autism spectrum are especially at risk in these scenarios.

The now 24-year-old IT professional decided to build a tech-based solution to effectively end this problem. Akshay launched Project Chetna on 12 September 2023, and through it, he came up with unique QR tags, which can be worn around the neck inside a pendant.  

These QR codes, when scanned, would provide the contact details and medical information about the person who wears it. These tags are aimed to help vulnerable patients and citizens with mental health issues.

“In moments of disorientation or when people are lost, this QR tag can provide essential details, such as their medical condition, emergency contacts, and home address,” adds Akshay.

Helping the lost find their way home

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A post shared by Project Chetna (@projectchetna.in)

A series of events led to Akshay working on these tags. “My professor used to tell me that he forgets things easily. I thought it was just regular forgetfulness, but he told me that it was dementia. I then started reading about dementia and the problems faced by people living with it,” adds the Mumbai resident.

According to an National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) report, an estimated 8.8 million Indians older than 60 years have dementia. Dementia is the loss of cognitive functioning — memory, thinking, remembering, and reasoning. Alzheimer’s disease is one of the causes of dementia. People with dementia tend to wander about, which leads to them getting lost. 

To learn more about people living with this disease, Akshay spoke to caregivers, doctors and visited old-age homes. He also spoke to parents of children with disabilities to understand what they needed.

“The problem is that most people with dementia or children won’t have any tracking devices on them, which makes things difficult. Speaking to the caregivers, I realised how stressed they get when their loved one walks off. I wanted to build something solid for them, which is a fool-proof way of finding their child, or parent, or spouse,” explains Akshay.

Most of these people are also unable to communicate effectively. “These QR tags are an insurance for them,” adds Akshay. “I created this mechanism so that the identification process is sped up and the missing citizens can come home soon,” he adds.

All you need to do is log on here, click on register, fill in the personal details of the person you’re making it for, and you’ll get the QR pendant. Anyone with a phone can scan the code and get the information. Akshay is also building technology that will alert you when anyone scans the QR. 

“For example, if someone from Mumbai has wandered off to Bengaluru. If someone there scans the QR, you will get a notification. This will help save the lives of people who go missing,” he adds.

The need for empathy

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He named his project ‘Chetna’ as it means consciousness and because it is aimed at helping those people who have ‘lost their consciousness’. 

The QR-based digital identification system costs Akshay Rs 200 to make each pendant and he’s given away 100 of these for free so far. 

Mumbai resident Rajagopal, whose 15-year-old son is on the autism spectrum, first found out about this product through a friend. Upon hearing about it, he found that it was a well thought out and sensitive innovation.

“When my son went missing for just 10 minutes in a zoo, it was a horrendous experience for us. I had also seen a child in a Mumbai local train who seemed to be lost. I immediately handed him over to the railway police at Vikhroli station. Such a QR tag is very beneficial for children on the spectrum,” he says.

Akshay had previously created such QR tags for stray dogs as well, in February 2023. He was triggered to do this after his dog went missing. This particular QR code gives the name, gender, caretaker’s name, phone number and vaccination/sterilisation history of the animal.

While both these innovations are much-needed, they need a lot of awareness to succeed on a grand scale. 

“Police authorities, especially the railway police, need to be told about these QR codes. A lot of awareness is needed to make people acquainted with this product. Above all, people need to have a little more empathy, and be more forthcoming. When you see someone in distress, you need to try and help them,” adds Rajagopal. 

Tarun Gupta, who went missing in October 2019, has still not been found. Akshay hopes to prevent any other parent from going through such a harrowing ordeal.

You can find out more here. 

Edited by Padmashree Pande

Sources

NCBI

World population review

“My mother saw me crying after school many times and realised that something was not right. When I was five, she put me in another school that followed Montessori principles, and that changed my life,” says Prathyusha to The Better India.

The principal of this new school, which has since shut down, was unlike the other educators the young girl had met — he took a personal interest and helped diagnose her with mild dyslexia.

“The principal then held sessions regularly to help me out using Montessori methods, which focus on self-learning and use play to help children learn. The school was play-oriented and didn’t focus just on studies. Slowly, I started writing and learning well,” adds the 26-year-old.

A six-month journey to find their purpose

This was Prathyusha’s introduction to how important timely intervention is when it comes to learning disabilities. It’s also what she understood with much more detail after she began volunteering years later at L V Prasad Eye Institute in 2020.

Volunteering at the organisation’s Institute for Visual Rehabilitation, she would record audiobooks for children living with visual impairments, and witnessed the “positive effects of early intervention in many young children”.

It was also here that she found like-minded people in Vivian Manohar (32), a mechanical engineer, and Nivedha Christabel, an optometrist.

Vivian recalls, “We were able to see first-hand the problems faced by the community. While there are a lot of technologies available to help people with visual impairment, most are imported or not accessible. We wanted to change this, and make technology accessible and affordable,” adds Vivian.

The same year, Vivian and Prathyusha were chosen for a government fellowship for social innovators called SPARSH, conducted by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC).

As part of this social innovation programme, they travelled to rural areas across the country like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh for six months and gained exposure at three levels — primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare.

Prathyusha recalls, “We had a chance to travel around the country and observe the medical setup. As we were keen on helping children with disabilities, we focused on how they were accessing healthcare.”

“At L V Prasad, we had a glimpse of how early intervention works. However, in rural facilities, even in government hospitals, not many facilities were available for developmental disabilities. This was true for most small towns and villages. We knew that this was the area we needed to focus on.”

And so in 2021, Prathyusha, Vivian and Nivedha co-founded Grailmaker Innovations, an assistive technology company. With the monthly stipend and kickstart grant they received from their fellowship, they developed their first product — Vision Nanny.

Affordable treatment for thousands of children

Vision Nanny is a SaaS platform (software application) that provides therapy for cerebral visual impairment (CVI) at the click of a button. Why CVI?

During their fellowship, the duo observed that several young children had visual impairments that were not ocular (eye-related) but caused by damage to parts of the brain that process vision.

As Vivian explains, “CVI is a major problem that is going unaddressed. It is a growing cause of childhood blindness. This occurs in children because of complicated birth, preterm birth, or accidents. Their eyes are fine, but due to neurological damage, they are not able to understand what they see. The whole world looks like a confused maze for them. The only solution for this is vision therapy, but the awareness and expertise at rural centres is appalling,” adds Vivian.

Vision Nanny caters to children with this problem. It is a set of digital activities that can be accessed through a mobile device, tablet, laptop, or even Smart TV. Every activity that is provided for developing the visual skills of a child in a hospital is available on this platform and has the advantage of being customisable.

“Vision Nanny provides personalised intervention for every child with CVI through customisable, interactive, vision stimulation activities. It is designed for parents and special educators. You can access different colours and pictures, move objects, show charts, conduct simple activities like moving a torchlight, etc,” says Vivian.

The platform has three phases, depending on the age and condition of the child. The different activities are used to improve the user’s vision, and the platform is also equipped with interactive tools that make this process fun.

“It starts with simple shapes like circles and triangles, which you can show in different colours. You can also change the background colour and size of the object, highlight features, add text, and bubble wrap it. This helps children identify the word as a shape. You can also move objects and add complexity as the child grows,” notes Vivian, adding that these interventions change how children interact with the environment and do activities independently.

“After recognising different objects on the screen, they will be able to view things better in person too, starting with simple things like recognising their toothbrush and toothpaste,” he explains.

Vision Nanny also aims to help therapists with an easy-to-use assessment tool and dashboard to monitor the overall progress of the child.

Dr Beula Christy, head, Institute for Vision Rehabilitation, L V Prasad Eye Institute, says that this platform is a big boon. “This application gives educators and parents the ability to control everything with customisation, which other apps don’t offer. You can change colour, change activities, and even show your photo. It helps continuous therapy, which is the need in CVI,” says Dr Beula.

A better life for children with CVI

CVI cannot be treated with surgery or spectacles like other ocular problems. Since this is a problem related to the brain, treatment has to be continuous, and the best results are seen in children where intervention is done early.

“Early assessment and intervention is crucial. We have babies as young as eight months who come to our centre with CVI. We do vision therapy with them. This has to be continuous. After doing it for, say, three months, we teach the parents to do the same at home. If therapy is interrupted, even for a month, we have to start from scratch again,” adds Dr Beula.

Rohini (name changed), mother of a 4.5-year-old girl with CVI, believes that long-term therapy is not practical for most people due to its financial and mental strain. Her daughter was diagnosed with CVI after an accident when she was just one year old.

“We went for therapy to hospitals for almost two years. We would leave home at 7 am in the morning and return only by early evening. My daughter is a schoolgoer now, which makes it difficult to attend therapy regularly. It’s also very expensive. When the pandemic hit, we would go to the hospital by bus to save money,” says Rohini.

CVI is a growing problem in India, with Grailmaker estimating that around four million children in India are affected by it. One therapy session for CVI costs Rs 800–1500 for an hour, which amounts to almost Rs 2 lakh per year.

With Vision Nanny, though, the cost is Rs 7,000 per year, which is much more affordable. Rohini adds that Vision Nanny is a great tool that allows them to continue therapy from home.

“We have seen a marked improvement in our daughter thanks to therapy. Vision Nanny has many activities which engage the child and help improve their hand-eye coordination. After school, I spend time with my daughter using the application,” adds Rohini.

With daily practice, Rohini is confident that her daughter can lead an independent life.

Vivian says, “We want this intervention to reach any child, even at the remotest of areas, and help health workers easily screen and provide therapy.”

Launching Vision Nanny as a pilot programme in June 2021, the duo has so far seen 1,800 subscribers, including special educators from 10 countries like Dubai and USA. Annual subscription costs Rs 7,000 per annum.

“If intervention is not done at the right time, it affects their other abilities. Many times, they are also mislabeled as children with learning impairment. We don’t want any child to lose out on having the right treatment,” says Prathyusha.

This treatment is helping children, including Rohini’s, attend school and access education like their peers. “My dream is for my child to have a good life. Thanks to therapy, she can go to potty herself, go to school, and play with children. Vision Nanny has given us hope for a better future,” Rohini adds.

You can learn more about Vision Nanny here.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

Over the past 18 years, the retired Army man has identified and helped over 200 rural innovators, including Padma Shri awardee Chintakindi Mallesham. Mallesham created the Laxmi ASU machine to reduce the time and labour required to weave Pochampalli silk sarees.

It was during his service in the Indian Army that the armoured fighting vehicle specialist first encountered the acumen of grassroot innovators in soldiers. 

Out of the 200 innovations that he has identified so far, 26 are ready for sale, 24 have patents, 13 have bagged President awards, and 2 received Padma Shri awards. The prototypes of all these innovations are displayed in the Brigadier’s home in Vayupuri, Secunderabad.

“We helped the innovators shine in national exhibitions and competitions, and even get loans for manufacturing or scaling up. Till date, we have been able to generate almost four crore financial assistance for them,” he adds.

Here’s how Brigadier Ganesham has helped bring hundreds of remarkable innovations to light:

Edited by Padmashree Pande

In rural areas, about 54 percent of mothers attend the recommended visits, compared to 68.1 percent in urban areas. This implies that roughly half of pregnant women in rural regions do not visit hospitals for advised care.

Consequently, these complications significantly impact women’s lives. In India, there were 97 maternal deaths per 1,00,000 live births reported between 2018–20.

“One of the major reasons behind such deaths is that women avoid going to far-off healthcare centres for routine checkups. The complications, if any, remain ignored,” Tamil Nadu-based Senthil Kumar Murugesan tells The Better India.

“High-risk mothers are usually identified in the third trimester, which is around the eighth month of pregnancy. However, by this time, it’s often too late to effectively manage complications before labour. This can lead to fatal outcomes. Currently, all records are maintained on paper, and if mortality occurs, the reason behind the death remains unknown. There are no data-based analyses available,” adds the 33-year-old.

An electronics and communications engineer by profession, Senthil worked with companies like Samsung and Qualcomm for seven years. But to address this gap, in 2019, he started JioVio Healthcare, an IoT-based maternal healthcare startup that provides early risk monitoring services at home.

“We developed an AI tool that can predict high-risk pregnancies in the second trimester. This helps the women get early doctor’s recommendations if any changes are needed in nutrition, sleep cycle, etc. Our goal is to convert high-risk pregnancies into low-risk ones by ensuring the timely provision of medication and proper nutrition,” he shares.

Senthil informs that since 2019, the startup has catered to more than 30 lakh mothers from 14,328 villages in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Kerala. Through a 1,000-day care programme, he has also helped at least 7,320 high-risk pregnant women so far.

From sister’s struggle to lifesaving innovation for rural women

He first came across the pregnancy healthcare gap when his sister was pregnant in 2016. “She is a career-driven woman and would miss her antenatal appointments due to the lack of time. Also, the distance from her village to the hospital is far,” says the Madurai resident.

His concern for her drove him to develop a prototype of a device that could monitor one’s vitals like blood glucose and blood pressure. “I wanted to make sure my sister does not go into the labour room with any complications,” he says.

“This experience made me realise that women face significant challenges when visiting hospitals for antenatal care. The long travel times and waiting periods of five to six hours for a short consultation lead many women to avoid these visits and postpone them to the next month. However, this delay prevents potential risks from being assessed in a timely manner. I became aware of the alarming mortality rates among tribal and rural pregnant women and felt determined to find a solution,” he adds.

So after creating a simple device for his sister, Senthil felt inspired to assist more women, particularly those in rural and remote areas. His aim was to help them monitor essential vitals usually recorded during antenatal visits.

After three years of clinical trials, he founded JioVio Healthcare in 2019.

Monitoring vitals in a single device

Explaining the process of reaching out to rural women, Senthil says, “We work with the state governments. After contacting them, the secretaries inform us about the districts with high maternal mortality. We then approach the district collector, who onboards block-level officers, healthcare workers, and rural women. When any of the rural women get pregnant, a mobile application is used to track their health and conduct monthly checkups.”

“We give our medical device called AlloTricorder to healthcare workers. They use it to measure vital parameters like blood pressure, blood glucose, ECG, and temperature — all using a single device. They then digitally transfer the data via Bluetooth to the application,” he says.

“The data collected at hospitals is the same as what we capture at home. Our idea was to gather this data right at the patient’s home. If lab tests are necessary, we collect the samples from their homes,” he adds.

Senthil says, “Our device is unique as other tools available in the market are mainly for foetal monitoring. However, we still recommend that women visit the hospital every month, where the doctor can review the monthly data and prescribe medication accordingly,” he says.

So far, he has onboarded 15,000 healthcare workers and 2,500 doctors.

A unique wearable for high-risk mothers

Senthil also created a smart wearable device called Allowear, designed for high-risk pregnant women who need continuous monitoring.

He says that this battery-operated device tracks their sleep cycle, calories burned (indicating nutritional deficiencies), pulse rate, and steps. It also sends timely reminders for taking medicines. ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers can retrieve the recorded health data through Bluetooth and upload it to the cloud, where doctors can access it for review, he informs.

Senthil explains a scenario where such devices are useful. “If a high-risk mother has high blood pressure, doctors also consider her sleep pattern. If she isn’t getting proper sleep, it can contribute to increased blood pressure. In such cases, the doctor may prescribe different medications instead of a standard blood pressure tablet.”

The data is collected weekly and reviewed by a doctor every 15 days. High-risk mothers are recommended to use the wearable device for 1,000 days — starting from the fourth week of pregnancy until the baby’s second birthday.

The cost for this service is only Re 1 per day, covered by the government. Senthil says that their annual revenue is about Rs 1.5 crore.

Commenting on how useful the devices are, Madurai-based Dr S Karthikeyan, who has been practising medicine for 13 years, tells The Better India, “We have seen that a lot of pregnant women do not take care of themselves which causes nutritional deficiencies among them. This changes their blood glucose and pressure, and ECG.”

“With these devices, we are able to understand the problems and alert local healthcare workers. Accordingly, we are also able to prescribe iron supplements, folic acid tablets, and other nutrition supplements to the women. I can monitor their health by sitting in my OPD. We have been able to save hundreds of lives thanks to these devices. They have a huge potential to reduce the maternal mortality rate in India,” he adds.

Senthil claims that he has been able to reduce maternal mortality by 10 percent in the regions he has worked. For him, the impact of the work is extremely satisfying.

“After five years into any corporate job, the work is pretty much the same. I chose entrepreneurship because it gives me more learning opportunities. Instead of working in a big Fortune 500 company, this work gives me immense gratification. It is fulfilling to see we are able to save lives with our devices,” he shares.

Senthil shares that he now intends to expand their services in North and Northeast India.

Source:

National Family Health Survey – 5: Published by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Significant Decline in Maternal Mortality in India: Published by Press Information Bureau on 14 December 2022.

Edited by Pranita Bhat. All photos: Senthil Kumar.

“So, science has been my bread and butter since early childhood. I have always been fascinated and curious about science and technology,” says Dr Dastidar (45) in conversation with The Better India. 

The 22-year veteran of the tech industry, who holds 11 United States patents, is the founder of Bengaluru medtech startup SigTuple, which automates the manual microscopic review of biological samples using artificial intelligence (AI) for faster turnaround time for patients, making the lives of pathologists easier. 

Dr Dastidar’s love for science and technology took him to the corridors of the famed Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur. There, he completed his BTech and PhD in computer science and engineering before embarking on a career building software and holding technical leadership positions for some of the premier technology companies in the world. 

However, when he started his professional career back in 2000 at National Semiconductor, an American semiconductor manufacturer, tragedy struck back home. 

Dr Dastidar’s father passed away the same year after his treatment for acute myeloid leukaemia was delayed due to an earlier misdiagnosis. Alongside his day job at various tech companies, for about a decade and a half, Dr Dastidar began working on the problem of how to prevent such fatal instances of medical misdiagnosis. He founded SigTuple in 2015. 

SigTuple was, in part, the result of this search for a solution, and with the company, he has embarked on a mission to revolutionise pathology through robotics and advanced AI. 

“At SigTuple, we are about applying artificial intelligence into an area which positively impacts human lives. Accurate and early diagnosis of disease conditions is one such way, and this cause resonated with me personally,” he says.

Mitigating the loss of human lives

Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, SigTuple combines AI, robotics, microfluidics and cloud computing to create intelligent diagnostic solutions that make quality healthcare delivery affordable and accessible. 

Here’s how Dr Dastidar explains the problem statement. 

“In many cases, critical diseases go undiagnosed till it is too late. This could be because of the lack of access to quality healthcare. It could also be due to the inefficiencies in the healthcare delivery system. Whatever the cause might be, the effect is ultimately tragic — unnecessary suffering and loss of human lives. The idea behind SigTuple was to build artificial intelligence that could help early screening and diagnosis, possibly in underserved areas, which would make life better for the end patient.” 

More specifically, however, he notes that there is one pathologist for a population of more than 65,000 people. With the aim of making the life of the pathologist easier and thereby improving patient outcomes, their focus lies in automating the inefficient and error prone manual microscopic review process for the most common tests — blood and urine microscopy. 

Navigating the ‘biggest bottleneck’

One key device they have developed in this regard is the AI100, which offers a solution combining software and hardware components. The hardware is an automated slide scanner, capable of converting any physical specimen into digital images. 

The AI platform analyses these images and provides clinical insights into the sample, which brings down slide review time for the pathologist and allows them to seamlessly work remotely or collaborate with their colleagues across geographies.

“Microscopic review of blood samples is a gold standard for diagnosis of many critical diseases. This includes something as serious as the various forms of leukaemia. This process remains predominantly manual in more than 96% laboratories globally and is thus the biggest bottleneck in terms of turnaround time for sample reporting,” explains Dr Dastidar. 

“Being manual, it is also prone to errors. Most importantly, blood microscopy is by far the largest use case of the microscope in a clinical laboratory. The idea behind AI100 is to automate the microscopic review of blood samples through robotics and AI, to make the process standardised, reduce turnaround time, and improve quality of reporting,” he adds.  

While the idea of AI100 originated at the time of the birth of SigTuple, Dr Dastidar and his team tried out different approaches on the hardware side before zeroing on the current design. He says his team knew that they had to build the hardware themselves, as there was no cost-effective solution available for automated digital microscopy in the market. 

“Our biggest challenge was the founding team’s lack of experience with hardware design, especially hardware that requires micron level precision, as in microscopy. We had vast experience in developing artificial intelligence and data analysis tools, but hardly any to develop hardware. As a result, we made many rookie mistakes along the way, which delayed the final deployment of AI100 into the market. Those were good lessons to learn,” he notes. 

AI100 was ready for beta testing starting early 2019. SigTuple deployed the beta version into many labs, and used the opportunity to gather customer feedback and smoothen out any rough edges. 

COVID-19, however, dampened their commercialisation plans. They started commercial deployments of AI100 after the second wave of the pandemic subsided in late 2021.

How does it work?

In normal laboratory practice, a blood sample is smeared on a glass slide and then reviewed under the microscope. 

With this device, instead of a pathologist reviewing the slide under the microscope, the slide is inserted into AI100. The machine automatically captures high magnification microscopic images of the relevant portions of the slide and uploads the images to a cloud platform. 

“The AI module resides on the cloud platform. It analyses the images, mimicking what a pathologist would do while reviewing it under the microscope. The result of this analysis is then presented to the pathologist on a web browser, which makes the report accessible from anywhere and anytime. The pathologist reviews the AI suggested report and then approves it.

This process helps the current workflow in many ways,” says Dr Dastidar. 

First of all, the pathologist need not be in the lab to report on the sample. 

“Imagine a critical patient requiring immediate attention in the dead of the night. Earlier, the pathologist had to rush to the hospital or the patient had to wait. Now, that is no longer necessary, as the pathologist can report from home, while the sample is in the laboratory where the AI100 machine is present. Further, since the AI does most of the job of the pathologist, it makes her more efficient, by reducing the review time. She can now concentrate more on the really critical patients, rather than wasting time on near normal samples,” he explains.

Finally, the AI is free from fatigue-related errors that impact human pathologists. It’s better at detecting those rarer and easy to miss abnormalities. This ultimately improves the end patient outcome. With AI-enabled automated digital microscopy, the sample review process by a pathologist, which used to take 5 to 10 minutes, has come down to 30 seconds today. Also, thanks to this technology, a pathologist can now review approximately 300 slides per day as compared to 30 slides with manual microscopic solutions, according to Dr Dastidar.  

“This is how AI, robotics and cloud all come together to improve the speed and accuracy of diagnosis. Also, apart from blood, AI100 can also analyse urine samples. Urine microscopy is the second most common use of the microscope in the clinical laboratory. Soon, other and more specialised tests will be enabled on the same platform,” he adds. 

Components of AI100

AI100 consists of an optical column with a microscopic lens (400X magnification), an LED illumination unit and a CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) camera. 

“It has a mechanical stage used for moving the sample under the lens, and also to focus it, which operates at micron level precision. There is an electronic printed circuit board (PCB) to control the mechanical stage and the LED unit. It also contains a full-fledged compute unit consisting of an Intel processor and NVIDIA GPU,” states Dr Dastidar. 

“SigTuple has the capability to assemble the hardware in house. We also have a tie-up with a certified contract manufacturer for medical devices. While many of the internal components are imported, some are locally sourced. The plastic cover and the machined components are manufactured locally,” Pranat Bhadani, President of Business Growth, SigTuple. 

Improving care in Tier 2 and 3 cities

SigTuple is also focused on equipping Tier 2 and 3 cities by installing their device in pathology labs and introducing the need for advanced automated digital microscopy, which will help cope with the dearth of pathologists.

“Most laboratory chains are stunted in their ability to open up quality diagnostic centres in Tier 2 and 3 cities (and even beyond), by the inability to find a good pathologist for such labs. So, they typically operate in a hub-and-spoke model, where samples from smaller cities and towns are transported to their main centres in larger cities. This has its obvious drawbacks — increased turnaround time, sample degeneration while transport, and so on,” explains Bhadani. 

Microscopy requires the physical presence of the pathologist in the lab. Most other functions in the lab can be performed digitally, with technicians at the lab running the machines. 

“AI100 enables the labs to perform microscopy digitally over the internet, obviating the need to have the pathologist physically present in the lab. Given the increased efficiency of the pathologist due to the AI, the same pathologist can now look at many more samples in a day than what she could do earlier. This is how SigTuple is helping laboratories in their foray into smaller cities and towns. We count nearly all the top laboratory and hospital chains in India as our customers — HCG, Manipal, Krsnaa Diagnostics, SRL, Aarthi Scans, etc,” says Bhadani.

What is the road ahead for SigTuple? 

“We will continue our journey of innovation in the medical space and come up with newer solutions which solve real clinical problems. We will also continue our journey to expand commercially, both in India and internationally,” says Dr Dastidar. 

(Edited by Divya Sethu)

However, a Bengaluru-based company Minus Zero has made it possible!

The co-founders, Gagandeep Reehal and Gursimran Kalra, were in college when the idea of building something as futuristic as a driverless car came to them. With this in mind, the duo started Minus Zero — an AI mobility company and built India’s first self-driving car called ‘zPod’.

Wondering how the car works?

It has a network of high-resolution cameras that are strategically placed on the car. These cameras capture real-time images of their surroundings and transmit them to the AI System. The system makes decisions based on these images and drives the car.

“There is no ecosystem for an autonomous vehicle in India. So when we took on the task of building an autonomous vehicle, we also took up the task of building up an ecosystem around us,” says Gursimran.

The founders also believe that the car is also a step towards safer roads as it eliminates the risks of human errors while driving. zPod can drive on any kind of environmental or geographical terrain.

While the duo was confident about their design, others were unsure if India was the right place to launch the vehicle. “There were many people who questioned us and asked us to move our innovation to a developed country, but we wanted to make it in India,” says Gagandeep.

The company has raised 1.7 million dollars in seed funding from various investors.

Watch this short video to find out how this driverless car works:

Edited by Pranita Bhat

In 2021, she had a brilliant and innovative solution — repurposing plastic bottles and sacks to create affordable life jackets that could assist people during floods.

This innovation won her several awards and recognition. She won a silver medal at the India International Innovation and Invention Expo (INEX 2022), competing with students from all over the world.

“For me, the life jacket idea was an outcome of two things that I really care about. First, the need to conserve the environment and reduce carbon emissions. Second, to help people in need,” Anusweta tells The Better India.

The life jackets are crafted using 100 percent upcycled plastic materials with a production cost of approximately Rs 150. Available in small, medium, and large sizes, these jackets have the capacity to support up to 110 kg of weight while floating on water.

A conversation that gave birth to an idea

Born and raised in Hailakandi in Assam, Anusweta grew up hearing about how floods had been affecting the neighbouring areas. But this became a reality for her in 2019 when her hometown, too, was affected by the flood.

“I was in Class 9 when my district was flooded. The water entered the first floor of our house. It was a terrifying and devastating experience. Three people died in the district,” she recalls.

While things got better and life went back to normal, the horrors stayed with her. During a conversation with her tuition teacher, she realised that there was something she could actually do.

“My tuition teacher and maternal uncle, Satyapriya Das who is also a government school teacher, used to help me in my studies. After the floods, we were having a discussion on how it can be prevented, and he kept asking me various questions,” she says.

“His questions like ‘What can you do to save someone stuck in a flood?’ and ‘Are there resources around you that can help in that?’ made me think. This laid the seeds for the life jacket. Back then, it was just an idea that we discussed, and I decided to draw some prototypes,” she adds.

Satyapriya had always known Anusweta’s potential and wanted to push her to use her talents. “She was always a curious kid; eager to learn and grow. When she started talking about a life jacket made out of plastic, I could see the potential of the idea,” he says.

However, with board examinations, the discussion could not leave the room for a while. It was in 2021 when she regained interest in her idea.

“My teachers told me about a national-level science competition, and I decided to participate in it along with my friend and partner Pooja Das,” she says.

They started brainstorming and the duo tested and failed numerous times. “I tied 15 bottles to myself and went into the water to see if it works. To my surprise, it did, and I was floating. This made me realise that a plastic bottle that we usually throw away can be so useful and save a life,” she exclaims.

“Additionally, we see plastic waste increasing everywhere and thought that this might be a better way of reusing them,” she adds.

Anusweta and her partner Pooja participated in the National Children’s Science Congress and made it to the state level. They also went on to win a silver medal in the India International Innovation and Invention Expo (INEX 2022).

Using plastic bottles to save lives

While the innovation was hugely applauded by her school, friends and family, Anusweta did not feel that it was serving its purpose.

“The real test of my jacket came along in 2022 when our neighbouring district Silchar was hit by the flood. There were rescue operations going on everywhere and I wanted to help too,” she recalls.

Anusweta and Pooja, along with Satyapriya, asked the students and teachers at their school to help them to make these life jackets in bulk. They then sent it over to the rescue teams.

“We made 200 life jackets and distributed them for free to the people stuck in Silchar. Our friends and teacher came in unison to make it happen. The rescue team themselves tested the jackets first and took it to the people only after verifying its utility,” she says.

She also contacted several NGOs who were also working on rescue operations. Soon word spread and several other volunteers reached out to her for the jackets.

She upcycled 400 plastic bags/sacks and more than 1,000 plastic bottles to make the 200 life jackets.

“This was the real test and achievement for me. While the awards and recognition matter, it was not my aim. My motive behind this was always to help people,” says Anusweta.

Talking about the materials used in the jacket, the young innovator says, “You will need four things to make the jacket — a plastic bottle, plastic sack, thread and a needle. These can be made at home without any hassle and will not cost more than Rs 150.”

The small-size jackets require six one-litre plastic bottles, the medium ones require eight, and the large ones require 10 bottles. Only one plastic sack is needed to make a small-size jacket, whereas, for medium and large sizes, two are needed.

For the 200 life jackets that she distributed, she took the help of the local municipality to arrange the plastic bottles.

“I was among the rescuers who went to the Silchar district during the floods and distributed the jackets. Initially, people looked hesitant, but then with the help of the rescue team’s assurance, we were able to convince them,” explains Satyapriya.

Among the various volunteers who used Anusweta’s life jackets was Abhijit Dey. “I volunteered to distribute food in the Silchar area. With so many people stuck, there was an acute shortage of life jackets. That’s when we heard about two girls in the Hailakandi district who were distributing life jackets. It was quite unbelievable, so I decided to contact them myself,” he recalls.

“The jackets were made out of plastic bottles and were very safe to use. They safeguarded us and the people stuck in the flood. The weight-carrying capacity was good, and the best part was that it was a very low-cost alternative. It was a wonderful idea and executed equally well,” he adds.

According to the teacher, the large-sized jacket can keep up to 110 kg of weight afloat.

“There were a lot of calculations, trials and failures involved in the process, but the best part is that the jackets helped people. I am looking to expand more on the idea, and I am also trying to find ways in which the jackets can be made more easily available in flood-prone areas,” says Anusweta.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

For this, V Sahil Seshadri (15), Lakshya Goswami (16), Uday Singh (16), Sourish Grover (16), and Armaan Sharma (15) decided to zero in on the severe heatwaves generated by climate change and its effects. 

India has been battling unprecedented heatwaves that have massively affected its population’s health and resulted in loss of working hours, productivity, and economic well-being — especially farmers and daily wage labourers, who are forced to work in the open spaces. Only 4.9 percent of households in the country enjoy the comforts of air conditioners, and 14.1 percent of households possess air coolers.

Use of Air coolers is more dominant in western states . ~Half the households in Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan have air-coolers. Followed by neighbours – Chhattisgarh, Telangana and MP. https://t.co/sahma6ztix pic.twitter.com/IuGVeqmUfE

— Stats of India (@Stats_of_India) March 8, 2023

The students thus zeroed in on a simple, yet brilliant solution: an eco-friendly, portable, and cost-effective device named Zephyrus, which dually functions as a cooler and a heater. 

We sat down with these students to understand their innovation.

What led to Zephyrus

“Currently, there are only two forms of cooling devices in the market — coolers and ACs,” explains Sourish. “We found that the weather was so hot that even with centralised air conditioning, one would not feel comfortable during the transition to and from open spaces.” 

“This made us wonder how difficult it would be for those who can barely afford a cooling device, let alone such a high-end cooling system,” he adds.

In a bid to understand the cooling comforts available in regular Indian households, the students approached school staff who use coolers. 

“We found out that they face multiple challenges. They have to refill the water tanks constantly, and prolonged use leads to a humid atmosphere. Coolers are inefficient during the monsoon season. We wanted to make a device which would benefit these users,” Sourish says.

This was the inception of Zephyrus, which derived its name from the eponymous ancient Greek god of wind. This, they say, resonates with the device’s functions of both modes of air conditioning — cooling and heating.

How does the device work?

Lakshya explains: “Zephyrus is a two-in-one cooling and heating system powered by four cooling modules built at the centre, each of which is driven by a Peltier module, which is a small thermoelectric device sandwiched between two fin-shaped aluminium blocks.”

“When electric current flows through this device, one side gets extremely hot, and the other side gets freezing cold. This creates a necessary temperature difference required to create the dual effect of cooling,” he adds.

The students have used aluminium blocks, an exhaust and CPU fans to build the 24*12 inch device, and have designed its main body with aluminium sheets. Financially supported by the school, the device cost them Rs 5,500. “Its cost is roughly 10 percent lower than an average cooler. Currently, we are in the testing phase to make it market ready. Once we start mass producing, we will reduce the cost further,” says Armaan.

‘The device could save gallons of water’

The students have developed the device keeping sustainability in mind. Armaan says, “Zephyrus works on the principle of the Peltier effect and doesn’t require any cooling agent to create the cooling effect.” The Peltier effect is a phenomenon in which heat is given out or absorbed when an electric current passes across a junction between two materials.

“Besides, on average, a single cooler requires 3,000 litres of water per month, but our device requires only 300 ml of water. Thus, it could help save gallons of water consumed by traditional coolers and reduce the negative environmental impact of refrigerants used in air conditioners.”

The students are also working towards reducing their dependency on power and using solar panels to meet the power requirements in a self-sufficient way, thereby reducing the overall carbon footprint.

Highlighting the challenges in developing the device, Sahil says, “We needed to find out a certain pattern to arrange our components. Before coming to the final version, we tried multiple arrangements of our components, but a lot of them did not work as it was taking time to reduce the temperature.”

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A post shared by Shiv Nadar School (@shivnadarschool)

The students claimed that on testing the cooling of their device, Zephyrus surpassed the cooling capabilities of other products by 2-3 degrees. “For testing, we measured the temperature difference between ambient air and air blowing out of the cooler fans. We tested our device in a small size room (10ft * 10ft) and noticed a relative temperature difference of seven degree celsius between the ambient air and the cool air released by our device,” he says.

For these children, contributing to protecting the environment while developing a solution for a real-world problem, has proven to be a big boost. “It feels great to receive appreciation for the project. If along with our academics, especially during our boards, we could work on a project like this, then it brings a huge impact on us. We feel like we are working towards something which has value,” says Sourish.

“A lot of us forget about our contribution to society. We are just focused on ourselves. I feel that if I am able to contribute towards the betterment of society as a child, I will be able to do a lot more when I am an adult,” adds Sahil.

Edited by Divya Sethu

Source:

Multiple Indicator Survey in India NSS 78th Round (2020-21): Published by the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation in March 2023.

“By the time they get the results, farmers have already added fertilisers to the soil so they can sow seeds on time. We have 14 crore farmers in India, but we hardly have 3,000 labs for soil testing,” explains Dr Rajul Patkar, CEO and co-founder of Pune-based Proximal Soilsens Technologies.

To tackle this issue, Dr Rajul and Dr Mukul Singh developed NutriSens — a paper-based sensor strip device that makes soil testing as easy as testing blood sugar at home.

After more than a decade of research, Dr Rajul made the prototype of the device in early 2022.

Explaining how the device works, she says, “Prepare a sample using one gram of soil; put an agent solution of 3 ml in a small vial; shake it; and leave for about half an hour for the soil to settle until the clear solution appears. Put a drop of solution on the sensor.”

It takes about five minutes for the device to test the soil for all six parameters. After the test is completed, a soil health card is generated, which can be downloaded instantly on mobile phones.

So far, the duo has sold over 2,000 consumable sensor strips, which are priced at Rs 35,000 in Punjab, Assam, Telangana and Maharashtra.

Watch this video to learn more about the soil testing device:

Edited by Pranita Bhat

Behind this project is Ahmedabad-based startup MiCoB, which has incorporated the latest 3D rapid construction technology to construct the structure.

#IndianArmy constructed its first 3D Printed House Dwelling Unit for soldiers at #Ahmedabad in 12 weeks time, incorporating the latest 3D Rapid Construction Technology. The building is earthquake resilient and follows green building norms.#InStrideWithTheFuture pic.twitter.com/awiMA5PjOK

— ADG PI – INDIAN ARMY (@adgpi) December 29, 2022

“We did it in a pre-fabricated 3D printing model. Columns were made of steel, and we placed foundation pedestals and 3D-printed wall panels. We kept the wall cavity hollow for better insulation,” Shashank Shekhar, the CEO, tells The Better India.

“Construction has evolved in the past 100 years, but 3D printing is going to change the way construction is done,” adds the 31-year-old.

Apart from the Ahmedabad unit, his startup has 3D printed and delivered 30 bunkers and three building structures for the defence across Ahmedabad, Visakhapatnam, Sikkim, Maharashtra, and Arunachal Pradesh.

What is 3D printing

While working at Jindal Steel, the engineer realised the need for 3D printing in India. “I observed that there is a lot of dependency on labourers and formwork (shuttering) for construction in the country. At the same time, I read how China had been using 3D printing technology to construct 10 houses in a day,” he says.

After working for nearly three years, he quit his job to do research on 3D printing at IIT Gandhinagar, where he met Ankita Sinha and Rishabh Mathur. In 2018, the trio co-founded MiCoB to work towards merging art, automation, and construction through 3D concrete printing technology.

In 3D printing, construction material is deposited, assembled, and solidified under computer control, with the material being added subsequently layer by layer.

Explaining how the structures are made using 3D printing, he says, “Firstly, we freeze a 3D architectural layout of the building. Secondly, we consider structural configuration — keeping earthquake regions and zones, wind load, and snow load in mind. Thirdly, we look at the structural design part.”

“While columns are made using steel and reinforced cement concrete (RCC), all the walls are 3D printed by laying sequential layers of the material. With these materials, we ensure structural stability and durability in the long run. We provide a cover to the steel columns using concrete so that it does not get corroded, and the durability of the building is ensured. With this, we can ensure longevity for up to 200 years,” he adds.

Shashank mentions that 3D printing does 30 percent of the construction work. The remaining work including the installation of electrical systems, plumbing, tiling, and painting is done in a conventional way. On average, it takes about three months to construct a 4BHK house spread over 2,000 square feet of area, he says.

Complex designs without added costs

The engineer points out that 3D printing has unique advantages over traditional construction. He highlights that conventional methods use time-consuming and labourer-dependent shuttering procedures in order to give stability to the concrete before it becomes solid.

“While in 3D printing, you do not waste time setting up and removing shuttering, all you need to do is create a digital file which prints walls. It also reduces the weight [of the walls] compared to brick masonry walls, for instance, from 1,800 kg per cubic square metre to 1,100 kg per cubic metre. This is a more sustainable way of construction,” he says.

Besides, the innovative technique gives architectural freedom to design in a customised way. For example, customising bunkers in remote locations, residential houses, schools, and government offices in small plots of land.

“3D printing allows us to make curved walls and various parametric designs without paying extra. We are also providing better thermally insulated walls using cavities and columns, which would reduce the requirement for AC in the long run,” he adds.

Research also shows that 3D-printed construction is 10–25 percent cheaper than the cost of building with concrete masonry units. “These cost savings are essential in low-income, underdeveloped, or post-disaster remote environments where economical methods of construction could transform communities. This rapid construction capability can be vital in remote environments where meeting a housing need quickly, responding to a natural disaster, or establishing a military base is required,” notes a paper published in ScienceDirect.

Talking about the project they undertook for the Indian Army in Ahmedabad, Ankita says, “Our first interaction with Indian defence happened when the senior personnel from Army Design Bureau visited our facility at IIT Gandhinagar. While we were relatively in an early stage at that time, they realised the potential that 3DCP holds for high-performance construction as well as that in extreme climatic and terrain conditions.”

“Our projects with the defence have been done in a co-development mode, and their willingness to offer their time and efforts in the process have helped us to come up with some of the best solutions so far,” she adds.

But 3D printing also comes with a set of challenges.

For example, dependency on the transportation and logistics of pre-fabricated 3D printed structures like panels; getting good quality material in remote locations; dependency on crane machines for erecting the structures; and performing in congested spaces. However, Shashank believes these will be further eliminated with more research and development and 3D printing would prove to be a game-changer.

He says, “3D printing has provided a tool to further improvise the way we are building structures, which are better economically and are time-efficient. It is a hybrid model which is being adopted across the globe, and in a span of the next 2-3 years, this will become part of mainstream construction. I feel that the construction of infrastructure bridges will also happen in the near future, and this will revolutionise our current building practices.”

Edited by Pranita Bhat

Sources:

A systematic review and analysis of the viability of 3D-printed construction in remote environments: By Steven J. Schuldt, Jeneé A. Jagoda, Andrew J. Hoisington, Justin D. Delorit in ScienceDirect.

Indian Army Inaugurates first ever two-storey 3-D printed dwelling unit at Ahmedabad: By Press Information Bureau published on 29 December 2022.

Since 2013, a community maker space ‘Maker’s Asylum’ has encouraged thousands across India to collaborate and innovate in the spaces of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) through several programmes and its core value of “learning by making”. 

Among these programmes is the SDG School — a remarkable platform that engages with the youth in capacity building, and encourages innovation in sustainable development goals set by the United Nations. In multidisciplinary teams, they work on a host of ideas and solutions that cut across sectors like healthcare, education, energy, waste management, and more. Moreover, this school is open to all.

Over the years, the program has been conducted as a hackathon to engage young people — at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, in Mumbai, and Grenoble, France. Since 2021, UNDP also joined as an impact partner. Even during the peak of the pandemic, the program continued in the virtual form, embarking on a more immersive and sustainable journey. This, in turn, has meant more impact and a greater pool of social innovations. 

In February this year, Maker’s Asylum launched a hybrid version of this programme in collaboration with UNDP India, UNESCO and The Better India to conduct a 10-day virtual bootcamp, followed by a 4-day physical acceleration residency. The aim is to generate solutions with respect to 11 sustainable development goals (SDGs) — quality education, responsible consumption and production, climate action, gender equality, good health and well-being, clean water and sanitation, sustainable cities and communities, partnerships for goals, reduced inequalities, decent work, and life on land.

As many as 50 people from several countries participated in this program. Here are the project highlights for the 2023 cohort.

Black Gold Diggers

The participants tackled the lack of awareness among school children about reducing food wastage by introducing a fun and interactive game. ‘The Black Gold Game’ was designed to empower students to foster collaborative action to drive food waste mitigation via composting methods.

Safe Snann – Dignity for her

Migrant women residing in urban construction sites lack access to safe, private bathing spaces, resulting in unhygienic and unsafe living conditions. These women may not be empowered to take decisions to improve their sanitation needs in a male-dominated construction site. To address this problem, the participants proposed DIY women-only bath houses to improve hygiene, agency and safety among women labourers.

Preset

The improper disposal of medicine strip and blister pack waste poses a significant environmental challenge. For this, participants proposed a user loop that collects empty medicine strips at the source and repurposes them into useful lifestyle products. In the second phase, they proposed a cost-effective and sustainable plan to remanufacture the aluminium component from the medicine packs into aluminium sheets that can be used to construct shelter roofs for stray animals. The sheets are weather-resistant and water-resistant. 

Quad squad

Many girls in the upper primary, secondary and higher secondary levels of education drop out of school as they do not have access to better education opportunities and safe spaces, which affects their overall well-being. The participants proposed to connect rural school dropouts and adolescent girls with an online community platform to help them achieve a sustainable future.

Second Chance

The project was focused on the growing addiction to vaping and e-cigarettes among the young urban Indian population. The participants suggested the development and execution of an intervention program that would raise awareness about the health hazards associated with e-cigarette usage, and offering tools and assistance to decrease or stop its consumption.

Wrapkin

The unavailability of proper facilities for the disposal of menstrual products is a problem, especially in the common washroom cubicles in hostels. To address this issue, the participants plan to design a paper to properly wrap soiled napkins before disposing of them in the dustbin.

The paper will be placed in the washroom as a roll, and users can easily tear off the required amount, wrap the napkin, and fold it using the folding instructions provided on the paper. It will come with a pleasant fragrance, have disinfectant properties, and also be leak-proof and easily decomposable.

GreenPEACE Warriors from Banana Brigade

Dumping banana stems in large quantities causes soil degradation and pest infestation in the fields. Participants proposed using the banana stem as a sustainable packaging solution. These will imbibe the stems’ biodegradable and durable aspects. 

Flush it

To find solutions to decrease the amount of water used per flush, participants picked a solution inspired by the story of the crow drinking water from a pot by putting pebbles.

They started putting water bottles filled with pebbles and sand inside the water tank, which decreased the volume of the water in the tank. They applied this technique in their homes and neighbourhoods, saving close to two litres of water.

Water Samurai

There is increased wastage of water due to the mismanagement of urban infrastructure and irresponsible human behaviour. In a bid to promote responsible consumption of water in hostels, offices and schools, the participants proposed using a water sensor to send alerts to the user’s smartphone to bring a behavioural change.

These innovations are made possible as a community effort. The program partners and community play a critical role in creating grassroot change through resources, problem statements, financial support and expertise towards capacity building for the youth to facilitate the achievement of the SDGs. To partner with Maker’s Asylum on SDG School, write to info@makersasylum.com. 

Apply for the  July cohort @ http://www.makersasylum.com/sdg-school to participate.

While Dr Diwan is an expert in genetic engineering, Dr Bhosale is a specialist in mycology. Dr Shinde is an authority in the development of bioactives, a type of chemical found in small amounts in plants and certain foods. The three scientists had just incorporated their venture BioPrime AgriSolutions, and developed a unique technology called Smart Nanomolecule Induced Physiological Response (SNIPR), which they believed could help farmers adapt to the vagaries of climate change. 

Later that summer, Narayangaon and the larger western Maharashtra region would go on to experience its worst heat wave in 155 years, causing significant crop losses.    

Speaking to The Better India, Dr Diwan says, “Initially, it was challenging to convince farmers to adopt our technology, as there was scepticism and resistance. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution, we decided to intervene at the seedling nursery stage, treating the tomato plants from the germination itself. This approach showcased tangible benefits, as farmers observed minimal transplantation shock and plant deaths in the treated seedlings.” 

They treated thousands of plants in collaboration with the local nursery with a bio-stimulant containing a unique blend of biomolecules that triggered plant’s adaptive processes called “signalling molecules”, metabolites and antioxidants. Although farmers acknowledged the positive outcomes, they were still hesitant to provide their own land for further testing. However, as the heat wave intensified and the surrounding tomato crops suffered, the stark contrast between the treated plants and the affected ones became evident. (Image above of Dr Amit Shinde, Dr Renuka Diwan and Dr Shekhar Bhosale on the left)

“Our fields stood out with lush green hues and fully expanded leaves. Intrigued, farmers started approaching us, inquiring about our methods and the exceptional condition of our crops. This inspired us to name our first product ‘Verdant’,” she recalls. The contents of this bio-stimulant were formulated in the laboratory employing their proprietary SNIPR technology.       

Getting farmers onboard 

“Later that summer, a turning point came when 10 farmers decided to join our summer testing programme, which expanded to 100 within a few days due to the severity of the heat wave. Despite widespread crop loss, these farmers recorded a normal harvest at the end of the season, thanks to the efficacy of our technology. This success created a strong foothold for us in the region, and today, it is rare to find a farmer in that area who does not use our products,” she adds. 

The concrete results they witnessed were the resilience and improved performance of the treated crops compared to the surrounding fields. 

“Farmers experienced firsthand the ability of our products to mitigate the negative impacts of heat and viral infections. As word spread about our success in Narayangaon, more farmers became interested in adopting our technology. They recognised that our technology and the products it germinated, such as Verdant, Fortisea, and Chiron, provided them with reliable support and helped them achieve consistent yields in challenging conditions,” argues Diwan.  

This initial success paved the way for wider adoption and expansion of their technology in rural India, empowering farmers to mitigate risks, enhance crop yields, and improve their livelihoods.

“Witnessing firsthand the power of climate resilience and how it could prevent harvest losses, we realised that we had an opportunity to bring pride and profitability back to farmers,” she says.

Since their introduction in 2016, their solutions have prevented significant crop losses due to untimely weather events for hundreds of farmers in districts like Pune, Satara and Nashik across Maharashtra, besides other states including Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujrat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.   

Understanding the science

Dr Diwan and her team have developed cutting-edge technology that helps farmers increase crop yields while reducing their dependence on chemical fertilisers and pesticides. By harnessing the power of naturally-occurring microorganisms and biomolecules, BioPrime’s technology provides farmers with an eco-friendly solution to enhance the growth of their crops. 

How does it do that? Here’s how Dr Diwan explains the science behind it. 

“The naturally-occurring biomolecules and microorganisms we work with at BioPrime are an integral part of the plant’s ecosystem. They have coexisted with plants for centuries and play a crucial role in enhancing crop growth and resilience,” she explains. 

“One of the key attributes of these microorganisms is their ability to form relationships with plants. In the past, with heirloom varieties of crops, this association was strong. The plants used to release around 70-80% of the carbon sequestered as exudates and sugars, which served as a food source for the beneficial microorganisms,” she adds.  

In return, these microorganisms helped make essential nutrients more available to the plants, protected them from diseases and pests, and promoted overall plant health. It was a mutually beneficial relationship, where plants and microbes lived as a community. 

However, with the development of modern agriculture and the focus on high-yielding varieties, this symbiotic relationship has been disrupted. The crops were bred to allocate more resources to yield, but in the process, farmers often neglected feeding the beneficial microbes.

As a result, plants became more dependent on synthetic additives such as chemical fertilisers, insecticides, and pesticides to meet their nutritional and protective needs.  

Addressing imbalances

“At BioPrime, we address this imbalance by employing two main approaches. Firstly, we identify trigger molecules that can activate the dormant pathways in modern crop varieties, encouraging them to reestablish their interaction with beneficial microorganisms. By reintroducing these trigger molecules, we stimulate the plants to allocate resources towards nourishing and engaging with the microorganisms, thereby revitalising their symbiotic relationship,” she says.

Helping them identify these ‘trigger molecules’ is their proprietary screening platform SNIPR. This helps with discovering molecules that need to be activated for the crop to become tolerant to heat waves or other extreme climatic conditions. 

“It’s not a single technology, but an amalgamation of all these processes we have developed. What the platform does is conduct a series of assays — bio-chemical, physiological, molecular and genomic-level — club all of them, conduct a subtractive analysis and discover the molecules we need to activate in, for example, a tomato crop to make it tolerant to heat waves,” she says.  

The next step is understanding how you arrive at a formulation that can activate certain processes in the crop to make it tolerant to heat waves. 

“We need multiple pathways to address something as complex as heat waves in this case. For example, heat tolerance will require something as superficial as the waxy coating on the leaves or the cell wall needing to be thicker. Heat tolerance will also require the plant cell to store more sugar and salt so that it can retain more water. Its roots will also need to have much finer tertiary branching so that they take up more water in drier conditions. It’s not enough to just have a thicker cell wall or a better root system. We need all of this together,” she explains.  

“When we’re designing a formulation, we find trigger molecules that activate these processes. Our formulation will consist of these trigger molecules. When given to the plant, it will activate these processes instantly. SNIPR at one end tells us what processes to focus on. Once we get information on what processes to focus on, we go about finding trigger molecules,” she adds.  

“We have to run tests and validate that triggering this molecule activates this process. Once it gets validated, we can make formulations, test it in controlled conditions, and then commercialise it. Arriving at a formulation is a long drawn process. It takes about 2.5 years to develop a formulation that can be tested on fields,” explains Diwan. 

“Once we have field level testing, we have to check whether it works on all crops, in all geographical conditions, soil conditions, etc. This takes about two seasons  — one kharif and rabbi [season ]— to make sure it works in all climatic conditions. Once we obtain regulatory approvals, we can launch our product. Products like Prime Chiron, Prime Aavirat, Prime 1515 and Prime Verdant are basically formulations we have arrived at thanks to SNIPR,” she adds. 

“BioPrime has taken the drug-discovery approach employed in the pharmaceutical industry to designing agricultural biologicals,” says Dr Shinde. 

Besides identifying trigger molecules that can activate the dormant pathways in modern crop varieties, BioPrime has also developed synthetic communities of microbes specifically tailored to restore and enhance the lost plant-microbe associations. Like humans, who cannot digest food without microbes, plants also need a core set of microbes to thrive and survive. 

“These carefully selected microbial strains work in synergy to promote nutrient availability, enhance soil health, suppress diseases, and improve plant growth and resilience. These microbial communities act as natural allies for the plants, supporting their overall well-being and reducing their reliance on synthetic inputs,” explains Diwan. To discover these microbes, BioPrime has developed another proprietary platform called Bio-nexus.

Benefits of this technology

Dr Diwan claims, “Our biologicals can cut fertiliser requirements by up to 50%, enabling farmers to optimise their nutrient management and reduce input costs. Also, our biologicals also play a crucial role in pest and disease management. Currently, our products are being actively used in over 150,000 acres for more than 25 different crops.” 

In business, they adopt a B2B approach. They establish strategic partnerships with large agri-input companies that have a presence and a pan-India distribution network.

“Their goals have to align with ours — sustainability and regenerative-agriculture focussed. Usually, these companies have a very strong chemical research and development (R&D) capacity, but haven’t necessarily invested in the biological discovery segment. They either partner with us to take our products to the market or work with us to co-develop products with us that they eventually take into the market,” explains Diwan. 

However, they also share a direct interface with farmers on the ground, particularly in western Maharashtra and central Uttar Pradesh. BioPrime has their own team which operates like a small sales force.“We iterate the product along with the farmers. We have about 600 farmers who’ve been working on iterating the product with us. These are educated, marginal, export-oriented and small grain grower farmers as well,” she says. 

To protect these farmers, however, they’ve put safeguards in place.  

“Before we give any product to the farmer, it’s tested for environmental toxicity, cytotoxicity, exposure-related toxicity, etc., in GLP (Good Laboratory Practice)-approved labs. Following this, we validate every iteration of our product using the SNIPR platform to make sure it does what it says it does. We then do control-condition trials with growth-chambers and try the product out. After this, we take the product to our greenhouses where it’s tested on vulnerable seedlings. If there is any kind of harmful effect, we get rid of the cause right there,” explains Diwan.

Following this, they test it on an actual crop in controlled condition at their research farm. Once it clears this test, the product reaches the farmer. “Any chances of a wayward event is weeded out considerably. But in the event anything untoward happens to the farmer’s crop and he suffers losses, we reimburse them 100%. We don’t want farmers to suffer,” she adds.    

One farmer who has benefitted from BioPrime’s intervention is Sachin Durape, a 32-year-old farmer from Narayangaon. An engineer by education, he is a second generation farmer. 

“I cultivated chrysanthemums and saw that [Prime] Chiron led to 40% more yield, uniform flowers with vibrant colours and 4-5 days of extended shelf life,” he says. 

However, he understood that he wasn’t getting full market value for his products. He noticed that middlemen were targeting distant markets with better prices. Taking a chance, he built a small cool room to store his harvests and started sending flowers as far as Hyderabad. 

“I became the first farmer from Narayangaon to send produce to Hyderabad. From Rs 25/kg, I began fetching Rs 70/kg and more than doubled my income,” he adds. 

Today, young farmers in his village seek his guidance. Many of them now club their produce and send it to markets like Bangalore and Hyderabad and earn far more than they did earlier. 

Meanwhile, Sunil Verma, a fruit farmer from the Awadh region of Uttar Pradesh, also employed [Prime] Chiron, which gave him “uniform produce and a great strawberry harvest”. 

“Realising that I won’t get a good price for my strawberry crop in the local market, I took a risk, made boxes with my brand name, employed members of my family to help sort and pack strawberries, and sold them in Lucknow for a handsome profit. After taking this risk, my earnings shot up nearly three times. Recently, I started my own farmer producer organisation (FPO) with little help from BioPrime. We help neighbouring farmers cultivate different fruits and take them to the Lucknow market. Now, we have our eyes set on the Delhi market,” he says. 

Funding, taking the business forward

Thus far, they have received support from government-backed institutions such as the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), the Department of Biotechnology’s Atal Incubation Mission (DBT AIM), NITI Aayog, and the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), Pusa.

“Their support has been instrumental in fueling our research and development efforts, as well as providing valuable guidance and mentorship,” says Dr Diwan.

In addition to institutional state support, they have also raised venture capital funds like Omnivore. They have also secured funding from Inflexor Ventures, a prominent venture capital firm with a focus on early-stage technology startups. 

“Looking ahead, we are actively exploring opportunities for Series A funding. This will enable us to accelerate our growth trajectory, expand our product portfolio, and extend our reach to more farmers and agricultural communities,” she adds.

(Edited by Divya Sethu; Images courtesy BioPrime AgriSolutions)

Right from a young age, Biju started innovating new electric devices to find solutions to everyday problems. In 2010, he built a smart solar mixie after seeing his wife struggle without one during a power cut.

Unlike regular mixies, his innovation has the ability to perform a variety of tasks. With 15 unique features, the mixie can also be used to chop vegetables and shred coconut. It has a WiFi modem, a smoke detector, and a radio, and can be operated using a remote.

The mixie can also be used to charge mobile phones and can function as a vacuum cleaner. In addition, it has an inbuilt 3W emergency light and a fan.

It took him over a decade to innovate and modify the mixie by adding more features. He says the device uses only minimum power as it works on direct current and the battery gets charged through reverse current.

The 53-year-old’s innovation won the Government of Kerala’s Rural Innovation Award in 2021, and he is now trying to make his smart mixie commercially available.

Learn more about this unique mixie in this video:

Edited by Pranita Bhat

Shiksha is the brainchild of 30-year-old Akshay Mashelkar, and aims to make learning fun and interactive “Growing up in a village I was very aware of the limitations of schools in rural areas. We still use printed charts and blocks as a means of learning. There are no scientific methods available. I want to change that,” Akshay tells The Better India. 

A new way to learn 

Born and raised in the village of Sirsi in Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada district, Akshay grew up in a teaching household. “My mother was a teacher and from a very young age, I knew I wanted to become an educator too. While studying, I realised that I wanted to work towards improving the education system,” he says. 

Following in the footsteps of his mother, Akshay became a professor at a college in Sirsi after completing his degree in Physics. “While I enjoyed my job as a professor, I had many ideas to implement in the education system. With the work, there was no time for me to start working on it though,” he says. 

When the COVID pandemic hit and the education sector moved online, Akshay found himself relatively free. 

“I found the perfect opportunity to work on my ideas. One of the most important things that I have seen in the education sector, especially in Tier-2 and -3 cities and rural areas, is the lack of modern and scientific methods of teaching. On one of my several visits to schools in the village, I saw that teachers were still using charts and blocks to teach,” he says. 

“Those techniques were used when I was in school. It is sad that the world has advanced so much with smart boards and whatnot, but schools in rural areas are still stuck with handmade charts. This pushed me further to give all my attention to bringing an easier and cheaper solution,” he adds. 

It took Akshay a good one and half years to do the research. In 2022, ‘Shikha’ — a humanoid robot capable of teaching in regional languages up to Class 4 — was ready. 

In India, the education sector has been incorporating technology for teaching purposes for several years. Nevertheless, its implementation has primarily been observed in urban regions and expensive schools. On the contrary, rural schools continue to rely on conventional tools like charts and drawings to facilitate learning.

Moreover, teachers of government schools are overburdened with students. A recent Quint report states, “The number of teachers in government schools in Karnataka has dropped from 2.08 lakh to 1.99 lakh, forcing 6,529 schools in the state to have only one teacher. The student-teacher ratio is now 23:1 when compared to 21:1 in 2020-21.” The inclusion of such a device could help fix this problem. 

A mix of technology and good ol’ jugaad 

The robot took nearly Rs 2 lakh to build, which he took out of his own savings. “A lot of money was involved in the research and development. On average, making only a robotic arm costs nearly Rs 50,000. ‘Shiksha’ is an entire robot with several features. The reason why I was able to cut costs was I used jugaad. For instance, I did not use a mould for the body of the robot, instead for the arms I used plastic cricket stumps that you find in toy shops,” he says. 

Siksha can teach various subjects including rhymes in Kannada and English rhymes; the days of the week; names of shapes; English alphabets, and maths topics such as multiplication, addition and tables.

Explaining how the robot works, Akshay says, “The robot has two main cards — the master card that unlocks it, and the normal card to start the desired programme. The teacher has to put the master card on Shiksha’s hand to start it and then they can use the programme cards to start different programmes. She moves her arms to take the card and returns it once scanned. She asks questions, recites poems, and even has trivia options,” he says. 

The robot has visited over 25 schools in the Uttar Kannada district, including KHB School and Urdu School in Sirsi. So far, Shiksha can teach up to Class 4 and has syllabus accommodation across boards.

Sunaina Hegde, who teaches Science and Maths at Model Higher Primary School in Sirsi, says, “Akshay came with Shiksha to our school in April. The children were so happy to see her and they took a greater interest in the class. For them, Shiksha was not a robot, but more like a friend as it was dressed like them too.”

“While it is great for students to learn, it is also a great tool to be included in schools for teachers. It reduces our burden, as there are fewer teachers in government schools. Something so interactive helps children to gain more interest in science and technology,” she adds. 

Akshay notes, “The importance of involving village children in technology is because they are also the future of the country. An average child living in an urban setting, from a very young age, knows how to operate laptops and computers. Sadly, this is not true for kids in rural areas. When the kids saw Shiksha for the first time, I could see the sparkle in their eyes. They were intrigued, amazed and excited.” 

“My motive behind making Siksha was not only to introduce technology in the classroom but also to encourage children to make their robots,” he says. Taking the thought forward, Akshay also opened a research centre where young robotics enthusiasts can come and learn for free. 

“In order to keep the cost of the operations of the centre low, we keep our centre mobile. Whenever we get low-cost places to rent in Sirsi, we move to that place. Over 200 children have visited the centre and many are regulars now. They have the space to learn from me and use the tool available in the research centre,” he says. 

Although the first Shiksha cost him lakhs, Akshay says that he can reduce the cost even more. “There were a lot of errors and a lot of investment in R&D initially, but now there won’t be. With the help of grants and support from the government and NGOs, I can possibly reduce the cost to Rs 35,000. This way it will be cheaper to afford rural schools. My only wish is to take Shiksha to every rural school in Karnataka and make learning fun,” he adds. 

If you wish to know more about his research centre and be a part of his initiative, you can reach him at 74832 76508. 

(Edited by Divya Sethu)

“Water hyacinth is known as the terror of Bengal. This weed grows in still pond water, and almost every household here has a pond in their backyard. Aquatic life can survive only when dissolved oxygen in water is at least five mg per litre, but it decreases to one mg per litre in the presence of water hyacinth. This threatens aquatic life and deteriorates water quality. It is a global phenomenon,” Gaurav Anand tells The Better India.

Interestingly, water hyacinth is used in the country to make mats, paper, and other handicrafts. But in an innovative move, the 46-year-old Jamshedpur-resident has found a way to convert this nuisance into fusion sarees by extracting fibre from the plant.

“I wanted to come up with a sustainable solution to the growing problem of water hyacinth so that people do not see it as a nuisance but as a resource. We utilise 25 kg of water hyacinth to make one fusion saree,” he says.

Since February 2022, when he first made such a saree, Gaurav has been able to make 50 fusion sarees and aims to make 1,000 more by the end of this year.

Befriending the water hyacinth

The environmental engineer identified this big abnormality in the river in the form of water hyacinths during the river cleaning drives while working with TATA Steel. “It is present in almost all the rivers except flowing rivers like Ganga, Godavari, and Krishna,” he says.

In 2018, he got an opportunity to be a part of a one-month-long Namami Gange mission to clean River Ganga, where he covered more than 1,500 km of the waterway. “After the mission, all team members went back to their respective work but for me, this was a life-changing expedition. I started dedicating every Sunday towards cleaning rivers,” he recalls.

Then in 2022, Gaurav quit his 16-year-long corporate career and founded Swacchata Pukare Foundation to dedicate himself full-time to the cause.

Before starting the venture, he had started making handmade products like lampshades, paper, notebooks, and mats from water hyacinth. “While working on such products, I found that the pulp of these plants contains cellulose, which can be converted into yarn, similar to jute. A personal contact of mine connected me with weavers who implemented our idea into yarn. This is when we started fusing the material with cotton to make sarees,” he informs.

How are fusion sarees made?

Gaurav says the process of converting water hyacinth into a fusion saree is arduous work. First, the stems of the plant are collected and dried in the sun for a week.

“We keep the soft cover of the stem to make paper while we use the pulp to make fibre. Fibre from the stem is extracted after hot water treatment to remove insects from the pulp. These fibres are used to make yarn, which is then coloured. Weavers then weave the saree on a handloom. They need around three to four days to make one saree. It is a first-of-its-kind product in the world,” he claims.

Since it is labour-intensive work, Gaurav has kept the ratio of 25:75 for water hyacinth and cotton. “We can increase the ratio but for that, we will have to extract numerous stems, which will increase our cost of production which is Rs 1,200 per saree. The finer the fibre, the more the cost. Currently, we have priced our saree at Rs 2,000–3,500 so that it is affordable for middle-income groups as well. We have been able to sustain the business so far,” he adds.

“Also, if we make a 100 percent water hyacinth saree, it will be a little weak in strength. This is the reason why we fuse it with materials like cotton. But we are planning to fuse 50 percent water hyacinth to make it more sustainable,” he says.

Although his other water hyacinth products are sold through offline markets in Jamshedpur (Jharkhand) and Kharagpur (West Bengal), Gaurav aims to start commercialising the sarees soon.

Empowering rural women

With this work, Gaurav says that he has employed about 10 weaver families from Santipur village of West Bengal to improve their economic status.

“In Santipur village, almost every household makes sarees using handlooms. But most of the weaver families were switching to alternate jobs as they were not able to earn enough income. They would not get more than Rs 500 for four days of arduous work,” says Gaurav.

“Our objective is not to earn from saree making. We just want to boost the livelihood of the weavers, so they do not leave the work and remain motivated,” he adds.

Apart from weavers, Gaurav has been able to empower more than 450 rural women, who are employed to collect water hyacinths from water bodies and process them before sending them to weavers.

Rama Ray, a 47-year-old widow, one of the employees, says, “Earlier, I used to work in a tobacco factory. I would often suffer from skin diseases and would spend a big amount on the treatment. Today, I am able to work in safe conditions and earn up to Rs 5,000 per month by working for three to four hours a day.”

This initiative, says Gaurav, has helped him to live with a purpose. “If I had retired doing the corporate job, I would have done nothing for my country. Earlier, when I would get a salary, I was able to support only my family. Today, I am able to support so many families with this work. It is a ‘wow’ moment for me. I intend to increase the number of 450 women [employees] to lakhs,” he says.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

“This results in plant degradation and loss of productivity. Without complete knowledge, farmers keep on adding fertilisers, which only worsens crop yield,” Dr Rajul Patkar, CEO and co-founder of Pune-based Proximal Soilsens Technologies, tells The Better India.

Experts suggest that farmers carry out soil testing to decide whether their current management is diminishing future productivity, and hence, profits. Dr Patkar also points out that current soil testing methods in India are too complicated, as farmers have to send a sample to an agriculture lab, which takes at least 15 days to show results — a factor that causes an aversion to soil testing among farmers.

“By the time they get the results, farmers have already added fertilisers to the soil so they can sow seeds on time. We have 14 crore farmers in India, but we hardly have 3,000 labs for soil testing,” she adds.

To address this problem and increase awareness among farmers for soil testing before every round of sowing, the scientist, along with Dr Mukul Singh has recently developed NutriSens. This, they claim, is the world’s smallest soil testing system, which is portable, affordable, and easy-to-use.

Can soil testing be as easy as testing blood sugar at home? 

Dr Patkar (55) first started researching the technology back in 2011, while pursuing her PhD at IIT Bombay. “Although I do not come from an agricultural background, I chose to do my research in this domain, as other students did not choose the subject. For me, bringing impact through my work was more important than having a doctorate degree,” she says.

During the research, she found that measuring blood glucose levels was made easier with the innovation of glucometers. “I thought, why not build a similar testing device to test soil? I started working on electro-chemical based technologies similar to a glucometer.”

After more than a decade of research, she was able to make the first prototype of the device in early 2022. “NutriSens is a small hardware device that comes with paper-based sensor strips to check six parameters like PH, electrical conductivity, nitrate, phosphate, and potassium,” says Dr Patkar.

Explaining how the device works, she says it can simply be carried to the field to perform the test, unlike traditional methods of sending half-kg samples to distant labs. “Prepare a sample using one gram of soil, put an agent solution of 3 ml in a small vial, shake it, and leave for about half an hour for the soil to settle until the clear solution appears. Put a drop of solution on the sensor,” she explains.

And that’s it. “We get the results in less than five minutes for all six parameters. It takes 25-30 seconds to measure each parameter.”

Thereafter, the soil health card is generated, which can be downloaded instantly on mobile phones. “In a day, one can easily perform up to 25 soil tests for various parameters,” says Dr Patkar.

Seven months back, she started commercially piloting the device and says that today agripreneurs across Assam, Punjab, Telangana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan are using the soil testing device. So far, Dr Patkar has sold nearly 2,000 consumable sensor strips.

Dr K Ananth Krishnan, a consultant scientist working with IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, has been assisting nearly 70 farmers in Jharkhand to use the device. “The portable equipment is very useful for farmers. As per quality standards, the device is up to the mark. We have found that the soil here lacks nitrogen because the region has coal mines. Accordingly, we mentor the farmers to put vermicompost only in the required amounts,” he tells The Better India.

A quantum leap

In the process, Dr Patkar aims to boost the livelihood of rural women by making them microentrepreneurs. “With this easy-to-use device, they can become ambassadors of soil testing. They can buy these devices, take these to farmers, get the return on their investment in one soil testing season, and also generate their own revenues,” she says.

One such microentrepreneur is Mangal Dhumal, a resident of Dongaon of Solapur district in Maharashtra. Since last year, the 50-year-old has been using this device and says she has been able to assist about 25 farmers in her village, and five nearby villages as well.

Explaining the benefits of using the device, she tells The Better India, “Earlier, farmers would get soil testing results in 8-15 days and would not even have an idea of what improvements need to be done after the results. But with this new device, they get results immediately and the device helps them understand what fertilisers they should use and in what quantity. In our region, farmers would use a lot of urea, but now they have started using cow dung more.”

Meanwhile, Dr Patkar says that this is a first-of-its-kind smallest soil testing device, and is priced at Rs 35,000 — nearly half the amount of alternates in the market. “We are working to further reduce this cost for agripreneurs and give it to them at a discount of 50 percent.”

The device is also expected to reduce the cost of soil testing from Rs 500 at a private lab to Rs 300. It has a lifespan of three years, and Dr Patkar says that it can perform at least 3,000 soil tests in a year.

After the successful pilot commercialisation of the device, Dr Patkar aims to expand its usage across the country. “This is a quantum leap in technology and I want this device to be as popular as a glucometer. Every rural household should have this soil testing device so that it helps boost their soil health and crop yield,” she says.

Source

Soil Health: New Policy Initiatives for Farmers Welfare: Published by National Academy of Agricultural Sciences New Delhi published on 25 May 2018.

Edited by Divya Sethu

However, their lives dramatically changed when Rahul’s father, Arun Kumar, suffered a heart attack. A seemingly fit man, he was saved by doctors in the nick of time.

“After this episode, we were worried about what if something suddenly happens to him in their absence which is not detected on time,” recalls Rahul, speaking to The Better India.

They looked for devices that could detect Arun’s heart problem early. Moreover, it had to be a device for a layman who isn’t very tech-savvy, like Rahul’s father, to monitor his heart condition regularly and can instantly connect with a doctor in the event of a problem.

“When we did not find anything, we decided to design a device on our own. Since both of us are electronics and telecommunications engineers and had experience in designing hardware and software products respectively, we set up a lab at home and started working on a prototype. That’s how SanketLife was born. Unfortunately, Rahul lost his father in 2021 to cancer, but till he was alive, he was effectively monitoring his heart through Sanketlife,” recalls Neha.

By 2015, they formally established their venture Agatsa Software Private Limited to build this device. It took them nearly three years to launch the beta version of the device in 2016. Eventually, the device was launched on Amazon in April 2017. In 2018, however, they launched a newer version of the device, SanketLife 2.0, a 100% ‘Made in India’ product.

“It is the world’s smallest wireless 12-lead portable ECG monitoring device used by medical professionals, doctors, and individuals. The device records ECG and displays the results on Android/IOS smartphones via the SanketLife Application. With SanketLife 2.0, cardiac symptoms can be detected in just one ECG. Information from the captured ECGs can be easily shared with doctors or healthcare providers in real-time, enabling them to assist with cardiac health instantly,” says Rahul.

“The device has registered more than ten million ECGs so far and has been highly renowned among cardiologists in premier institutions like Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research and Narayana Hrudayalaya Bangalore, amongst others. Moreover, SanketLife is accredited by CDSCO (Central Drug Standard Control Organisation),” he adds.

Essentially, the SanketLife 2.0 is a pocket-sized device with three sensors, of which “any two need to be touched at different parts of the body to capture full ECG, the gold standard to detect any problems in the heart,” explains Rahul.

The device is coupled with a mobile app, which generates a digital PDF report which can be shared with a doctor.

Currently, there are two variations of this product in the market. Agatsa also has the H360 device — a multiple health parameter monitoring device — in the market.

“All our products are a result of innovation making vital measurements possible with just a touch. These devices are helping doctors and heart patients. Anyone can carry it in their pockets and can use it with their smartphone if they feel any symptoms like palpitations, chest pain, shortness of breath, etc. The device is so easy to use and needs no training. The complex process of getting an ECG from huge machines with wires and leads is simplified to a touch-based marvel of engineering, which is instrumental in saving lives at the right time,” he says.

Dr Satish, the head of the cardiology department at Bokaro General Hospital says, “You’ll be surprised [to know] that I was able to diagnose a patient with a complete heart block and do emergency pacing with the help of this device when there was no ECG monitor available.”

“Also, this device sometimes helps us when working remotely. Our patients would send us their ECG whenever they feel like and in doubt, particularly those having arrhythmias like atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia,” he adds.

Meanwhile, according to this March-April 2020 paper published in the Indian Pacing and Electrophysiology Journal, “The analysis showed a high degree of agreement and accuracy of SanketLife in detecting major cardiovascular conditions (Major Minnesota codes) such as left and right bundle branch block, ST-segment elevation and ST-segment depression, AV conduction block. SanketLife showed high sensitivity (98.15%) and specificity (100%) in diagnosing major cardiovascular conditions.”

Health innovators

Neha explains, “In India, electronics manufacturing and prototyping is a challenge. Although things have improved quite a bit, when we started about seven years back, it was a huge challenge to design a microcircuit and do repetitive iterations to make it correct. We had innumerable failures initially.”

“The worst part was that since it was difficult to manufacture PCB (printed circuit board) in India, we had to send it to China, a costly and time-consuming affair. Also, funding research and development was a huge challenge. Most investors wanted to invest in running businesses only. We were innovating a product with an idea that one day, it would save lives,” she adds.

Meanwhile, as Rahul notes, “We had to get the product right and accurate since this was going to be a medical device that people need to use in critical situations. At the time, there was no Indian regulatory framework which could validate our device. Initially, we had no choice but to go for international certifications like US FDA, which was very costly for a startup like ours. These challenges have been solved now, but in the initial days, they were really challenging.”

Since the launch of the beta version, SanketLife has undergone a variety of changes. Back in 2016, he notes that it was “not a very good-looking and accurate device”.

“We have worked hard since then to make a commercially viable product, which not only looks good and sleek but is also accurate. Since ECG is typically taken in a particular setting in hospitals, we had to make sure an accurate signal is produced when a person is taking ECG at home, office, basement, near machinery, electronic items, etc. We have worked hard on our noise-removing algorithms to make this happen,” explains Rahul.

In a 2016 video Agatsa did in collaboration with The Better India, Neha talks about how they aspire to add other parameters like SpO2, blood pressure, temperature etc in the same device to provide quality and affordable healthcare at home. 

But it was not SanketLife, but another device they launched in early 2023 called H360, which is capable of taking blood pressure just by touch (no cuff is required), blood oxygen levels, heart rate and ECG — all in one pocket device.

“We would also like to mention here that all our devices are clinically validated and have been tested in the best hospital and clinical settings in the country, which is why we took our time to bring the devices to market commercially. Also, after we launched our touch-based ECG in the market, we realised there may be some cases where the user might not hold the device himself like an unconscious patient. Hence we came up with another innovation where the same pocket device can be converted into a traditional lead-based device by adding just one more accessory called ‘Switchsy’. This device is called SanketLife Pro+ and is being extensively used by hospitals, doctors and care providers to provide ECG service in the remotest areas,” she says.

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‘World’s smallest wireless 12-lead portable ECG monitoring device’

In a bold claim, Rahul Notes, “SanketLife is not just the smallest device in terms of size and weight in the world, but it is also the least cumbersome medical grade device since it takes ECG just by touch and does not need wires or leads to be attached to the body to measure ECG.”

In a traditional ECG setup, leads and electrodes are attached to various parts of the body and electrical signals are displayed on the monitor in the form of a graph. This gives a 360-degree view of the heart and a problem is detected in any part of the heart.

“There are some devices in the market which take ECG by just the touch of two fingers or wrist like the Apple watch. These are single-lead devices that do not give actionable data to a doctor. Our device takes data from all points like a traditional ECG and is medically viable to help a doctor make an accurate diagnosis. We are the first and the only such device in the world with this form factor,” he claims.

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These devices are manufactured at two facilities, with one located in Noida and the other in Visakhapatnam. Thus far, they claim to have sold almost 50,000 units of this device.

“We have also secured around $8 million in funding and Sun Pharma is our biggest investor. (They have a 26% stake in the company) Funding has helped us in scaling up our production and team and increasing sales. We are also in talks with the biggest hospitals in India and scaling up our distribution channels there besides employing online channels,” he adds.

(Edited by Pranita Bhat; Images courtesy Agatsa Software; Click here to check out their products.)

On asking the farmer why he was resorting to this, the farmer replied, “My crops failed. My stomach doesn’t know my pockets are empty.” 

The incident remained in Sathya’s mind and haunted him even years later, when and his colleagues Kaushik K, Saumya, and Ayush Sharma were discussing the harrowing lives of small farmers. 

This propelled them to launch Kheyti in 2015 and come up with an innovation ‘Greenhouse-in-a-box’ that would get smallholder farmers in India their dues by increasing their profits. 

Explaining how the model works, Sathya says, “We build houses to live in safety and to protect ourselves from environmental factors like heat, rain, insects, etc. Likewise, a greenhouse helps plants thrive. Our greenhouse cuts off excess heat by 2-4 degrees Celsius, reduces pests by 90 per cent and saves 98 per cent water as compared to open-field conventional irrigation.”

The intent behind this, he says in a TED Talk, is that while we cannot cool the entire planet in one day, it is possible to create a climate for a small portion of farmers’ land to be suitable for farming. 

The ‘Greenhouse-in-a-box’ kit has two variants — one costs about Rs 2 lakh (for 320 sq mts) while the other costs about Rs 3.35 lakh (for 462 sq mts) and the farmers also get training on what to grow, how to grow and when to grow. 

Watch how this concept is helping farmers across the country increase their yield:

But soon after the sunset, the village turned pitch dark. They realised that the village had no access to electricity. Households relied on firewood to keep their homes lit after dark.

So, the friends decided to “light up” the homes in the village. They launched the Batti project and distributed the ‘Batti kit‘ – a durable kit that consists of a solar panel, an LED battery, three LED tubes, three holders, three switches, 21 metres of fixed cabling, and a charge controller – to the villagers.

The project expanded with time, and in 2012, the Batti project lit up hundreds of homes in the Lower Dibang Valley and about 100 homes in East Kameng’s Lada Circle.

These solar panel kits brought light to many homes for the first time. “We were wanderers; moving constantly without much of a reason, until that day. From no plans to structured road-maps to helping villages get the basic facility of light, we have come a long way. And yet it feels that a longer journey awaits,” says Merwyn.

The friends have also collaborated with The Technical University of Munich to light up 50 residential schools of Jumupani village in the Lower Dibang Valley.

Watch how they transformed the village in this video:

Edited by Pranita Bhat

These questions perplexed Milind Shah, a 29-year-old software engineer, who was no stranger to the problem of FMCG products going to waste. With his family having a distribution business in Kolkata, Milind had grown up in the city watching numerous amounts of products being discarded when rejected by their partner retailers.

Even though he had a lucrative job at Amazon’s software development department in Bengaluru for three years, Milind felt restless. He wanted to create some sort of social impact through his work. Something that would resolve the problem of wastage — an evil he knew would only increase in the coming years with consumerism.

Sharing the shocking facts he landed upon with The Better India, Milind says, “An eye-popping 69 million tonnes of food find their way to landfills every year, a problem rooted in supply chain mismanagement.”

He continued to read up about where the problem lay; why such massive amounts of food were being wasted on the one hand, while on the other hand, people slept hungrily. He says he wanted to get back into the family business to understand this situation more deeply.

So, in 2019, Milind joined his brother and father in their FMCG distribution venture.

Explaining their role in the supply chain, he says it is that of procuring products from brands and selling these to the retailers, from where they are bought by customers. While it seemed a smooth sailing concept, the techie noticed gaps, which fuelled in him a zeal to bring about some kind of a solution.

Today, his venture ‘Gauraa’ is an attempt to bridge the existing misnomers in the chain, eventually aiming to reduce the wastage seen overall.

The crux of the problem

“Every retailer has stringent rules when it comes to the shelf life of the product,” Milind explains. “They are clear that non-food products have to have a shelf life of 50 percent at the time of procuring from the distributor. For instance, if the total shelf life of the product is two years when the retailer purchases it from us, it should have a remaining shelf life of one year at least. In the case of food products, the figure is 60 percent.”

The question arises as to what happens if this criterion isn’t fulfilled.

“Well, these products are then rejected,” he says. He adds that as distributors, they return these products to the brands and are compensated for the same.

“But still, this is a massive waste. In our case, we see 10 percent of the total volume of the products we procure from brands being rejected by retailers and ending up in landfills. The problem is there is no one to blame.”

Intent on coming up with a solution, Milind began persuading retailers to accept stock that has crossed the mentioned percentage but is still viable for use. But they denied doing this, saying that they would receive customer complaints and that would tarnish the image of the brand.

While the idea for Gauraa had taken shape in Milind’s mind, one particular incident gave him the final push to launch.

One of the products the family procures from brands is baby food powders which come in a sealed container. During transport, these cans would often suffer dents and be rejected by retailers, who would cite this as a loss for them as customers don’t want to buy dented cans.

“An average of 20 percent of cans would get dented and rejected, making their way to landfills. Now, baby foods are expensive, averaging a price of Rs 800 for 400 grams of the product. Watching them go to waste, while so many kids starve to death, is heartbreaking,” notes Milind.

This needed to end, thought Milind, who spent the next few months ideating and launching Gauraa — a solution that would enable the rejected products to get a second life.

The platform saves 2,500 units of various FMCG products from finding their way to the landfills of India, every month. Managed by a team of over 30 in a 6,000 sq ft warehouse at Cossipore Road in Kolkata, Gauraa is making sure wastage is a thing of the past. 

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A unique business model

While products lie in the family warehouse waiting to be sold to retailers, often their shelf life gets reduced to 20 percent, a mark that Milind says is the cutoff. “Below this, no retailer will accept these products.” In addition to this, products whose packaging is dented too lie in the warehouse. These are then sold on Gauraa.

But why would consumers purchase these defaulted products when they could easily buy products in perfect packaging online?

“We offer a 50 percent discount,” says Milind, revealing the final key in the maze.

While initially, Milind had approached their partner brands suggesting that they give a discount to the retailers on these damaged products, the brands were not too keen. Wondering what other countries were doing to salvage the situation, Milind began reading up and discovered that an interesting model existed in the United States. Not just FMCG products but also excess food in restaurants and bakeries were all put up for sale online at discounted prices.

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Gauraa is founded on the basis of this model.

With partner brands — the likes of Hindustan Unilever, Haldiram’s, Bajaj, and more — the family retails to major eCommerce platforms such as Flipkart, Amazon, Swiggy Instamart, etc.

“But, it wasn’t easy creating this platform,” says Milind.

“The primary challenge was making people aware that the product is fine, just with a lower shelf life or a dented can. The quality was in no way compromised,” he says. Now that the model has been in operation for months, Milind is finally certain people are seeing its social purpose.

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Brands too agree that this is a great idea. Irshad Ahmed, in charge of sales at Haldiram’s, one of the partner brands of the family, applauds the idea.

“One of our personal experiences was in Soan Papdi which had been left over post the Diwali season. Its shelf life had fallen to less than 50 percent and no major retailer would accept it. Gauraa clearly mentioned the expiry date on the website with a 55 percent discount and it was amazing as we got the entire stock lifted off in a few days.”

He adds, “Gauraa addresses the pain point of all the FMCG companies, where potential customers are ordering products with lesser shelf life and getting ample discount on it, which was not possible from the retailer points.”

Browsing through Gauraa, there are juices, cornflakes brands, washing powders, grooming products, beauty essentials and many other household items, which would have probably ended up in a landfill despite being in usable condition.

Milind says, “I’m glad I could give them a home.”

Edited by Pranita Bhat

Realising the gap, Pune’s Satyajit Mittal launched a tech-led footwear startup Aretto that makes shoes that expand as the child grows.

“We are making children wear bigger sizes and this is not just an Indian phenomenon, it is a universal problem,” says the 30-year-old, adding that he, too, was among these children while growing up.

“Children do not wear the right shoes for the first ten years of their lives. Between zero and three years of age, children’s feet size changes every three months, and you need roughly 15 sizes between zero and nine, before attaining final foot size at 13 years. We figured out the problem that while feet grow, their shoes do not,” adds the product designer-turned-entrepreneur.

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Adult versus kid footwear

Satyajit also found a gap in children’s shoes offered by the Indian footwear industry, which is considered the second-largest producer of shoes in the world. “There is a huge gap between the user and the product offering. Big brands always focus on adult footwear. They simply shrink the adult shoe into a small size for children, without understanding the anatomy of the kid feet which is very different from adult feet,” he says.

In 2020, he started researching the anatomy of children’s feet by speaking to several podiatrists. “We understood that a child’s feet are broader, and the bone structure in the first three years is not fully developed. There are thousands of nerve endings in the feet that have to be simulated in the first six years. If you have a thicker sole, sensorial feedback is taken away,” he adds.

After two years of research, Satyajit came up with a one-of-its-kind shoe that expands as the child grows. It not only saves parents from buying shoes multiple times, but also provides comfortable shoes to children, a neglected segment in the footwear industry.

1 shoe = 3 sizes

In 2022, he co-founded Aretto with his childhood friend Krutika Lal, who manages the marketing and sales of the startup, and started marketing the shoe with its patented innovation 3D knit. It is a stretchable and highly durable fabric to fashion shoe uppers. Satyajith says the shoes are approved by podiatrists and are 360-degree flexible, breathable, adaptive in size, and stretch up to three sizes.

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“We wanted to give children the right fit for all cycles. We chose one shoe to cover three sizes that allow 18 mm growth. We took inspiration from how a flower blooms from the bud stage to the fully-flowered stage. The transition happens organically every day. We applied this concept to the shoe,” he says.

“We started working on a shoe that flexes as per the feet. Simply put, as and when the feet grow either from the front or back or sideways, and when a child wears this shoe, it expands accordingly and takes the shape and contour of their feet. That’s why children feel comfortable wearing such shoes,” he adds.

The shoes are made using grooves built into the sole that blooms open to fit the natural shape of growing feet, and with a “jelly-soft” memory foam insole to provide comfort and padding to small feet.

The shoes are priced between Rs 1,800 and Rs 2,600. Last month, Satyajit clocked a revenue of Rs 21 lakh and an 80 percent month-on-month growth rate. Most of his customers are from Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, as well as the US and UK.

Last October, Shreya Jain from Meerut bought a pair of shoes for her four-and-a-half-year-old son. In a conversation with The Better India, she says, “After I got these Aretto shoes, he has not worn any other pair of shoes at all. In fact, he finds them so comfortable that he has replaced his slippers and wears these new shoes even at home. He wants them in all colours and wants to wear them to his school now.”

“Earlier, I would end up buying a new shoe worth Rs 2,500 every other month for him. This is very cost effective and a good option for me as a parent,” she adds.

So far, Satyajit has sold over 6,000 pairs of shoes within nine months of the launch of his startup. Like Shreya, thousands of parents have found a better alternative for their child’s footwear.

Edited by Divya Sethu

And while we do so with photographs and videos, imagine this — a 3D replica of a 2D photograph of your most precious memories.

That’s the way Assam-based Harsha P Deka’s platforms My3DSelfie and My3D Meta preserve them. The 35-year-old has brought over 10,000 photos to life so far and delivered them to 45 countries including Singapore, the US, Australia, India, Canada and more. He recently raised funding of over Rs 10.5 crore from The Chennai Angels, Dholakia Ventures, AccelNest, Karn Nagpal, Badri Raghavan, IIT-IIM Angels, and Hyderabad Angels.

“There was nothing similar to this back in 2016 when I started. I knew I had a huge market and soon enough, we became one of the largest holders of 3D human models in the world,” Harsha tells The Better India.

Not his first try at startups

The Guwahati-born entrepreneur says that he always had a knack for business. “I remember I sold the photocopies of my tuition teacher’s notes to my classmates at a price. I was rich within a few days, but my parents found out and I was given a good scolding. Looking back, the idea might not be acceptable, but was smart enough to earn me money,” laughs Harsha.

After completing his secondary education from Guwahati, Harsha moved to Canada for his Bachelor’s degree. While pursuing higher education, he held various odd jobs like janitor and salesperson to “get a glimpse of the real world”.

“I worked for 16 hours a day during my college breaks to get hands-on experience of what kind of product people need, and how I could build customer relationships before I could start building a business,” he says.

In 2010, when Harsha was still in college, he tried his hands at business for the first time.

“I started my first company Myra Solutions, which was a software solution provider. I was the sole founder of the company. One of our products was ‘Barter Books’, where you could exchange books, which were very expensive back then. The startup did not do quite well and looking back, I think it was because I did not do any marketing,” he recalls.

He started another company in 2011, which was an application that helped people to reduce stress. “There was limited awareness and no industry for stress management, so the product failed to reach the audience,” he notes.

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‘For my beloved friend’

Around the same time, while Harsha was still in Canada, he received a life-changing phone call.

“I distinctly remember — it was a calm Friday evening when my brother called me. He told me I’d lost my childhood best friend. I was devastated. I could not take it in, the grief and sadness took over me. I took a couple of weeks to recover from the shock and I could not even visit his family at that time,” he recalls.

Sitting in his grief, Harsha wanted to do something special for his family. He wanted to capture the essence of his friend in a physical form.

“I wanted to immortalise my friend and make a 3D replica of his photograph with his guitar. I tried to find services that would do that for me.” But nothing concrete turned up, and for a while, he quit his pursuit.

In 2015, in a mall in California, Harsha came across a 3D scanner where they were making small figurines of scanned objects. He approached them to ask if they could make it out of a 2D image.”

“The idea at the time was new and got the attention of many people. But there were loopholes too. For instance, if you want to give a gift to someone, you cannot ask them to come and get scanned. The element of surprise will be lost in that, so I decided to brainstorm more.”

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Harsha explains that 3D models are building blocks for animation, metaverse, and gaming platforms. “I realised that it might have a big market, and that if I want to create something like this, I need a huge database. If scanning one character takes 72 hours, for a thousand characters, we need a lot of hours,” he says.

In 2016, Harsha released My3DSelfie.com, where he created 3D figurines for his customers. “In about five years of functioning, in 2020, we became the largest library holder of human models.”

Chris, who received a 3D figurine of his dog, says, “It was very realistic! My heartbroken wife was in tears when I surprised her with the figurine of our former 18-year-old dachshund. This way, our Polly can live forever in our minds and on our shelves.”

What’s next?

Although Harsha lived in Canada for the past 14 years, he decided to return to India in 2019. “I always wanted to come to my homeland and do something here. I wanted to, most importantly, do something for the Northeastern part of India. It is not as developed as other regions in the country and I believe the states still lie in a state of neglect.”
“I knew the contributions I make in a developing country will be far more useful than in a developed country. [So] I came back for good. We have an office in Guwahati and one in Bengaluru.”

With the recent funding of Rs 10.5 crore, Harsha is all set to come up with a range of services with My3DMeta.com.

“What Canva did in 2D, we want to do in 3D with My3dMeta. For 2D graphics, one might have to learn Photoshop. Similarly for 3D, you have Zbrush. But learning these could take you years. With My3DMeta, you can do it within a couple of hours. It will help artists create 3D graphics in minutes and in a very cost-effective way. My3DMeta will be useful not just to artists but across fields like gaming, design, and other creative industries,” explains Harsha.

The founder is all set to launch My3dMeta in May. The 3D figurines can be customised and purchased from the official website.

Edited by Divya Sethu

The 13-year-old was staring at a fraction of India’s looming problem of agricultural spoilage, an issue that made headlines in 2019. According to the World Economic Forum, India — despite attaining food sufficiency with its 270 million tons of agricultural produce in a year — found itself at a position of 103 out of a list of 119 countries on the Global Hunger Index. 

How? 

The major discrepancy the report estimated was because of agricultural food spoilage, meaning that while sufficient amounts of produce are harvested, much of this doesn’t even reach the intended populations. 

According to the United Nations’ (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), about US$14 billion (12.42 billion euros) worth of food is wasted every year in India. 

These were the startling facts that Mahek discovered as she tried to wrap her mind around why food wastage was such a concern. Now 19, she says she decided to take matters into her own hands and come up with some kind of a solution that would help farmers, at least in her region, to salvage their produce. 

Her innovation is an eco-friendly grid-less cooling methodology named SunHarvested CoolRooms, a technique she says allows the produce to remain fresh for three times longer than it would in traditional drum storage. 

Mahek’s methodology went on to win the Lexus Design Award India 2023 under the ‘Eco-Innovation’ category among 1,000 projects from across the country.

‘I didn’t have the heart to see so much food wastage.’

Tracing back to the time Mahek watched the produce on her mom’s 2-acre farm going to waste, she says it was disheartening. 

“This was quality produce, including seasonal fruits like strawberries, cherries, and passion fruits. When I’d spend time here during my summer vacations, it was eye-opening to watch just how much goes to waste. Piles and piles of good fruits are thrown away. For me what stood out was that my mother, along with her team of six farmers, would put so much effort into growing the produce, and all of this effort would amount to nothing. There had to be a way to avoid this spoilage.” 

Mahek began working on a technology in this regard in Class 6, and continued through school. Now, she’s taking a gap year to scale it up, after six years of understanding the prototype, perfecting it, and bringing the drawings to reality. 

Elaborating on the design, Mahek says it was inspired by the climate in which she lived. 

“In Chennai, the evenings are colder compared to the mornings, when the sun is scorching and the temperatures soar to as high as 45 degrees Celsius. I thought it would be interesting to play around with this factor while designing something that would keep the produce fresh for longer. Rotting happens when humidity increases, so I knew I’d have to get the humidity to a stable level to prevent the produce from getting spoilt.”

A sustainable design that mimics nature

This was when Mahek read about convection currents. The first draft of the product she designed comprised three parts — a brick room, an exhaust chimney and a draft tube. These come together to work based on scientific principles of evaporative, cooling, and dehumidification and keep the produce fresh without refrigeration. 

The draft tube, which took Mahek a year to perfect, is made up of a wooden tray lined with aluminium sheets, aluminium grids, a material that maintains humidity and arched glass. When the aluminium sheets absorb the sun’s rays, they heat up and create a pressure void, propelling the wind towards the closure. This forms the wind circuit. 

“This design mimics nature and convection currents, the same way the land and sea breezes work. The air flowing into the draft tube rises to the arch of the glass and moves further through the tube into the enclosure of the brick room. It is then dehumidified by the desiccants hung on one side and a screen of khus root hung on the other. This allows any moisture to evaporate,” explains Mahek. The entire apparatus is designed to keep the temperature and humidity optimal. 

Letting us in on the journey of innovating the apparatus, she says the hardest part was coming up with the draft tube, considering there was no information on the internet on how to build one. Mahek recounts the struggle to find the perfect material and come up with a design that would work well to keep the produce fresh. 

Another challenge was getting the shape right. “It’s an unusual structure with an arched glass and so explaining it to people in the manufacturing space was tough. I would use matchboxes to show them the ridges I was looking for in the structure and how the aluminium sheets needed to be aligned as grids on the tube.”

She adds that every part of the draft tube was built by a different vendor in Chennai and assembling it all together was another task. Finally, after a pilot, the project was commissioned in 2022. 

Mahek emphasises that since the SunHarvested CoolRooms methodology is a sustainable alternative to cold storage, it can help in cutting down on nearly 14 per cent of the global greenhouse gases emitted due to refrigerants.

A potential solution to the problem of food spoilage

While Mahek says there is still scope for improvement of the apparatus in terms of remote accessing and automation, she says the field prototype showed good results. “The sensors we installed in the prototype provided us with information on the humidity and temperature. They gave us a good estimate of the conditions inside the tube, with the humidity being 20 percent and the temperature having a difference of eight degrees Celsius between the ambient and enclosure.”

The implications this could have for rural India could be great, she adds. 

“A majority of the farmers in rural India harvest the land in slots, storing their produce in drums, and eventually this leads to rotting as the storage spaces are not equipped correctly.”

Prof Harish JK, Mahek’s mentor from Chettinad Vidyashram, terms the innovation “novel and an important step towards curbing increasing greenhouse gases, like HFCs and CFCs, which are emitted by rotting fruits and vegetables as well as cold storages that are used to save them”. 

“By potentially replacing cold storages in rural parts of India, the SunHarvested CoolRooms will have an indisputable impact on the quality of our air, climate, and our lives and those of future generations,” he adds. 

Meanwhile Mahek’s school principal, Dr S. Amudha Lakshmi adds that Mahek’s project could be a boon for farmers who are constantly irked by the malady of perishable crops. She adds that while the innovation is notable, “Mahek’s scientific acumen and her thirst for innovative strategies have always been her strongest assets.” 

Ask Mahek her favourite part about this project, and she says it was her learnings, both academic as well as personal. “What I’ve realised is that you can get help for anything you need, but getting the ideas straight in your mind first is crucial.”

Edited by Divya Sethu

Collaborating with Dr Mahapatra in this interesting endeavour are research scholars Subhashis Patari and Dr Priyankan Datta. Together, they have co-authored a research paper that was recently published in the prestigious peer-review journal, Nature Scientific Reports.

Researchers claim that this “three-dimensional (3D) paper-based portable device” has the capability of detecting substances used as adulterating agents in milk including urea, detergents, soap, starch, hydrogen peroxide, sodium-hydrogen-carbonate and salt, among others.

These researchers even claim that one can perform this test at home. To test for these adultering agents in milk, one would require just a millilitre of milk.

Moreover, a recent press release issued by the institute makes the argument that, unlike expensive and time-consuming conventional laboratory-based methods to test the purity of milk, “this new technology is affordable and could also be used to test other liquids such as water, fresh juices and even milkshakes for traces of adulteration.” (L-R: Image above of Dr Pallab Mahapatra and a representational image)

Milk adulteration: A problem which requires solving

According to a report by the Food Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI), in 2019, 41% (in 2018, 70%) of milk produced in India was adulterated.

“The total number of cases registered for milk adulteration is around 15,000 per year. Nowadays, urea, melamine, detergents, boric acid, formalin, ammonium sulphate, caustic soda, starch, sugars, hydrogen peroxide, soaps, caramel, and many more harmful substances are added to milk to contaminate it. The major bottlenecks for fixing this issue are the lack of strict enforcement laws and the unavailability of quick and easy detection techniques,” says Dr Pallab Mahapatra, in a conversation with The Better India.

These significant issues motivated them to solve this problem. They studied the current situation, examined available facilities, and developed their adulteration detection device.

“Cost and laboratory skills are the major constraints for a developing country like India. Therefore, to keep the price low and make the device user-friendly, we proposed paper-based devices with a colour-coding concept. We have performed various laboratory experiments to detect adulterations such as urea, detergent, soap, salt, H2O2, boric acid, and neutralisers in milk and successfully identify them in a single test,” he explains.

How does it work?

Elaborating on how this paper-based device works, Dr Mahapatra notes that the technology behind their idea is the combination of microfluidics and the calorimetric reaction.

“Our device is basically an absorbent paper, consisting of micropores through which liquid can easily flow due to the capillary action. The device comprises a top and bottom cover and a sandwich structure 3D paper-based microfluidic device. The 3D design has hydrophilic channels and circular detection zones. Samples are added in the small opening on the top cover, and it is transferred to the detection zone through the hydrophilic channels due to the inherent capillary action. The chemical reaction takes place in the detection zone,” he explains.

“The colorimetric detection technique identifies the adulterants in these detection zones, and the adulterants can be quantified using a colour intensity test. A transparent cover is provided outside the device to decrease the reagent evaporation rate. A colour band and adulterant names are provided on the bottom cover’s backside for easy understanding of users,” he adds.

“With the provided colour bands, the number of adulterants can be measured with a limit of detection varying from 0.1% to 0.4% for different adulterants,” says Dr Mahapatra.

“This idea is better than other existing techniques in terms of cost, sample volume, and time. It provides quantitative and qualitative detection of multiple adulterants simultaneously with zero energy consumption, while also being lightweight and easy to use. The product can be used in every house and any resource-limited setting. The potential customers of the current product are food collection centres, households, schools, hotels, labs, and food industries,” he adds.

But how does this device manage to test the purity of milk in just 30 seconds?

As Dr Mahapatra explains, “The colorimetric reaction happens as soon as the sample touches the detection spot. So within a few seconds, we can get a yes or no answer.”

Developing this device

Dr Mahapatra and his team have been working in this field for the last four years. They started by conducting a detailed literature study about the problem.

“Our aim was also to facilitate decisive meetings with experts in the same field, testing the chemical reagents and investigating the ideal detection techniques. We also did experiments with different concentrations to monitor the changes. We conducted a detailed study of the detection technique to improve the sensitivity and limit of detection (LoD),” he recalls.

“We performed the in-depth testing of the reagent’s durability, specificity, and its interference with foreign substances. We have tested several different prototypes and arrived at the proper packaging of the device. Having said that, there were several challenges we encountered while fabricating the device like formulating a design to detect multiple adulterants simultaneously, cross-contamination of the reagents, leakage of the sample and reagent evaporation,” he adds.

When can we buy it off the shelf?

A prototype of the device has been developed in the lab. The current invention is at technology readiness level (TRL) 3, where critical function/proof of concept has been established.

“We have filed a patent for this device and are working on the design modifications, and developing other methods of food adulteration detection. Our future goal is to identify even the uncommon/unknown harmful contaminants in liquid foods,” he claims.

The major equipment used for this purpose was purchased through different projects. Consumables were purchased through the department/project funds as well as Subhashis’ PMRF (Prime Minister’s Research Fellows) fund.

“Before the prototype develops into a marketable product, we have to work on scalable production methods, attractive design, and proper marketing strategies. We need a mobile app for easy access and quantitative detection of contaminants. Later on, a web-enabled medium can be developed for information gathering and learning the country’s adulteration patterns. We also require support staff to help us in the final product development stage. Automation of the fabrication process is another challenge that we have to address,” he says.

In other words, there is still some way to go before you can buy this device off the shelf, but there is clear intent that its final destination is the larger Indian market.

(Edited by Pranita Bhat; Images courtesy IIT Madras, Pexels, Shutterstock)

“If the ambulance services could have been informed early and arrived on time, he could have survived. Data suggests that about 30 percent of deaths are caused due to delayed ambulance services,” the Jharkhand resident tells The Better India.

The incident was the trigger for the 16-year-old to start working on solutions, and in 2021, his quest led him to innovate the application Rakshak Road Safety to get immediate medical help to road accident victims.

To protect lives

The latest government data shows a total of 4,12,432 road accidents were reported in the country in 2021, claiming the lives of 1,53,972 people. The worst affected age group in road accidents is 18-45 years, which accounts for about 67 percent of total accidental deaths.

Rupesh shares that his app has the potential to prevent such road accident deaths and save lives. 

“It is a multipurpose road safety application and device, which is designed in a way that it notifies nearby hospitals’ emergency services, police stations, close friends of the victim, and the people within a 1 km radius of the accident. It gives them the exact location of the accident, as well as the details of the victim and his vehicle. Once people get notified, they can reach the victim for help,” he says.

For this, the app uses artificial intelligence and data driven from sensors (acceleration and retardation of the vehicle). “The app triggers this event as an accident and sends a notification to registered people who are in a range of the accident spot. It also messages people who are in the emergency contact list given by the user,” he adds.

The mobile application uses Google cloud services to get information about nearest hospitals and police stations, and informs them about the accident and vital information such as blood group and disabilities of the victim. Furthermore, the app also provides a first-aid guide to help the victim before professional medical help arrives.

Rupesh says that this app also promotes road safety rules and informs the traffic police, whenever users exceed the speed limit. This becomes significant given a majority (71.7 percent) of road accidents are caused due to over speeding.

The data also suggests that 1.6 percent of road accidents are caused by the use of cell phones while driving. “The app is also equipped with modules, which on the wish of the user do not allow phone calls to happen while driving,” he says.

Recognised by the Central Government

Currently studying in Class 10 at the Delhi Public School Bokaro, Rupesh has been fascinated by the world of computers and programming languages from a young age.

Earlier, he also developed a sign language translator that was designed to bridge the communication gap between persons with disability and those who do not understand sign language.

After developing the prototype of the Rakshak app, he received recognition for the 2023 INSPIRE Manak scholarship of Rs 10,000 from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. He used the scholarship amount to cover the cost of development and also invest in further research and development of the mobile app.

Currently, as part of the regulations of the competition, Rupesh is not allowed to make the app public. “However, the app has been evaluated and tested by the competition officials, and I have received positive feedback from them. The INSPIRE Manak provides full patent, funding, and support to make the app public once the competition is finalised,” he says.

Among those who have tested the app is his friend Aryan Kumar, who tested the app by intentionally simulating an accident scenario under safety and guidance. “The app worked as expected and provided a quick and accurate response. It correctly identified the accident and sent messages and calls to nearby hospitals and police stations,” he tells The Better India.

“Rakshak can have a significant impact on society by reducing the number of road accidents and providing timely assistance to victims. It can help reduce the response time, which is often a critical factor in saving lives,” he adds.

Meanwhile, Rupesh is looking forward to making the app widely accessible to as many people across the country. He aspires to work with car manufacturers in order to enhance the impact of the mobile app and help prevent road accidents in the country.

“My ultimate goal is to make a positive impact and contribute to the betterment of society in any way I can. Knowing that the app has the potential to prevent deaths caused by road accidents and save lives is a powerful motivator, and it gives me a sense of purpose and fulfilment,” he says.

(Edited by Divya Sethu; All photos courtesy: Rupesh Kumar)

Sources:

‘Road Accidents in India 2021’: Published by Ministry of Road Transport & Highways in 2022.

“He was with his daughters and wanted to use the toilet. After defecating, he needed someone to clean him and the two daughters looked at each other. The guilt and embarrassment in the father’s eyes were saying everything. He murmured to himself, ‘It is better to die than live like this,’” recalls Sruthi to The Better India.

That day, Sruthi decided to build something to ease some of the difficulties faced by people with immobility issues.

After working relentlessly for years, Sruthi launched Sahayatha — a smart wheelchair with an inbuilt commode, a battery indicator, and an armrest with a 180-degree recline.

Later on, this very wheelchair managed to impress the ‘sharks’ on Shark Tank Season 2 and won her a deal of Rs 1 crore at 10 percent equity.

‘My father was my greatest support’

After completing her graduation in biomedical instrumentation engineering, Sruthi was working as a medical coder in Coimbatore. Always a shy kid, leaving home and moving to a different city was never her plan.

“I had never left Coimbatore. I came across a fellowship program but it was in Odisha. Initially, I was unsure how to proceed as I have never been to any other state. It was more of a mental barrier, but my father was my biggest motivation to go out of my comfort zone,” she says.

Always passionate about being an entrepreneur, the fellowship, which was a social innovation program, seemed like a perfect place to learn the ways of business.

“My father accompanied me to Bhubaneswar where I had to give an interview and I got in. Back then I just wanted to learn and make products of utility. I had no idea what was ahead for me,” she shares.

“I did not know Hindi or Odiya and I had never been out of home, but my father convinced everyone in the family to let me go. Working as a fellow, I learnt a lot and the journey of Sahayatha began,” she says.

In 2018, after the incident with the paralysed man, I started to conceptualise the idea of the smart wheelchair.

“I had seen the issue, and now I had to bring up a solution. I could clearly see there was a market for this kind of innovation but not enough knowledge about it. Under the guidance of my mentors from BIRAC and KIIT, I started to develop various ways of making the wheelchairs easier to use,” she explains.

Enabling a dignified and independent life

Sruthi’s father, K K Babu, had been a part of her journey ever since the conception of the idea.

“My father was a mechanical engineer and I knew where to turn for the mechanical and designing part of the product. We set up a small unit in Coimbatore, and he worked tirelessly with me to make this product happen,” she recalls.

The duo went through 118 iterations before landing on the final product.

“In 2020, we were pretty confident of our design and decided to run some trials. But that’s when the pandemic hit. We requested many hospitals to help us but the time was such that the staff was too busy treating the patients,” she says.

“We noticed that many COVID patients were too weak to go to the washrooms, so we suggested the hospital put the chair near the patient. They agreed, and we went on with our pilot study which took nearly six months,” she says.

With the product ready to be launched, Sruthi went to an expo in Chennai.

“While I attending the expo, dad left us. I lost all faith…he was my biggest supporter and motivation. He was with me throughout the process, and I did not know what to do without him,” she shares.

“I collected myself and was able to launch the product,” she adds.

Explaining the various benefits of the product, Sruthi says, “People usually think that a person with a mobility issue only needs a wheelchair. But that is not the case. They need help doing basic things like passing urine and motions. They need a caretaker, so what we provide with Sahayatha is a wheelchair which can become a stretcher with a self-cleaning toilet facility.”

“The cleaning system uses an old Japanese technique called a bidet system. It is quite common but not in wheelchairs. It has an inbuilt water storage system, and the faecal matter is collected in a cup-shaped container, which can be easily removed from the back of the chair without disturbing the patient. The chair is also multifunctional and can be made into a stretcher too, so a person with limited mobility can easily transfer themself to the bed,” she adds.

The cleaning system works on a battery which is chargeable. Once charged the battery can work for up to 30 days.

There are two variations of the product — S100 and S200. The S200 model comes with the facility of being converted into a stretcher. The S100 is priced at Rs 29,900 and the S200 at Rs 39,900.

‘Shark Tank was a miracle’

The product took the ‘sharks’ by surprise with the level of innovation and the aspiration behind it.

“Before going to the Shark Tank, we were not able to sell the product. While we knew there was a market for it, people were not aware of our existence. We were really small back then with limited finished products. Most of the hospitals wanted to try samples, but we did not have the bandwidth to give them that,” she says.

“But after Shark Tank, people know us. We have had hundreds of enquiries and many orders too,” she says, adding, “It was my husband who first told me to go to the show.”

Sruthi’s application got selected and she decided to take Hindi tuition to learn the language.

“Since most of the pitch happens in Hindi, I decided to take classes to prepare myself. When the day finally came, it was like a dream. Even when I was standing behind those [Shark Tank] doors, I was thinking, ‘Is this really happening?’,” she says.

Sruthi further informs, “We have sold over 30 chairs since the episode aired.”

Geetanjali Mohandas, the first purchaser of Sahayatha, shares her experience of using the chair. “My 93-year-old mother has been partially bedridden since 2018. She has been under medication and a nurse’s support. I am a working woman, and it was becoming really hard for me to take care of her. When I heard about the wheelchair, it was a big relief. I think it is an amazing product not only for the design but also for the change it brings in users.”

She continues, “My mother was happy that she is not a burden on anyone now and she can clean herself. The product brought back the lost self-respect and dignity.”

Narrating a similar story, Sruthi says, “Another customer of mine spoke to me and told me that he can eat anything he wants now. I was astonished to hear that and asked why he said it. He replied, ‘Since now I can relieve myself whenever I want, I eat whenever I want to’. Just the shame and guilt of asking someone’s help to clean himself was not letting the old man eat. It is such feedback that kept motivating me to go on this path even when sales were not good.”

As for the future, Sruthi wants to increase production and spread more awareness about her product and its uses. The chairs are available to buy on the official website and on e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

The machine works with a harness, seat, and seat-belt and operates using a small motor and a set of wheels to grasp the trunk without using their hands. This easy-to-use machine helps reduce dependence on labourers, cuts down costs by 20 per cent, and helps farmers harvest 300 areca palms in a day, which is over thrice the amount harvested from traditional methods.

“The labourers used to work for four to five days a week, as the conventional method was limited to covering fewer trees per day. But today, a single labourer can complete the work of four. This saves about Rs 24,000 a week in labour costs,” Ganapathi tells The Better India.

With no technical or engineering background when he created this scooter, villagers called him insane. But his invention helped them tackle the difficulties in harvesting betel nuts.

So far, he has sold hundreds of bikes and continues to amaze people with his innovation.

Learn more about his innovation here: 

Edited by Divya Sethu

With a mission to boost farm yield, they launched their startup Fuselage Innovations in 2020. So far, they have launched two drones — Niriksh and Fiya.

Both drones are cloud-connected. Niriksh has sensors that can spot problems such as pests and nutrient deficiencies at an early stage through plant mapping. Instead of spraying all the crops, these drones help spot specific plants or areas needing help. After analysis, Fiya is used to spray the required area.

“Over the past two years, we have seen that adopting drone technology and following the precision farming protocols help boost yield by 25-35 percent. A significant dip of 75 percent has been observed in fertiliser and nutrient use. Efficiently, farmers’ profits have become three times,” Devan, co-founder of the startup, tells The Better India.

The brother-sister duo also provides products and services to farmers. While the drones cost Rs 4-7 lakh, they charge Rs 2,000-5,000 per acre for the service model. So far, the startup has worked with more than 3,500 farmers.

What inspired the two engineers towards the innovation was the devastating Kerala floods, which left fertile land destroyed due to the removal of topsoil.

Learn more about their innovation here:

Edited by Divya Sethu. Photo: Haripriya Shaji

“Watching my mother serve as their caretaker taught me the importance of compassion and empathy in the care of the elderly,” she recalls. 

What followed was a journey that took her to Bengaluru, Auroville and eventually Los Angeles, United States, where she pursued a master’s degree in industrial and furniture design at the prestigious ArtCenter College of Design, while volunteering at senior living facilities.

“At senior living facilities in Los Angeles, I was able to hear their stories and truly experience their lives, further solidifying my passion for assistive technology and the potential it has to improve the quality of life for our ageing population,” she adds. 

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “In 2020, the number of people aged 60 years and older outnumbered children younger than 5 years. Between 2015 and 2050, the proportion of the world’s population over 60 years will nearly double from 12% to 22%.” 

Breakthroughs in medicine, nutrition, biotechnology, and other fields are helping people enjoy life for a longer period of time. The key is to understand how older people will spend their lives. Focusing on well-being, mental and physical health, recreation, and leisure time. 

Shreya’s research calls into question our assumptions and perspectives on personal mobility. As the market for products focused on older people grows, she closely interacts with users to understand their behaviours, sentiments, and the impacts of ageing. 

“When older adults were asked about their dreams, a majority of them mentioned independence and the joy of meandering. I studied their everyday lives, listened to their stories, observed them in their natural habitat, and experienced their lives with them. Seniors are keen on the quality of life, autonomy, and self-reliance,” elaborates Shreya. 

“Finding balance between independence and ageing in a world of rapidly-evolving technology and mindsets is challenging. We must overcome the myth that ageing equates to feebleness and passivity, an idea perpetuated by the ageing-related products and stereotypes,” she adds. 

Shreya’s extensive research and passion has led her to develop the interactive Wander On smart cane (Walker On Assist 01) and walker (Walker On Assist 02) for seniors that combine SOS alarms with GPS tracking, built-in blood pressure monitoring, and even a seat.  

Understanding ageing 

Volunteering at elder centres and assisted living facilities in Los Angeles and Grand Rapids, Michigan, albeit for a few months, allowed Sherya to immerse herself in a setting where the ageing process is more pronounced, and observe people’s behaviour in a context that is difficult to comprehend. It was a deeply enriching experience that enabled her to better understand the complexities of ageing, including the physical, emotional, and social aspects that come with it.

“Through my time spent observing and interacting with seniors in these settings, I gained valuable insights into their daily routines, preferences, and the challenges they face on a regular basis. I learned how important it is to take the time to listen to their stories, their experiences, and concerns, in order to provide the best possible care and support,” explains Shreya. 

“A very valuable aspect of my experience was studying the behaviour of middle-aged seniors who had just moved into a senior community. The transition from independent living to a more communal setting can be difficult. It was fascinating to observe how people adapt to their new environment, form new relationships, and find meaning and purpose in their lives,” she adds.

The experience taught her to take the time to understand each individual’s unique situation, needs, and preferences. As she delved deeper into her research on “Engaging in Ageing”, she realised that the market for products catering to the actively ageing population was stagnant. 

“Through my research, I identified key areas in elderly life where there was a need for improvement, such as morning routines, internal mobility, and kitchen assistance. This led me to conceptualise and design the first smart cane and walker,” recalls Shreya. 

“My intention was to create a mobility assistance device that would help elderly adults actively age in place by making products more engaging and appealing. I wanted to encourage them to feel cheerful and make healthy and enjoyable life decisions. With this in mind, I developed the ‘Wander On’ cane and walker, which was specifically designed for ageing baby boomers and others who may lack the self-assurance necessary for independent mobility,” she adds. 

The ‘Wander On’ was envisioned to be a ‘helping hand’ by providing seniors with a sense of security, enabling them to get aid right away if they need it and also providing physical support. 

“It strengthens the independence equilibrium that one always strives to preserve. Overall, I  created a product that improves the quality of life for the ageing population and helps them actively age in place with dignity, independence, and grace,” claims Shreya. 

Wander On Assist- Smart Cane

The Wander On Assist 01 is a “reimagined cane” that is “ideal for those seeking partial walking assistance”. With an adjustable height, a built-in pedometer, and a shock-absorbing ergonomic design, it promotes freedom and independence, according to Shreya. 

“It also tracks blood pressure, temperature, and pulse, and allows users to share this health data with their contacts. When pressed, the SOS button sends an emergency signal to the support centre and nominated contact, detailing the current health stats and location. The navigation light offers invaluable assistance at night. And during unforeseen events, including power outages, the location of the cane can always be found on the Wander On app. If the cane is lost nearby, the vibration setting can help locate it too,” she explains. 

The built-in pedometer tracks steps and a sensor monitors blood pressure, temperature, and pulse. Users could easily share this data with their contacts for added safety and support.

The Wander On smart cane is more than just a mobility aid. It’s a high-tech, all-in-one service and healthcare device. In 2019, Shreya embarked on a mission to “revolutionise mobility assistance for the elderly” and others facing mobility challenges. 

“My journey began with extensive research and analysis, diving deep into the intricacies of cane design. As I delved into the nitty-gritty of handles, grips, and functionality, I realised that designing the perfect cane was no easy feat. Brining my vision to life through prototyping. It was a nerve-wracking process. Every time my design failed, I gained invaluable insights that allowed me to tweak and improve. Maintaining an open feedback loop with stakeholders proved instrumental in obtaining validation and understanding the pain points of the project,” she says.

Wander On Assist- Smart Walker

Shreya wanted to reimagine the traditional walker and create a device that would not only provide assistance, but also promote activity, independence, and ownership of one’s health. 

“So I set out to design the Wander On Assist 02 walker for seniors — a game-changing mobility device that would incorporate smart home connectivity, a navigation system, and hand gesture detection. I envisioned an elegantly ergonomic walker with wheels and seats that would not only assist with mobility, but also open doors, carry groceries, and even guide users home with GPS technology if they found themselves in unfamiliar surroundings,” explains Shreya.

“Users can sit or stand using one device; so they can choose when to be mobile. Additional features mean that at the end of the day, users can even check their health details and step count — information they can then share with contacts for safety,” she adds.

And to make it even more user-friendly, she incorporated a simple hand gesture that would call the walker toward the user, so they wouldn’t have to struggle to retrieve it.

“But I also wanted to prioritise health and safety. So I added features that allow users to check their health details and step count, which they can then share with contacts for added safety. With the Wander On Assist 02, I aimed to usher in a new age of product development that meets the needs of millions of people in a thoughtful and imaginative way,” she notes. 

On the verge of commercialisation 

Shreya currently works as a design strategist for a renowned Houston-based architecture company, Planning Design Research. In her role, she has been conducting research on patients’ and visitors’ experiences in healthcare facilities. 

“We are currently in the process of prototyping the products and are planning to commence production soon. To better understand the ergonomics and product-market fit, we have enlisted the help of some seniors who are using the prototype. This will enable us to refine the design further before making it widely available. This is only the beginning of what we hope will be a continuing effort to improve the well-being of seniors in India and around the globe,” she says. 

Compared to existing walkers and canes, she believes that the Wander On device offers “superior monitoring and communication services” that have typically been provided by medical professionals or caregivers. “Our goal is to enhance the user’s sense of independence, allowing them to continue their normal routines, including healthy social activity,” she adds. 

Looking ahead, she aims to continue her work on designing better solutions for seniors, addressing societal problems and designing sustainable urban systems. 

“It’s my goal to help older people achieve greater levels of autonomy, independence, mobility, and connection through my work. This is only the beginning of what we hope will be a continuing effort to improve the well-being of seniors,” notes Shreya. 

(Edited by Divya Sethu; Images courtesy Shreya Thakkar)

Even as batchmates at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Calicut, Swapnil Shrivastav (28) and Venkatesh R (27) were heavily focused on technology-driven sustainability. Having worked on personal projects of rainwater harvesting and wastewater treatment, they felt that water is one of the most neglected domains in the country.

“Back then, the last great innovation of reverse osmosis had happened during the 1960s, and even that ended up wasting more water than it purified. We keep saying that India is a rain-fed country, but about 80 per cent of our drinking water requirements come from groundwater,” Swapnil tells The Better India.

As per a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India released last month, the overall stage of groundwater extraction had increased from 58 per cent to 63 per cent between 2004 and 2017.

“So right after graduation in 2016, we started exploring the ‘water from air’ concept and came up with a traditional electricity-based atmospheric water generator (AWG) in 2018. But we had a vision of developing technology that could provide high-quality drinking water to serve as a viable alternative to groundwater, with completely renewable energy sources,” he says.

In 2019, the duo joined hands with Pardeep Garg (34), a graduate of Bengaluru’s Indian Institute of Science and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Govinda Balaji (30), from Coimbatore Institute of Technology, to establish their water-tech startup Uravu Labs. After a year spent researching, funded by a 50,000 USD grant by Water Abundance XPrize, their efforts came to fruition when they developed a working prototype that could produce five litres of water per day (LPD) in a wholly sustainable manner.

Occupying an area of 2 square meter, the Uravu AWG is a thermal and desiccant-based system that makes use of absorption and desorption processes to convert ambient air into drinking water, priced at Rs 5 per litre.

“During the adsorption process, air is passed over a desiccant core made of silica gel, which has a very high affinity for water vapour. So with a standard desiccant using 10 kg of silica gel, as many as 2 litres of water can be adsorbed within three hours. The desorption process also lasts for another three hours, during which solar heat is used to release the vapour back. The moisture can then be condensed into completely renewable drinking water,” Swapnil explains.

“So each cycle lasts about six hours and is repeated four times during 24 hours. We use a thermal battery which enables the desorption process during nighttime,” he says.

Swapnil says the quality of the water produced by Uravu AWGs fits the parameters set by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). The National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) has also approved it for drinking usage.

While the startup hasn’t made any commercial sales, he adds, it has secured three pilot projects for a real-estate developer, a beverage manufacturer, and a corporate office.

Strategic Advantage

Swapnil says that while several companies occupy a space in the Indian AWG market, they primarily use air-conditioning-based technology that employs high levels of energy.

“These machines are non-renewable, and you’ll hardly get three litres of water for one unit of electricity. Even if one pairs it with a solar PV system, you’ll have to use electronic supply batteries that end up almost doubling the cost of the operation,” he notes.

“At Uravu, we decoupled the desiccant and heat systems, which gives us the strategic advantage of not being limited to solar energy, but tapping into any heat source to produce renewable water,” he says.

He explains, “So a processing, textile or chemical industry could ideally use their existing waste heat, even produced while burning biomass, to power our AWGs and fulfil their on-site drinking water requirements. Another application we’re looking at is breweries, which have a wet by-product called ‘beer spent grain’. This can be dried using exhaust air, which enhances the humidity of the air, and the dried BSG can be burnt to generate heat for the AWG. So we can utilise the waste generated at the brewery and enable a circular system to continually produce water.”

Swapnil says the Uravu AWG can even function in areas with as low as 30 percent relative humidity (RH).

“Our focus is on designing custom desiccant systems relevant to the weather conditions of a site. So in an area with 80 per cent RH, say Chennai, about 20 kg of silica gel will be used to generate 20 litres of water. But in Rajasthan, where you usually have 30 to 40 per cent of RH, the amount of silica gel will be four times higher. What’s more, silica gel contributes to only 20 per cent of the AWG’s total cost, so we can supply water to less humid areas without a marginal increase in price,” he says.

Road Map

Swapnil notes that the startup’s primary focus lies in reducing the reliance on groundwater by the Indian beverage manufacturing industry.

“Globally, the beverage industry consumes 1,500 billion litres of water every year, and about 45 per cent of this amount is sourced from groundwater. This includes manufacturers of packaged drinking water, cold drinks, energy drinks, and alcoholic beverages like beer and wine. This is equivalent to almost 20 percent of the entire world’s drinking requirements,” he claims.

“In India, such companies typically look for areas with a sufficient water table or set up a factory near an existing spring. We refer to groundwater as a non-renewable resource because it has accumulated for billions of years and takes a drastically long time to recharge naturally. For instance, a factory could be set up in an area where the groundwater would be completely depleted within the next ten years. On the other hand, air is replenished in eight to 10 days and makes for a much more renewable source to generate water,” he says.

He says that Uravu’s initial launches will involve AWGs with 20 and 100 LPD capacities, targeted at the real estate sector target market, including educational and office campuses, luxury hospitality units, and residential areas in a limited capacity.

“A 20 LPD rooftop unit would be enough to fulfill the drinking and cooking needs of a family of five. But we can only look at residents of low-rise buildings and independent houses,” he notes.

Beverage manufacturers, however, would require AWGs with 2,000 LPD capacities, and the scaling of operations would help reduce the price of renewable water by Rs 1.5, he adds.

Swapnil says Uravu Labs is also looking to fulfill projects for ‘strategic partners’ such as the World Bank and the Ministry of Jal Shakti, which would enable them to fulfill the drinking requirements in the rural and remote areas of the country.

“The residents of such areas wouldn’t have the purchasing power to buy AWGs, but we can help subside them through governmental initiatives. One comes across multiple reports of women travelling a couple of hours daily to procure drinking water for their households. With in-house AWGs, they could use the same hours on their primary economic activities,” he says.

“For the next few years, our roadmap involves fulfilling B2B orders for green projects, helping create impact in terms of both preventing groundwater depletion and helping local communities preserve their water for themselves,” he says.

For further information, you can reach Uravu Labs here.

It all started when Dr Lal Singh decided to use his scientific knowledge — from years of research in analysing issues in rural and geographically difficult areas of the Himalayas — to offer grassroots innovative solutions.

With this intention in mind, in 1997, he founded the NGO Himalayan Research Group (HRG) in Shimla.

On interacting with the women living in the Maigal village, located in the remote areas of Himachal Pradesh, he realised that they were in dire need of cash in hand. So, supported by KVIB and SEED-DST, the HRG’s team of scientists set up mushroom compost units in the year 2000, helping the women earn quick money.

But despite availing of sustainable employment, the women would often be late for the training sessions and sometimes be absent.

“It became a frequent scenario across villages. They said they were collecting firewood from the forest or seeking fodder for cattle. The case was particularly concerning for villages located 2,000 metres above in the mountains,” says Dr Lal.

After digging deeper into the issue, he realised that the absence was, interestingly, connected to the inaccessibility of hot water.

Dhaneshwari Devi, a resident of the village, explains, “At any given time, the water temperature is between 7 and 12 degrees Celsius. We need warm water not just for chores and bathing, but also to feed the cows, cook, and even drink throughout the day.”

This situation is what eventually led Dr Lal to come up with the Solar Hamam, which warms water within minutes and works all day, providing much-needed respite to the villagers.

A harrowing struggle for warm water

Elaborating on the need for this innovation, Dr Lal says that in these remote areas, there is little to no electricity at all times. So the villagers chop down forest trees to gather wood to use as fuel to heat water.

“The fire at the chulha, a traditional stove, was always burning with a water heating pot that kept warm water. The women would remove the pot and replace it with other utensils while cooking. Then, the pot would go back on after the meal was complete. The family members would use the warm water from the pot for drinking, washing hands, and making tea,” he says.

Further research revealed that only 30 to 40 percent of the wood collected was used for cooking purposes, while around 60 percent was used just for heating the water and space in their homes.

“The village residents did not use LPG apart from warming food or preparing tea. They entirely depended on the fireplace,” says Dr Lal, adding that even though they could afford to buy solar water heating systems, “The water in the pipes would freeze and burst the channels. New parts of the branded solar heating system would require almost a month, and there were additional expenses to maintain and repair.”

Solar-powered water heater to the rescue

Since the introduction of the Solar Hamam in 2005, the villagers have had access to warm water all day.

The Solar Hamam is a wooden frame housing an absorber sheet made using galvanised iron, which is insulated with styrofoam in the rear. The sun-facing side has an aluminium alloy water coil with a capacity of 18 litres. The water coil and the absorber sheet are coated with black paint to absorb solar energy. The sun-facing side is further fitted with a 3.5 mm window glass. 

To operate the device, water is poured from the top left end of the pipe. After a waiting time of around 15 minutes, warm water (80 degrees Celsius) is released from the bottom right side of the exit.

“It has undergone a couple of iterations over the years to improve efficiency, enabling it to work even at -20 degrees Celsius. The first batch takes about 45 minutes to heat as the pipes absorb sun rays, but the consecutive batches release in 15–20 minutes. The villagers have to ensure that no water remains in the pipes by the end of the day to prevent freezing and bursting of pipes,” says Dr Lal.

Dhaneshwari shares, “I have been using the water heater for five years and have never been so happy. I use the sun to warm water without needing electricity or burning wood. The water is used for cooking, washing clothes, and doing farm work, without inhaling toxic fumes from fuelwood and harming my lungs.”

The water heater is priced at Rs 12,000 and is being funded by the central and state governments under different schemes. Over 6,000 people in over 60 villages have benefited from them, so far.

The villagers receive them free of cost, but to hold them accountable, they are expected to provide the wooden frames for the device. Furthermore, 30 trained artisans from the village manufacture the solar device, hence generating local employment.

For his innovation, Dr Lal was awarded the HP State Innovation Award in 2016-17 and the Jamnalal Bajaj Award for Application of Science and Technology for Rural Development in 2021.

He claims, “The water heaters help save 40 percent of fuelwood, which amounts to annual emissions of 2.5 metric tonnes of CO2,” adding that reducing wood consumption is crucial to maintaining and conserving biodiversity elements in forests near the villages.

(Edited by Divya Sethu; All images courtesy: Dr Lal Singh)

“Winning the Aarohan Social Innovation Award felt like ‘coming home’,” says Rajlakshmi (Raji) Borthakur, the founder and CEO of TerraBlueXT, a Bengaluru-based AI MedTech company that aims to transform healthcare with cutting-edge technology. Her award-winning innovation ‘TJay’, an early epilepsy-attack detection device, is all set to help countless people with epilepsy.

Adversity drives change

The journey of TJay started when Raji’s son, Tejas, was born in 2011, and the young mother knew something was amiss. “Tejas would have jerks, and he would sweat in his sleep. But the doctors refused to believe there was anything seriously wrong. So his epileptic attacks remained undiagnosed until one day, following a severe attack, Tejas slipped into a coma. Finally, the doctors paid attention,” she says, adding that “they were still insistent that his condition wasn’t serious”.

Thus, the desperate mother set out to find a solution which could inform her of Tejas’ impending seizures in advance. From being a self-proclaimed nerdy but worrying mother with no knowledge of the clinical background of epilepsy and entrepreneurship, to becoming a successful MedTech entrepreneur, her adventure was full of ups and downs.

Raji recounts how trying it can be to “start from scratch”.

“In one of my early days in dealing with Tejas’ seizures, out of frustration, I opened Google and actually typed out, ‘What is epilepsy?’. The internet defined it as an abnormal electrical activity in the brain. I was intrigued, because it occurred to me that if Photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors can measure abnormal activity in the heart by simply being attached to a person’s fingers, surely the brain too must be sending electrical signals somewhere in the body, right? And, perhaps we can tap into that information using some common mechanisms, like some sort of sensors?”

Building upon this epiphany, Raji spent the next few months creating a prototype for the design simply “to prove a point that technology like TJay is possible”. At the time, she says she had no plans of commercialising the venture but was only keen on proving that technology could perhaps ‘see’ complex things in our neurophysiology, which a human eye could miss.

TJay and its potential

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Raji’s innovation, for which she has been granted a patent, is a sign of hope to many who struggle with epileptic attacks. As she explains, the device helps predict incoming attacks up to eight hours in advance by measuring the autonomic nervous system, using a combination of sensors and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

It is an AI-powered smart wearable that detects electrical signals emerging from the brain to the extremities such as the palms of the hand. The device, when worn on the hand, measures a combination of biomedical signals including electrodermal activity (EDA), heart rate variability (HRV), temperature and respiratory function, and derives intelligence that monitors and diagnoses seizures.

Sharing her vision for TJay, Raji says, “There are about 65 million people living with epilepsy in the world, and we see ‘TJay’ being accessible to many, if not all. We’re anticipating its impact to benefit numerous undiagnosed epilepsy cases. We believe that the utility of ‘TJay’ will extend beyond epilepsy, and one day it will be instrumental in other severe conditions such as dementia, Parkinson’s, autism etc.”

Today at TerraBlue, another journey awaits Raji with her new innovation ‘Xaant’ — an AI-powered mental health screening device that automatically identifies anxiety and depression in minutes.

‘Infosys shaped me into what I am’

It was in 2019 that Raji received an email prompting her to apply for the Aarohan Awards. “Infosys has been my family for quite some time. It was the place where I was given the freedom I needed to experiment and brainstorm out-of-the-box solutions. While at Infosys, I became aware of the power of emerging technologies like the Internet Of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence, and this knowledge contributed to my innovations. Eventually, winning the Aarohan Award felt like I had done my learning well.”

She adds that the Aarohan Awards came at just the right time. “We had spent over a million dollars (USD) developing TJay through a combination of funding and bootstrapping. But there was a time in 2019 when the funding was tight, and we were facing a period of financial drought. The prize money that we received from being winners at the Aarohan Awards came as a relief.”

Raji’s work on TJay was selected as one of the top three innovations for the Innovate for Digital India Challenge in 2016 hosted by Government of India and Intel. She was also one of the twelve women who received the Women Transforming India Awards in 2017. In 2019, she was recognised as a Women Power Trailblazer by Forbes India in. Her work has been recognised by Niti Ayog, Indian Express, the United Nations, and the 8th Global Entrepreneurs Summit 2017 among many others.

Looking back at the journey, Raji is in awe. “I was a complete rookie in the field of neuroscience, and convincing the doctors that I had a solution was challenging. The only thing that I had by my side was the conviction that technology for the prediction of epilepsy is possible,” notes Raji. She further adds that “out of all the odds she had to face, the most challenging was fighting the mindset of people that a person from a non-medical background can create something medically relevant.”

The struggles were validated as the entrepreneur stood on the stage in front of philanthropist Sudha Murthy of the Infosys Foundation, receiving praise and acclamation for an innovation that started out as a mother’s quest to help her son. Remembering the moment, Raji says, “That moment felt like I had finally passed an important test, and here I was, being acknowledged by my gurus.”

Edited by Pranita Bhat

While Sanjay is the founder of Gurugram-based biotechnology startup UBreathe, Subham is the startup’s head of product and innovation. They began by indicating their ages to be 45 and 50 respectively, even though they are barely 30 and 28 years old respectively. This was merely a reference to how high air pollution levels in Indian cities are ageing our lungs at a frightening pace. 

According to the Air Quality Life Index produced by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, air pollution can shorten lives by almost 10 years in Delhi. Unfortunately, this problem has expanded geographically with even states such as Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh seeing people lose an additional two and a half to three years of life expectancy. 

Sanjay and Shubham further explained how existing air purifiers not just fail to address the indoor air quality problem holistically but also have a negative environmental impact.

To address this problem statement, they developed a series of unique ‘plant-based air purifiers’— UBreathe Mini and UBreathe Life for indoors at homes and offices; UBreathe Wall and UBreathe 360 or semi-open areas like metro stations, airports and shopping malls. 

They claim that UBreathe’s air purifiers combine the natural air purifying capabilities of plants with modern technology. Their proprietary design, according to them, “boosts a plant’s natural process of removing pollutants from the air with improved soil breathability.” 

Unlike mechanical purifiers that filter only dust pollution and are highly toxic to the environment, their solution “captures all the contaminants in the air”. Going further, Sanjay and Shubham note that the air purifier technology has been tested and certified by NABL [National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories]-accredited laboratories and has been reviewed and recommended by faculty of All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Delhi. 

After pitching their product to ‘sharks’ (investors), UBreathe secured a deal of Rs 1.5 crore from entrepreneur Namita Thapar. 

Expressing his delight at securing this investment, Sanjay said, “We are truly thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Namita Thapar and to be able to bring UBreathe to a wider audience in India and abroad. Namita’s extensive experience in the pharmaceutical industry gives her an in-depth understanding of the time and effort necessary to develop a product like UBreathe.” 

He also noted, “For the last several years, we have had the privilege of making a real difference in the lives of more than 1,000 customers. Over the next couple of months, we will be taking up marquee projects with offices and private and public schools to reach out to more people and make a bigger impact on their overall health.”

Building the technology

Established in 2018, the startup was founded by Sanjay, alongside Akhil Gupta, Akshay Goyal, and Inderjeet Rao — a diverse team of engineering and management graduates from renowned centres of learning like the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore, MIT Media Labs and Harvard School of Design.

They came together with a vision to build a “world-class consumer product from India” to tackle air pollution while being environmentally friendly and sustainable. Their research is backed by leading state-sponsored organisations such as IIT Ropar, CIIE.CO IIM Ahmedabad, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology and the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), among others. The company has filed six patents in India and Europe.

Sanjay, Akhil and Inderjeet have been working together for close to a decade now. Even before establishing UBreathe, they were working together on a separate Bengaluru-based startup. In 2018, however, they shifted track and wanted to work in a segment that could generate greater social impact. 

They got together with Akshay and began exploring nature-based technologies for India’s burgeoning air pollution problem. Such solutions were not only deemed to have great commercial value given their necessity but could do wonders for people’s long-term health. 

Speaking to The Better India, Sanjay Maurya says, “UBreathe was established in 2018 to solve the problem of indoor air pollution in a sustainable way.” 

“The currently available mechanical air purifiers can only filter dust pollution and at the same time, they are expensive and highly toxic to the environment. Additionally, it is highly challenging to bio-degrade these filters, resulting in a high carbon footprint. We had a two-fold goal to start UBreathe — one, to create an air purifier that captures all the contaminants in the air and secondly to create an eco-friendly alternative to mechanical air purifiers,” he explains.  

A United Nations study reveals that indoor air pollution can contribute 22%-52% to overall pollution levels and can be five times worse than outdoor air pollution. Indoor air pollution is not limited to just dust particles but also includes toxic gaseous and biological pollutants.

“At UBreathe, we believe that only technological innovations can help us in abating the rising air pollution issues. But, to solve this problem, urban buildings are adopting highly non-sustainable mechanical air purification systems. Hence, we decided to create a product that addresses the problem of indoor air pollution in a sustainable way,” elaborates Sanjay.  

“By combining three critical elements — technology, design and nature — the team came up with UBreathe. Our patent-pending ‘Breathing Roots’ technology uses the goodness of nature to amplify the natural abilities of air purification through plants. This process is broadly known as Phytoremediation. The ‘Breathing Roots’ technology boosts phytoremediation with the help of a centrifugal fan. It facilitates an increase in the volume of air at the soil-root zone, enabling the root microbiomes to interact with more air and purify the same. Our innovation is the first of its kind. Alternative solutions use highly non-sustainable filtration techniques,” says Akhil. 

According to the Nature Journal, phytoremediation “refers to the use of plants and associated soil microbes to reduce the concentrations or toxic effects of contaminants in the environment”. What UBreathe’s technology does is accelerate this process. 

After spending considerable time on deep research and development, the UBreath team finally had a working prototype in hand in 2019. It took them three years of intense research and development (R&D) and close to 25 prototypes to finally arrive at the current stage “where our solution can amplify the cleaning through houseplants by more than 100 times,” says Sanjay.  

How does it work?

Research findings from NASA in the 1980s, as well as studies at Harvard and the National Research Council of Italy, have demonstrated that plants can effectively mitigate indoor air pollution in a natural and sustainable manner. 

“Understanding the physiological processes and mechanisms involved in phytoremediation, UBreathe’s unique design boosts the phytoremediation process of plants by ~500x with the help of a centrifugal fan. This increases the volume of air at the soil-root zone, enabling the root microbiomes to interact with more air and purifying the same,” claims Sanjay. 

“The work is to amplify the properties of the roots of the plant. UBreathe performs activities and absorbs all the impurities from the air that comprise PM (particulate matter) 2.5, TVOCs (total volatile organic compounds), and other harmful gases and particles suspended in the air,” he adds. 

While Sanjay claims that UBreathe purifies the air from all contaminants like suspended particulate matter and other toxic gases categorised as TVOC, mechanical purifiers filter only dust pollution. 

“Moreover, UBreathe purifiers are a sustainable alternative. They don’t need any filter replacements. Even if the plant withers, it can be replaced with any of the recommended plants at a nearby nursery. Mechanical purifiers require regular filter replacements,” he adds. 

In September 2021, Professor Rajeev Ahuja, director at IIT-Ropar, spoke about the effectiveness of one of their flagship products, UBreathe Life. “This tested product ‘UBreathe Life’ can be a game changer for maintaining clean air indoors. The results of testing, conducted by the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL)  and the Laboratory of IIT Ropar maintain that the AQI (Air Quality Index) for a room size of 150 square feet drops from 311 to 39 in 15 minutes after using ‘UBreathe Life’,” he claimed. 

Meanwhile, according to a release issued by the Government of India’s Press Information Bureau in September 2021, “Recommending this researched product, Dr Vinay and Dr Deepesh Agarwal from AIIMS, New Delhi said that the ‘Ubreathe Life’ infuses oxygen in the room making it conducive to patients with breathing issues.” 

The Shark Tank India Experience

UBreathe submitted their interest in featuring in Shark Tank India (Season 2) in the middle of 2022. After witnessing the success and reach of Season 1, they felt that “this is the right platform for them to showcase their technology to Indian and global audiences”.

As Sanjay recalls, “The experience with Shark Tank India has been amazing. From the first day to auditions to the final pitch — everything was done at a grand scale. We feel such platforms definitely give a great boost to the entire startup ecosystem. Apart from Shark Tank India, the team has not raised external funds till now.”

Nonetheless, since its inception, the startup claims to have generated about Rs 1.6 crore in revenue, and is working with more than 1,000 customers to “provide healthy air quality through sustainable means.” 

Elaborating on the market opportunities available, Sanjay said, “As per a recent report, the $335B global market for Indoor Air Quality Solutions is now expected to grow at 8.28% in the next four years and COVID-19 has been a key driver for this growth. The pandemic has brought global attention to indoor air quality and the need to manage it to prevent airborne transmission of the virus. A product like ours can make a significant difference to millions.”

(Edited by Divya Sethu; Images courtesy UBreathe)

“Children who are visually impaired have a different way of interacting with the world,” explains Sanskriti Dawle, co-founder and CEO of ed-tech platform Thinkerbell Labs. 

Founded with her engineering batchmates Aman Srivastava, Dilip Ramesh, and Saif Shaikh in 2016, Thinkerbell Labs aims to use the team’s engineering knowledge to “bridge the gap in braille literacy that exists in India”. For this, they came up with a simple yet astounding innovation — Annie, named after Anne Sullivan, who was Hellen Keller’s teacher. 

Today, this self-learning device has managed to transform the lives of many children living with visual impairments in India, a feat that Sanskriti says was unimaginable when they started out. She says when they set out, they wanted to solve the problem of the lack of individualised attention these children received in school. 

“We learnt that if there are six students in a class with one teacher for an hour, each student sits idle for about 50 minutes, as they learn only when the teacher personally attends to them. As braille is a tactile language, a child only learns when the teacher holds their hand,” she notes, adding that this lack served as their motivation to find a solution. 

Annie: Your personal tutor on the go

Sanskriti says it is a challenge in itself to develop a device for children with visual impairment, because differentiation on the basis of colours cannot be done. 

“Instead, there are tactile differences that the device needs to have, so that when it is handheld, the child can tell the feature apart. Annie has a braille display, keyboard, and a digital braille slate that comes with audio-guided lessons in regional languages such as Malayalam, Gujarati, Kannada, Hindi, Marathi, etc, as well as English,” she notes, adding that this versatility renders it a comfortable aid to learn.  

“The best part is that children learn as they progress and there is no training required prior to using the device. It is very much like a video game, where the first few modules are focused on helping you find your way,” says Sanskriti.  

Annie also stands out for the fact that its integrated voice is more human than the standard robotic voices that come along with AI devices. “This makes it relatable to the kids, because if we had employed a robotic voice, they would tune it out. It does not capture their attention.” 

“Annie is one of the few devices that helps kids grasp grade-2 braille — which, like shorthand, uses special signs to represent groups of letters and words and is more complex than grade-1 braille.”

The device explains concepts or words from scratch, without assuming that the child has prior knowledge in those areas. This way, no child is left behind. 

Helios, the accompanying ecosystem, enables teachers to track the progress of students. Moreover, children can unlock different levels as they progress, while also letting donors and funders get a real-time view into their learning outcomes. 

But even as the friends were developing Annie and finalising the features, they knew that to achieve a considerable impact, they needed something more. Their hopes were answered in the form of the funding received through the Infosys Foundation’s Aarohan Social Innovations Awards in 2019. 

‘It took our startup to heights.’

Recounting the experience, Sanskriti says ironically they found out about the awards through a WhatsApp group of people working in the disability tech space.

“We decided to apply for the awards via a form, and in the coming weeks, I remember making our way to the Infosys campus with five of my teammates. It was exciting to present to a jury that had the likes of Sudha Murty and more than anything, it was inspirational to get her feedback on our idea and innovation and the impact we envisaged,” says Sanskriti, adding that the regional media attention they received post the awards helped them scale.  

Meanwhile, the funding of Rs 10 lakh was directed towards localising the content of Annie and increasing the number of educational institutes and states where it was deployed. Today, Annie is available in 16 states and the number is being scaled.  

“This is where the uniqueness of the awards came into play. What sets it apart from other awards is that they fund ideas and solutions financially, which is the single most impactful thing that a startup needs.”

Noting this, Sanskriti encourages people who have the opportunity to apply for the awards to do so this year. 

“For one, the application process forces you to articulate a lot of things about your business. It is thought-provoking, and during this time, you get the chance to network with other impact-based companies and get insights on navigating through challenges. It’s good not to have to walk the journey alone.”

The innovation even made it to the sets of Shark Tank India in 2022, where Sanskriti says “it was phenomenal in getting mass media attention to a very niche issue and did wonders for the business”. 

Today, there are “more than 70 Annie smart classes in the country and the device is available in nine languages”, while the group is also aiming for an international launch in the United States. 

“Getting the tech right is just the first part,” says Sanskriti. “Ensuring it reaches every child is the goal.”

For Karibasappa MG, the motivation to build a solar device to protect crops from insect attacks came from his own experiences.

After monumental losses due to attacks on his crop, the Karnataka farmer asked himself, “How do I get out of this situation?” The answer lay in his own innovation, which has not only solved his own woes, but also those of 16,000 farmers across India, as well as a few in Malaysia, the UK, Bahrain, Nepal and Australia.

“I understand the difficulties that farmers face. My only intention is to support them as much as I can,” he says.

Very often, innovations like Karibasappa’s emerge from one’s own experience and needs, and given the right platform, can catapult into a much larger movement that transcends geographical boundaries. The Infosys Foundation hopes to do just that with the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards.

Social innovation in India

Thousands today are entering the arena of social innovation in India, which in the last decade has seen a massive boom, cutting across sectors like healthcare, education, and women empowerment, to name only a few. Research over the years has yielded astounding results on how this is an effective way towards sustainable development, especially in rural areas, where it ensures grassroots involvement and development.

The third edition of the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards is an attempt to champion this innovative thinking and progress, so existing innovations may reach far and beyond to people who need them most — and in the process, inspire and empower other innovators to build something that could change the world.

Does this sound like something your own brilliant idea could need?

What are the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards?

The Awards seek out individuals, teams, NGOs, and social enterprises who have come up with technology-based solutions that have the potential to bring about a significant difference to people and communities at scale.

These solutions must be focused on the three categories of Education, Healthcare, and Women Empowerment. Infosys Foundation will commit up to Rs 50 lakh per winner, with a total award purse of Rs 2 crore.

Presented by the Infosys Foundation, the philanthropic and CSR arm of Infosys, the nomination process for the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards 2023 has commenced and will conclude on 12 March 2023.

How do I apply?

• Those applying must be Indian citizens above 18 years of age and residing in the country.
• Interested applicants must visit the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards website and can submit entries describing their work in the form of videos.
• The last date for submissions is 12 March 2023.

Points to keep in mind

• The entries must be of a fully functional prototype or finished project — not just an idea, concept, or mockup.
• The submissions will be judged on the following criteria — application to a social problem or need with a potential to scale; innovative use of technology with a focus on sustainability; originality of ideas; ease of use; and quality of presentation.

“At Infosys Foundation, we have always believed in the power of working relentlessly towards social good. The Awards further this very aim through a platform where…innovations with the potential to impact social good are valued, encouraged, and rewarded,” notes Sumit Virmani, trustee, Infosys Foundation.

Can your innovation transform lives? Apply now for the Infosys Foundation’s Aarohan Social Innovation Awards!

Edited by Pranita Bhat

One night in early 2015, Nitesh Kumar Jangir was at a tertiary care hospital in Bengaluru, when he saw something that shocked him. 

“An infant was brought to the emergency paediatric care unit in an auto. This is Bengaluru we are speaking of. The first thought that came to my mind was, why wasn’t there a system in place for such cases to be brought to the hospital with all due medical care?” 

As the doctors tried their best to revive the premature baby — who had suffered respiratory distress syndrome due to prolonged hypoxia (a low oxygen condition) — there was a scurry to set up breathing apparatus. Nine long hours later, the baby passed away. 

“This wasn’t a mere mortality statistic,” notes Nitesh, who observed this entire scene unfolding. “It has a lasting impact on the families of these infants. In this case, the mother was losing a baby for the third time. The trauma can’t be imagined,” he adds.  

The engineer from Rajasthan says it was this incident that gave him the idea to come up with Saans — a breathing support device that can help tackle the problem of premature deaths in babies. 

‘Equal access to paediatric care’ 

“In the case I mentioned, the baby did not make it. But even when they do, there is a chance of brain damage. Through our research, we arrived at the conclusion that the best solution in this case is non-invasive ventilation. Fifty percent of babies who are given CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) as the primary treatment option survive without severe issues,” notes Nitesh, who launched Saans under the startup, InnAccel Technologies.  

Thus, he wondered, if a solution was so readily available, why wasn’t it being implemented? Especially given that respiratory compromise is a significant cause of the nearly 7000 newborn deaths that occur every day globally.

Further probing helped him understand that existing solutions developed by international companies were prevalent but only in centres that had well equipped NICUs (neonatal intensive care units). These were fundamentally designed for well-equipped, well-staffed, tertiary-care hospitals. This assumption was the problem, notes Nitesh, adding that in India, most births happen in smaller, often rural hospitals, where such devices could not be deployed.

In order to develop Saans, Nitesh and his team at InnAccel began looking at existing devices that helped babies breathe and what they required. They observed that existing technologies required compressed air at high pressure, a continuous supply of high pressure, high flow oxygen, a complex blender, a continuous supply of electricity, custom tubing and interfaces,, and highly trained professionals. Furthermore, these existing devices could offer only one type of non-invasive therapy and could not be used in transport. 

“We designed a device that can work on any oxygen source, has a six-hour battery backup, and can work in hospital settings as well as transport. Our device does not need constant intervention; once the flow, pressure and oxygen percent are set, the machine takes care of everything and the paramedic does not need to check the parameters, due the monitoring and alarm capability in the device” he adds. 

Fourteen prototypes and numerous redesigns later, Nitesh and his team had their final product ready. However, they are still building and scaling up in a bid to incorporate any feedback they may receive. 

Today, over 1,000 Saans devices are being used in hospitals across India, in both urban as well as rural settings. “Our goal is that whether it is someone in a top-notch hospital or someone in a rural setting, everyone has equal access to quality healthcare,” notes Nitesh. 

An idea born out of personal observations

Even while the baby incident was the final push for Nitesh to come up with Saans, coming up with medical technology was always a cause close to his heart. 

Describing his growing years in a village in Rajasthan, he explains, “The nearest emergency medical service was 120 km away in Jaipur and the roads, too, were not good. People who needed to access specialised care had to travel for hours and would often lose their lives due to lack of timely care.”

Nitesh adds that these observations sowed the seeds for a love of medicine in him.  

“I grew up wanting to be a doctor and serve people. I loved Biology and even gave my medical entrance exam, but when I did not clear, I took up engineering.” 

Nitesh went on to pursue a course in bio-design, wherein engineers and doctors were trained on how to work together to come up with tech suitable for Indian settings. After this, as part of the training programme, he was required to spend time in various hospitals conducting need-based observational analysis. 

“We would note why diabetic patients needed to undergo amputation, why persons in ICU would recover from the primary infection but then get a secondary infection and die, etc. We would then come up with solutions for these problems,” he says. 

All of these learnings inspired his development of Saans, but as Nitesh says, it was support from the Government of India (through BIRAC),C-CAMP and organizations like USAID, BMGF IFC, ASME, IPE Global and Infosys Foundation, that allowed them to actually develop and build the device. 

‘After the Aarohan awards, we started getting recognition.’

The Rs 10 lakh funding that Nitesh secured  from the Infosys Foundation’s Aarohan Social Innovations Awards in 2019 not only set the stage for future scaling up and research, but also gave them tremendous recognition. 

“I still remember the evening I received the email notifying me that I was a winner. My mom was even happier than I, as she’d read Sudha Murty’s books and was excited that I would be receiving an award from Infosys,” he says, adding that the process that an idea went through before winning was fascinating. 

“Right from starting to apply to getting support from third parties and the jury, everything is great. Even if one does not win, going through the journey is an experience in itself. The funding was good, but what was more empowering was the acknowledgement we received following the award,” says Nitesh. 

He adds that when they approach hospitals or NGOs and mention the Infosys Foundation’s Aarohan award, people have faith in their innovation. “This is wonderful, as being startups, we face the challenge of trust. When there are so many devices available in the market, people’s common question is ‘Why should we buy yours?’” 

But with the award and how it helped them scale, their device has been used by 30,000 patients in 21 states, including a deployment in every government special newborn care unit in Assam, Nitesh says. 

“In terms of scaling, we are now planning on breaking into the international market. We not only want to have a made-in-India product, but one that can be taken to the world. Sometimes we take things for granted, but those who do not have access know how tough it is,” he says.  

Edited by Divya Sethu

With a vision that no mother or child dies during pregnancy, Bengaluru-based Arun Agarwal launched Janitri, an innovative healthcare brand that creates devices that can monitor the vitals of the mother and an unborn baby during pregnancy. This is expected to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality.

“I used to hear many stories about healthcare challenges from my family and others. Most of these stories were related to pregnancy complications, newborn complications, newborn deaths,” says Arun.

Impacted by these stories, he got admission to the Vellore Institute of Technology. After being hit by a huge wave of technology, he started to see solutions to all these healthcare problems. And with that thought, he registered Janitri.

“We have deployed our products in more than 250 hospital settings across India, Kenya, Brazil, etc. More than 60,000 mothers have been monitored using our product. More than 1,000 staff members have been trained to use these products,” he informs.

Recently, Arun also closed a deal of Rs 1 crore on Shark Tank India.

Watch this video to know more about Janitri:

Edited by Pranita Bhat

In 2018, mechanical engineering student Ajinkya Dhariya received an excellent opportunity to submit his business idea at a competition conducted by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC). 

The Pune resident decided to use this platform to pitch his sustainable idea of tackling and disposing of sanitary waste. The idea not only received applause and acclaim, but Ajinkya’s paper, which highlighted his thoughts and solutions on the matter, went on to be featured among the top 10 entries. 

Fuelled by a new zeal, Ajinkya decided to accelerate the idea into a full-fledged venture, and a few months later, Pad Care labs was born. The eco-friendly sanitary waste disposal system based in Pune was set up with a novel idea — converting sanitary pads into cellulose and plastic pellets.

That same year, he received another boost in the form of the Infosys Foundation’s Aarohan Social Innovation Awards, where he won a funding of Rs 30 lakh.  

“The funding helped me take my idea and product to the market,” says Ajinkya, adding that they were able to deploy 10 conversion units across Pune. “Before Aarohan, I was a tech geek working on small projects, but the funding escalated things.” 

The entrepreneur notes that today, their system disposes of 1.5 metric tonnes of pads per day and saves 2 lakh kg of carbon on a daily basis. He credits this feat to the Aarohan awards. 

Dispose sanitary pads safely 

Prior to launching Pad Care labs, Ajinkya says he was always enthused with creating sustainable solutions to modern problems. It was during his engineering days that a certain problem triggered the engineer to delve deeper into the research — disposal of sanitary pads. 

At the time, there were two common methods — dumping in landfills and incineration, both of which were polluting the planet. 

With a team of a few fellow engineering students, Ajinkya began furthering research into this area, speaking to students across schools and colleges in Pune to understand how they disposed of sanitary pads, and he landed on some startling learnings. 

“Most users mentioned that they felt uncomfortable carrying a sanitary napkin outside the toilet cubicle and disposing of it in a common dustbin. In the absence of a dustbin inside the cubicle, many opted to flush it down the toilet, which led to clogged drains,” he says. 

Many who threw the pad in a dustbin would do so without wrapping the pad in a newspaper, which would often lead to bad odour and create an unhygienic environment, which was a menace for the cleaning staff. 

“The cleaning staff complained of the smell and skin irritation they faced from handling open pads,” notes Ajinkya, adding that his plan to counter all these problems was to come up with a system designed to, first, dispose the pads in a hygienic way and, secondly, prevent the pads from building up in number. 

With a team of six, Ajinkya began working on the prototype ‘SaniBin’ and ‘SanEco’, which work on a chemical and mechanical disintegration method. 

The SaniBins are placed inside toilet cubicles to collect pads disposed of. “SaniBins have individual liners which can collect up to 30 sanitary pads over three weeks. Each liner is equipped with a patent-pending disinfection system that acts as a bacteria lock, and prevents producing any bad odour.”

The liners holding the sanitary pads are fed into ‘SanEco’, where they are disintegrated via a mechanical shredder. 

The shredded pieces then undergo a disinfection, decolourisation, and deodorization process to remove the super absorbent chemical from the pads. The pads are then broken down into cellulose to make paper and plastic pellets, which are in turn converted into packaging material.

Ajinkya’s unique idea and system was celebrated at the Aarohan Social Innovations Awards in 2018 by Infosys. 

‘The interactions I had during the awards inspired me.’

The platform he got to showcase his innovation was incredible, says Ajinkya, noting that the process started with a detailed application. 

“This was actually a good thing as it compelled us to go back to the pen and paper stage of our venture, back to the basics and made us rethink our solution and put into perspective why we were so intent on solving this problem, what was our goal, etc,” he says, adding that alongside, the awards also gave them exposure. 

 “We got a chance to meet and interact with personalities like Sudha Murthy and other innovators and startups in the same field. The feedback we got was amazing. These personalities not only gave us insights into the present moment, but also into how the product would scale and look four years hence. Today, we realise they were right,” he adds. 

Following the award funding, Ajinkya says they have managed to raise Rs 5 crore for the venture. 

“In 2018, I was fresh out of college and the startup ecosystem at the time wasn’t mature. But today things are very different and the Aarohan awards, as well as the experiences and interactions it gave me, changed my mindset,” he adds. 

He goes on to add that while the funding that the award gave was good, it wasn’t all about the money. 

“It was more about the fact that someone as big as Infosys believed in us and what we could do, and that was amazing,” he says.

In fact, Ajinkya’s innovation managed to impress the ‘sharks’ on Shark Tank India Season 2, with the unique pad disposal solution. The team walked away with an offer of Rs 1 crore for 4 per cent equity.

“The maps only identify the shortest route in terms of distance and fastest in terms of traffic, but it does not identify the problems on roads such as bad road conditions. This happened when we were still in college, which gave birth to the idea of making an AI-based solution to this problem,” says Dipen Babariya to The Better India.

What started as a hunch in college is now a full-blown startup in Bengaluru called RoadMetrics, which provides AI-based data for road management plans. It has collected data on more than 50,000 km of road across the country in cities like Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Jamshedpur, Patna etc.

Making Indian roads safer and pothole-free

“My friend Mishal Jariwala and I found immense potential in the idea. At the time, we were still in college pursuing engineering with a specialisation in AI. Our initial plan in 2018 was to develop an application for mobile phones that will tell the road’s condition to the user, but it eventually evolved,” informs the 26-year-old.

Hailing from Surat, Dipen and his co-founder moved to Bengaluru to try their hand at entrepreneurship as the city is home to hundreds of startups. “This is where we met our third co-founder who was as enthusiastic about our idea as we were. Nikhil Prasad Maroli had recently moved from the US where he was working with automotive car companies like Tesla,” he says.

Within the first two months of incorporation in 2019, the startup received great interest from investors and got its first funding from 100X.VC, headed by Sanjay Mehta.

“I was very excited and a little nervous. While I had worked on projects in college, this was going to be my first entrepreneurial exposure. Road safety is an essential area which does not have any software that tells the road’s health. This is true for India and even countries outside India,” says Dipen.

The trio started to develop their initial idea of making mobile-based software. “While the sensor-based technology that would work as a mobile application sounded good, it was not feasible as we would have to drive on every part of the road to capture the vibrations. The vibrations would then be assessed to find the potholes,” he says.

So, upon further research, Dipen and his co-founders found an even smarter solution.

“We developed an image-based or computer vision-based software. It uses the camera of the mobile mounted on the windshield of a car. Once the mobile is mounted, we start our data collection application. It records video data, along with GPS data, coordinates and time stamps. This is uploaded to our servers where there are millions of such data stored. Our trained AI software then identifies the road defect,” he says.

Dipen adds, “Our AI algorithm can identify 10 types of road defects ranging from minor cracks and surface deterioration to major problems such as potholes.”

Other than the AI algorithm, the startup also has developed RoadMetrics Maps which help consumers to find the fastest, most comfortable and traffic-less roads. But identifying that the solution to the problem was not just navigating a pothole-free route, but also fixing them, the company switched from the B2C to the B2B model.

“The data collected from the maps is also fed into our servers. The maps are currently functional only in Bengaluru,” he informs, adding “But since this was very labour and capital-intensive, we decided to take another route. The software is a B2B model where we help municipalities and private players to identify the problems in the road and fix them. Why avoid potholes when we can fix them?”

The company has already mapped the entire city of Bengaluru and Mumbai while they are working in Assam and Bihar.

“On the basis of damage reports assessed by our software, the municipalities and private companies can decide how much allocation of funds is needed. We are working with the TATA Group in Jamshedpur, where we are helping them identify the issues on the road,” he says.

A manual survey takes nearly four to five months and another couple of months to finish the planning.

“What happens is by the time the survey is completed, the entire condition of the road changes. The plans made might not be suitable for the new damages. Our technology is capable of surveying 1,000 km within a week’s time. Therefore it is less time-consuming and also more detailed. As an example of that, I can say in Jamshedpur, there was a road called M P Road that would always be in a bad condition even after maintenance. Turns out there was a small stream nearby and the water was sweeping below, damaging the road.”

He continues, “We identified this problem, and then the contractor was able to plan the road’s repair accordingly.”

Similarly in Bengaluru city, the company has collaborated with the Electronic City Township Authority (ELCITA) to fix the potholes.

A smooth road to the future

Dipen informs that the startup is currently working with private players like the TATA Group, Mahindra Group etc. The company is also in discussion to collaborate with government municipalities.

After covering thousands of kilometres in India, the company has no plans of stopping. “We have already started to map the city of London, UK as we have a clientele there. Since the city is a massive tourist attraction, we want to deliver the best quality work there,” says Dipen.

“More or less we aim to make the Indian roads as safe to travel as possible. As a company, we want to instil compliance to properly survey roads every year and submit reports to the government regardless of the method — manual or AI,” he says.

The startup has also been showered with a lot of awards since its incorporation — including the Mobility AI Grand Challenge by the Telangana government and the award for Best AI Startup for Smart Cities by the Ministry of Electronics and IT.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

“What stands out about the Aarohan Awards is that it does not see background or educational qualification, but simply whether the idea has impact,” says Aneesh Karma from Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, on the Infosys Foundation’s social innovation awards, in which he won under their Healthcare Silver category in 2019.

Living with a disability himself, Aneesh had first-hand experienced the difficulties that came with being disabled. His innovation MASC-KAFO — mechanically actuated stance-controlled knee ankle foot orthosis — won acclaim at the awards due to its simplicity and ability to help people with locomotion. The target group included the elderly and people with multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, and polio, among other ailments. This mechanically activated stance-controlled knee ankle foot orthosis has been designed to provide improved gait for people who have weakness in their lower limbs. 

While Aneesh is now set on scaling this innovation to greater heights, he says the journey until now has been gratifying.

The Class 12 pass arts student recalls that before the Infosys Foundation’s Aarohan Social Innovation Awards, a major roadblock he would face while asking for funds or applying for awards is that people would question his educational qualifications.

“People wondered what an arts student without a medical background could innovate. But I believed it was in my blood to come up with ideas for the problems around me. I always said one thing — while I may not have the educational background, I do have the right intentions,” he notes.

A unique substitute for callipers

An innate talent and the desire to do something out of the box resided in Aneesh. He says that the seeds for the innovation were sown through personal experience and the insights of other persons with disabilities.

“My wife and I are disabled and would make frequent trips to government offices trying to get our pension and handicap certificates. We would often meet other disabled persons there who would have come for the same thing. During one such visit, we spoke to them,” says Aneesh.

He says that a common complaint the people with disabilities had were with respect to the callipers. These, they told him, obstructed them from going to the toilet comfortably, riding cycles, sitting cross-legged on the floor and working, etc. Their clothes, too, would often get torn.

“I was now intent on finding a solution for my wife and for these people, and for disabled persons across India,” he says, adding that while one cannot deny that private companies have come up with substitutes for the usual callipers, these are often well over the budget of many.

“Out of the entire population, 95 percent aren’t able to access these callipers. My motive was if we, as disabled people, can’t find the solution outside, then we should make it for ourselves,” he adds.

With these thoughts in mind, Aneesh quit his job and decided to devote his life and career to the cause of MASC-KAFO.

An initiative by disabled, for disabled 

Building the device was memorable, he recalls. “I started from scratch — taking a cycle chain and making the design in a welding shop. And 70 tries later, I came up with a prototype, which was patented in 2015 by NRDC (National Research Development Corporation).”

Aneesh says the device is a handier version of the regular callipers. They are versatile and can be worn easily, even while going into the toilet. An attached belt makes it easier to wear and remove, and a lock automatically clicks into place when the user puts their foot down.

The angular shape makes it easy to use while walking, squatting, and even cycling, he adds.

Once the patent had been filed, Aneesh says he set his sights on modifying the device and scaling it up. But soon, he began struggling for funds. “People would often call me ‘mental’ for trying to run after a dream. Some even stopped speaking to me, but I never lost hope. My pockets were empty, and I had no job. I had a wife and kid to look after. I literally had nothing with me, but the desire and the fire to see my innovation to the finish,” says Aneesh.

He adds, “I also visited Delhi to show my prototype to a company that makes calipers, seeking their support for my innovation. But they said that they preferred foreign patents to Indian ones. After hearing this, my resolve to provide low-cost Indian calipers was even stronger.”

This is when in 2019, the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards by the Infosys Foundation came as a breather, and also a surprise.

“Usually when I apply for awards or funding, I face difficulties as I do not have the required qualifications and no science background. But the jury at the Aarohan Awards only checked the social impact. Their thought process was amazing,” notes Aneesh, but adds that while he was overjoyed at getting funding of Rs 10 lakh, the pandemic-induced lockdown hit right after.

‘The Aarohan Awards helped us sustain.’

“I returned to my village in Bulandshahr in the COVID-19 lockdown. I was clueless about what to do,” he says.

Aneesh recounts how he would go around the Delhi-NCR asking people for help, and often be denied. But he notes, “I would ask again and again. I always believed that if 100 doors closed, one brilliant door would open. I had made up my mind that I would either die trying or come up with a solution.”

As the lockdown progressed, he informs that he faced a lot of problems due to increasing costs of raw materials and services such as laser cutting, CNC, and manufacturing. So he decided to make do with the resources he had. “Thanks to the funds I received from Aarohan, I was able to establish a workshop in my village. This is why I would like to sincerely thank the Infosys Foundation Team — Mrs Sudha Murthy Ji, Prof Anil Gupta and the jury team who supported me,” he adds.

Continuing, Aneesh says, “Here I developed the callipers and gave them to disabled people in and around the village to try and get their feedback. This time profited me well,”

Towards the end of the lockdown, Aneesh says he was able to return to Mumbai, where he came up with different versions of the device that would be suited to different people’s muscle powers.

“When it comes to callipers, one size does not fit all. Some patients have problems with their knees while others have problems with their thighs. These models were aimed at different problems,” he says.

Currently, the device is at the clinical study stage at MGM, from where Aneesh says the innovation will be put for retail.

“The awards were a path for us to do better, and I am hopeful of applying again so we can scale the product further and give it to more people. I’ve realised that in India, people research and then publish papers, and use the funds to do this. But then the idea dies out. I don’t want this to be the case with MASC-KAFO,” he shares.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

With this intention, the 29-year-old returned from the US, where he was working in a company, to his homeland. He travelled through different villages in Karnataka to understand why so much produce is going to waste. A reason, he found, was that farmers could not afford expensive cold storage. 

After three months of extensive research, he launched Green Pod Labs in May 2020. He developed a cost-effective packaging solution that uses natural plant extracts to activate the inbuilt defence mechanism to slow down the ripening rate. It also minimises microbial growth which extends the shelf life of fruits and vegetables.

A year later, he got innovator Vijay Anand on board as co-founder. The duo is now working towards realising their dream of making India waste-free. 

The innovation is made in the form of eco-friendly sachets that are kept with the products to increase their shelf life. “Apart from this, helping the farmers get a better price for their products and making fresh food veggies/ fruits available to customers are other factors we thrive for,” says Vijay. 

Talking about the pricing of the sachets, Deepak shares, “The price of sachets will depend upon the type and quantity of the produce. For example, one kilogram of mango can be stored in a sachet worth Rs 5; for capsicum, it is Rs 4/kg; for tomato Rs 1.25/ kg; for strawberry Rs 15/ kg and so on.”

The duo claim that their innovation has cut down the spoilage of fruits and vegetables to 90 percent. 

Find their innovation interesting? Watch this video to find out more: 

Edited by Divya Sethu

In the tiny village of Jigali in Karnataka’s Davanagere district, a young boy had just finished his Class 10. He was, in fact, the first in his family of farmers to have any kind of education. His only wish was to continue studying further.

Owing to the family’s financial situation, however, he couldn’t. Instead, he had to join his family to work on their 5-acre farm. 

That young boy is in his 50s today, but his life is now a far cry from what it used to be. In 2018, Karibasappa MG won the Infosys Foundation’s Aarohan Social Innovation Award for innovating a solar insect trap, under Jury Special Mentions for the category Rural Development.

He says, “Infosys has introduced a new phase in my life — a very big change. The company took me, a regular farmer, from a small village to the world stage.”

Necessity is the mother of invention

Karibasappa comes from a long line of generational farmers. Once he completed his Class 10 in 1980, he stepped into agriculture full-time. “Back in the day, we used to farm using bullocks. Then eventually, I switched to tractors. We used to grow cane crops, but I wanted to grow our profits, so I ventured into horticulture crops.”

In 2012, he decided to grow pomegranates. “I sowed the seeds and reaped a good harvest in 2014. But in the two years following that, my harvest was reduced because of an insect attack. The insects would make holes in the fruit. We were suggested to spray pesticides over it. In our 5-acre field, we ended up spending around Rs 4.5 lakh just on pesticides.” 

“We were poor, and could not afford that kind of money. So, I had to take loans. But despite our efforts, we didn’t get a good harvest. The insects feasted on everything we grew,” he shares.

The farmer says that he was devastated and could not sleep for days. “How to get out of this situation?” was the only thing on his mind day and night. Then one day, a chance observation gave him an idea.

“On the farm, we had a small hut where there was no electricity. We had installed a solar bulb there. I observed how the light attracted all the insects. The next day, I bought an ordinary DC solar bulb and placed a bucket underneath it for three to four days. A lot of dead insects fell into the bucket,” he notes.

Soon after, he collected these insects and took them to ICAR Taralabalu Krishi Vigyan Kendra in Davanagere. “I showed them to a scientist. He asked me to continue experimenting with different-coloured lights at different heights,” he says, adding that he kept tweaking the setup till the results were satisfactory.

“It took me around a year to make the product. My first model had a 2 by 2 feet 10W solar panel and a 12 V battery. It was big and expensive. The battery had to be changed every year, and the farmers who were experimenting with it could not afford the costs. We eventually managed to reduce the size. Now we use a 5W solar panel and Lithium-ion battery,” he informs.

The current solar insect trap is a fourth-generation model. Describing it, he says, “An ultra-violet LED light is connected to a solar panel, which is in turn connected to a battery which gets charged. A programmable timer is attached which switches on the light around sunset and switches off automatically at 9.30 pm.”

Karibasappa says that even after making the product small, convenient and affordable, he faced other challenges while convincing his fellow farmers to use it. “Some said that my product will kill honey bees, which was not true. I approached many institutions and met scientists to test my product and recommend it. I even installed this product at a bee farm to prove it.”

He adds, “Then some villagers started spreading rumours that the product kills friendly insects also. Again I had to show them scientific studies that proved most friendly insects only appear after around 10 pm…And our product is designed to automatically switch off at that time.”

Eventually, many farmers started seeing good results after using the solar insect trap. He was able to reach around 3,500 local farmers with his innovation, he says.

The overnight recognition that changed his life

One day, he says, he came across the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards in the newspaper. He filled up the application form with his manager, who helped him do it in English. They even recorded videos to demonstrate the working of the product along with its explanation and sent it over. The product was selected.

Karibasappa and his team were invited to visit Infosys for the final round. He shares, “I don’t speak English. So, during the presentation, one of our team members acted as a translator. But he wasn’t able to properly convey what I was saying in Kannada to English. So Sudha Murthy madam [chairperson of Infosys Foundation], one of the judges herself translated everything I said to the other judges for 23 minutes straight.”

“And later, I was told that we had won. They felicitated us and presented us with a Rs 5 lakh cash prize. I had never seen such a big amount of money in my whole life,” he says, overwhelmed.

After receiving the award, he says, many newspapers and Kannada news channels covered his work, and more farmers got to know about the product. “The insect trap has now reached over 16,000 farmers across six states in India. I recently sent some samples to farmers in countries like Malaysia, the UK, Bahrain, Nepal and Australia.”

Even the Department of Agriculture in Karnataka recognised Karibasappa and his team after this. “They came over to our farms, checked our installations, and presented me with the Krushi Pandita Award along with Rs 50,000 cash prize. Six other institutes in Bengaluru also felicitated me, and they presented certificates and cash to encourage my work. These recognitions have helped me reach more farmers.”

He shares that he is now trying to get bigger loans to manufacture more units which will help to reduce the manufacturing cost of the product. “We want to make the insect trap more affordable and help farmers worldwide. Right now, it’s priced at Rs 3,500 including GST, along with a six-month warranty. The bulb needs to be changed once every 14 months and the Lithium-ion battery will last three years.”

He says that Syngenta India Ltd has ordered 600 pieces of his product which it plans to use all over India, and has promised to buy 6,000 more.

Karibasappa informs that his company’s turnover is rupees two crores and 20 lakhs this year, all thanks to Aarohan Awards. He says, “We were and still are small-scale farmers. We had no idea whether we’d win or lose the competition. We believe in working hard to the best of our capabilities and then putting the burden of results on God. I understand the difficulties that farmers face. My only intention is to support them as much as I can and do my share of seva in this world.”

He further says that he is immensely proud that an MNC recognised his innovation through the Aarohan Award, which has boosted his resolve to give back to the society that has given him so much support.

“There’s a mention of us on the Infosys website. I know people around the world visit their websites, and this makes me feel very proud. My family, my fellow villagers and I keep Infosys in our hearts. There’s not a single day that passes when we don’t acknowledge their support. We are eternally grateful.”

Do you have a similar innovation that has the potential to create an impact? Apply for the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards, 2023 and win upto Rs 50 Lakh.

Edited by Divya Sethu

In 2019, engineer duo Sumanth Mudaliar and Vishrut Bhatt were presented with the Aarohan Social Innovations Award by Infosys Foundation for their device Handicare. 

The unique mobility device was built on the idea of helping people with lower body disabilities and was the first product developed by their startup Oneceptual Technologies, founded in 2019.  While the ideation for the device began in 2015, the duo say that it was only after the Aarohan Awards that their initiative finally got the wings to take flight. 

Recalling the idea that laid the foundation of this innovation, Sumanth says it all began in his final year of mechanical engineering. 

He began noticing that among the people with lower limb disabilities, many would navigate roads and public places using a board and pushing their hands on the ground.

“Trying to navigate in this manner would not only bruise their hands, but also cause their clothes to tear. And needless to say, it was unhygienic,” he notes, adding that this problem was not only prevalent on the streets, but also — as he would discover through the course of the next few months — at centres that housed people with disabilities. 

Wanting to come up with a solution, Sumanth was joined by his batchmate Vishrut, and the duo spent the next few months at centres in Ahmedabad, trying to understand how they could arrive at a solution. 

A unique device is born 

Months of experimenting and conversing with inmates to understand their needs helped the duo come up with a prototype of Handicare — a mobility device that would enable people with disabilities or those who cannot afford a wheelchair to move without touching their hands to the ground. 

The device has a board on which the person can put their weight, as well as a handlebar to navigate and control speed. 

“We developed the device in 2016 and gave it to 100 people to use for two months. These were people who had lower limb disabilities. The idea was for them to try and test it out before we finalised the design, and we did get a lot of feedback,” he notes. 

“For instance, one feedback was that the board was too heavy, it was 10 kg at the time. Another was that the structure of the device made it tough for users to take it into the washroom,” explains Sumanth. 

The duo spent the next few months reevaluating the specifics of the device and modifying it to weigh less — 6 kg — while also structuring it to make it more aerodynamic, such that it wouldn’t be a problem in small spaces. 

To make this possible, Sumanth says they changed the steering from round to flat, enhancing speed and performance in the process. 

“We also altered the thickness of the board from the previous 19 mm to a marine board of 12 mm thickness. Having a marine board also ensured that the board did not swell up during the rain or when exposed to water,” notes Sumanth. 

Once these alterations were complete, the duo decided to have their devices tested from a medical perspective and started giving them to civil hospitals across Ahmedabad, which housed people with disabilities. 

“While our earlier testing period was around 10 days, this time we had people use the device for six months to know of any performance-related issues they faced. We then went through the entire process and re-engineered the device as our aim was always simple from the start — to make something that people could use on a daily basis,” he notes. 

Elaborating on the final design, he says there are handlebars that the user can wiggle, which helps the front wheels move forward due to friction. The greater the friction, the more easily the device moves. For higher speeds, all the user needs to do is move the handlebars more frequently.

In January 2019, Sumanth and Vishrut were finally ready with their innovation and launched their company Onceptual Technologies. 

Taking home the Aarohan Award 

Sumanth notes that while their startup was up and running, the Aarohan Awards in February 2019 changed everything. 

“We got to know about the awards through LinkedIn and filled out the form, which had a list of questions on the kind of impact we wanted to create through our innovation. In January, we got a call to say our innovation had been shortlisted and we pitched in front of a team of judges alongside 20 other startups,” says Sumanth. 

In February 2019, they were notified by Infosys that they had been selected for the final round to pitch the idea to a panel, including author, philanthropist and chairperson of Infosys Foundation Sudha Murthy. 

“Standing in front of her is, to date, the highlight of our Aarohan journey,” says Sumanth. “She has an incredible sense of humility, and though she is such a big personality, she remembered us and our idea from the first round.”

The opportunity gave the duo a chance to kickstart their company, they say. 

“Prior to being awarded, we had never had an investment before, and no one knew of Handicare. But the Rs 15 lakh we won helped us set up our manufacturing facility and tie up with other suppliers who could help us in the venture. We could also set our sights on a range of other products that would assist people with disabilities in leading a comfortable life,” Sumanth says. 

For instance, they came up with the Mobula in 2020. 

“This is a multipurpose electric scooter for people with disabilities, or the elderly who can’t walk. What sets the Mobula apart from other assistive scooters is that it can be used both indoors as well as outdoors, and in narrow spaces as well. It can run 25 km on a single charge.”

He adds that through their innovations, they are not only looking at providing mobility to people with disabilities, but also ways in which they can use the innovation to generate employment for themselves. 

The duo emphasise that their products are for everyone. Today, Handicare is being used by “5000 customers pan-India”. “We simply started out with the aim of solving a problem. Today we have built a dream out of that,” says Sumanth. 

India in the past decade has witnessed a boom in social innovations across areas like healthcare, education, and women empowerment, as well as has seen the amalgamation of economic growth and social value unlike before. 

The third edition of the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards celebrates these social innovations that have contributed to India’s transformation, while hoping to inspire others to create similar, if not more, impact at scale with their innovative minds. 

Presented by the Infosys Foundation, the philanthropic and CSR arm of Infosys, the nomination process for the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards 2023 has commenced and will conclude on March 12, 2023. Here’s everything you need to know about the application process. 

About the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards

The Awards seek out individuals, teams, NGOs, and social enterprises who have come up with technology-based solutions that have the potential to bring about a significant difference to people and communities, at scale. These solutions need to be focused on the three categories of Education, Healthcare, and Women Empowerment. Infosys Foundation will commit up to INR 50 lakh per winner, with a total award purse of INR 2 crore.

How can you apply? 

• Those applying must be Indian citizens above 18 years of age and residing in the country. 
• Interested applicants must visit the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards website and can submit their entries, describing their work, in the form of videos which can be uploaded.
• Last date for submissions is March 12, 2023. 

Points to keep in mind: 

• The entries must be of a fully functioning prototype or finished project, and not just a concept, idea, or mockup.
• The submission will be judged on the following criteria — application to a social problem or need, with a potential to scale; innovative use of technology, with a focus on sustainability; originality of ideas; ease of use and quality of presentation.

Infosys Foundation has always shown a strong commitment towards social issues that are largely overlooked by society, and through platforms like the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards, there is an opportunity for bolstering India’s development. 

Visit this link to submit your application TODAY!

Powerful rare-earth based magnets are employed in most electric vehicle (EV) motors and other high efficiency motor applications. What do these magnets do? They enable the motors to transform electricity into motion, thus powering the EV. But did you know that these high-performance permanent magnets in EVs contain rare-earth metals like neodymium (NdFeB) or a combination of samarium-cobalt (SmCo)? 

These rare earth metals are expensive to mine, extract and manufacture. Also, the process of mining and extracting them causes serious health and environmental damage.

According to Jaya Nayar, senior editor at the Harvard International Review, “For every ton of rare earth produced, the mining process yields 13kg of dust, 9,600-12,000 cubic metres of waste gas, 75 cubic metres of wastewater, and one ton of radioactive residue.” 

Finally, China has a stranglehold over the supply chain of rare-earth magnets, making India’s transition to electric mobility and beyond laden with critical and strategic dependencies. 

In response to these circumstances, Chara, a Bengaluru-based deep tech startup, is building a scalable, cloud-controlled, and rare-earth free platform for designing, building, and deploying electric motors for EV, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) and other applications.  

Speaking to The Better India, Bhaktha Keshavachar, CEO and co-founder, says, “Chara’s proprietary Drive Control FIrmware (DCF) is the brain of our motor controller. DCF is a suite of packages consisting of advanced motor control algorithms at its core. The state-of-the-art motor control algorithms are developed to extract maximum performance from in-house designed motors.”

More importantly, however, Bhaktha notes that Chara has indigenously built motors for a variety of applications including EVs that do not use rare-earth based magnets. 

“We have developed new IP in motor design, hardware architectures and algorithms in reluctance motor technology that deliver the same performance as existing motors. Our motor technology is scalable from kW to 100s of kW power at various voltage levels. Software becomes a larger component in our motors. We are building a software platform that will monitor the motor performance continuously and manage the motor performance in real-time,” he says.

Serial entrepreneurs

Chara was founded in November 2019 by Bhaktha Keshavachar, Ravi Prasad Sharma, and Mahalingam Koushik. They are serial entrepreneurs, veteran product experts, and motor technologists with decades of experience developing cutting-edge products and technologies.  

Bhaktha is most famously known for building the architecture and developing Ezetap, one of the first companies in India that came up with digital payment solutions. Ezetap was recently acquired by Razorpay last year for $200 million. 

Mahalingam has 15 years of experience at various product startups in the domain of renewables, IoT, home automation, fintech and now motors. During this period, he worked for Bhaktha at Ezetap, where he built new features such as USB and 3G Connectivity to the POS Terminal. Today, as co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) at Chara, he oversees power electronics and motor control activities.    

Ravi, meanwhile, has over four decades of experience designing, building, testing, and deploying motors of various technologies and power ratings. Among a whole host of achievements to his name, he developed some of the early prototype motors for Reva Electric Car and other electric vehicles developed by Maini Group. As chief motor designer at Chara, he takes care of motor design, development, mechanical design, and manufacturing. 

After successfully selling Ezetap to Razorpay, Bhaktha was looking for his next gig. While Bhaktha had worked with Mahalingam at Ezetap, he knew Ravi from their time in college at the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), Bengaluru. The three founders came together in 2019 and started working on identifying and solving a critical problem.

“Besides building a world-beating product company, a rarity in India, we learnt that motors for EVs and other applications are fully imported. We wanted to fix that and build a business around it. The Chara story began with an initial grant from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, worth Rs 25 lakh. IISc believed in our vision and ideas,” says Bhaktha.  

No dependence on China

Chinnu Senthilkumar, managing partner at Exfinity Venture Partners, a venture capital fund which recently invested in Chara, says, “Exfinity strongly believes that the EV story for South Asia and other similar markets has to be contextualised and not replicated from the US and European markets. After our earlier investment in Log 9 Materials, Chara is part of our continued belief in this thesis. Chara motors is also a great example for Atmanirbhar Bharat as it delinks the permanent magnet supply chain dependency from China and other countries.”

“Currently all motors and controllers used in EV in India are imported and contain rare-earth based magnets. Our technology does not use rare-earth magnets, and thus we become independent of China, which has 90% control over the supply chain. Our motors are developed from first principles. Thus, we not only achieve freedom from dependency on strategic materials, but also have a fully home grown technology critical for our electric future,” says Bhaktha. 

So far, Chara has built motors for 2-wheeler (hub and mid-mount), 3- and 4-Wheeler light commercial vehicles (LCVs), and HVAC use cases. The motors and their matching controllers are being field tested and are expected to go into production later this year. Chara also has several projects lined up to build motors and controllers for heavy commercial vehicles. 

“Chara’s current motor range starts from fractional kW to 10’s of kW with voltage ranges from 48V to 400V. Higher voltages and powers will be built in the near future. Chara has filed patents in motor design, controller design and control algorithms for these motor technologies. We have developed motors and controllers for 2, 3 and 4-wheelers. The best we have developed so far is a 35 kW 320V liquid cooled motor and controller that is undergoing field tests,” claims Bhaktha.

Peak performance

These ‘Make in India’ motors for EVs and other applications are currently being field-tested and will be in production in the second half of 2023.

In a recent press release, Chara states, “Using Model-Based Design (MBD), Chara’s proprietary Drive Control Firmware (DCF) gives peak motor performance while ensuring optimum efficiency, thermal management and smooth, ripple-free torque delivery.” 

What does this mean? How does using MBD allow the DCF in a motor to give peak motor performance while ensuring optimum efficiency, thermal management and smooth, ripple-free torque delivery?

“MBD is the process of development where we first build a model for the motor and the controller we are building and simulate it for various operating points. The resultant algorithms and parameters are then converted to firmware code with a semi automatic process,” he says. 

“In algorithm development through simulation, we are able to capture every detail of material properties and non-linear characteristics of a motor (which cannot be expressed with simple linear formulae). This helps us in designing the right tradeoff between peak torque, peak efficiency and noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) based on user inputs and operating conditions. The adjustments in current and voltages are done at more than 10,000 times a second to get smooth torque delivery and efficiency,” claims Ravi. 

Going further, the recently issued press release also said, “The motors will be based on a specialised patent-pending variation of the well-known SRM (Switched Reluctance Motor) and SynRM technologies and other magnet-free motor technologies.” 

Bhaktha explains, “The reluctance motor is about 200 years old. When man invented magnetism and electricity, these were the first motors that were proposed. These motors are simple in construction and use only steel, aluminium and copper. But these motors have a few problems. They are complex to control and have noise and torque ripple issues. We have developed a new IP that overcomes the known issues of reluctance motors and brings them into mainstream,” claims Bhaktha. 

Looking ahead

Currently, Chara Technologies is talking to manufacturers in several parts of India covering the usual centres of automotive manufacturing in the national capital region (NCR), Pune, Coimbatore and Bangalore-Hosur belt. 

Last week, Chara raised a pre-series A round of $4.75M led by Exfinity Venture Partners, a Bengaluru-based VC firm known for its B2B focus and deep-tech expertise. This round also had participation from Vietnam-based Big Capital, the venture arm of Bitexco and Log9 Materials. Kalaari Capital and ciie.co who are existing investors participated in this round as well.

Preetinder Singh Panjrath, CFO of BIG Capital, said, “BIG Capital continues to support innovative technologies that will power the world of the future. As part of our commitment to environmentally friendly solutions for land and aerospace markets, we were especially attracted to Chara motors with the focus on rare earth-free electric motors that are safer for the planet, more cost-efficient and offer better efficiency compared to legacy solutions.” 

“We are delighted to be part of Chara’s journey to not only power the EV and Power Market but also do so in an environmentally responsible way,” he added.

Apart from building a profitable and a green business, they have clear objectives that include making a centre of excellence for motor and controller design for various applications spanning many technologies, manufacturing the motor and controller either through partnerships and/or own plants, and deploying these motors outside India. 

(Edited by Divya Sethu, Images courtesy Chara Technologies)

In a significant win for sustainability, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M), have devised an interesting way to process recycled construction and demolition debris involving solar thermal energy. Researchers led by Professor Ravindra Gettu, the V S Raju Chair Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, used concentrated solar radiation to heat waste concrete from demolition to produce structural-grade recycled concrete aggregate (RCA).

Researchers argue that this RCA was higher in quality compared to those obtained from conventional mechanical crushing. They claim that concrete made using this technology met the requirements for structural applications like bridges, buildings, and roads.

The demonstration of this technology was done at the ‘India One Solar Thermal Power Plant’ in ‘Shantivan,’ the headquarters of the Brahma Kumaris — a well-known women-run educational, philanthropic, and spiritual organisation in Mount Abu, Rajasthan. This solar thermal power plant has 770 solar concentrators to produce electricity using steam generated at high pressure.

Operational since 2017, the plant provides power to a community of about 25,000 people at a reasonable cost and low maintenance. Two of the concentrators were used in the full-scale trials for treating the waste concrete. The findings of this demonstration were recently published in the reputed and peer-reviewed journal, Materials and Structures.

The published paper was co-authored by researchers Rohit Prajapati, Surender Singh, B K Jayasimha Rathod, and Prof Ravindra Gettu, as well.

But how does this RCA compare to conventional concrete bought from retailers?

Speaking to The Better India, Prof Gettu says, “Crushed concrete from demolition waste usually has a lot of old hardened cement stuck on the surface of the stone aggregates. This may make them unsuitable for recycling in new concrete as the old cement mortar causes zones of weakness and allows the permeation of water.”

He adds, “The RCA produced with heating through solar energy has much less old cement mortar adhered to the stone aggregates, making them better for structural applications. So, the concrete made with such aggregates would be as good as the conventional aggregates made with pristine (natural) stone aggregates. This would be true for all structural applications such as bridges, buildings, and roads.”

Understanding the problem

It goes without saying that concrete is the most common material used in construction universally, with annual production estimated to be between 10–30 billion tonnes. The global consumption of construction aggregates, including that needed for making concrete, is projected to reach 63 billion tonnes in 2024, according to different studies.

Virtually all aggregate demand is currently met by extensive quarrying and mining, leading to the depletion of primary mineral resources. Also, many countries have a severe shortage of fine aggregate due to bans on mining river sand to avoid serious environmental damage.

Meanwhile, construction activities generate considerable waste, estimated to be about 3 billion tonnes per annum. Some developed countries recycle up to 90% of the construction and demolition (C&D) waste whereas others still resort to the dumping of large quantities in landfills.

What are the conventional methods used in India today to deal with waste concrete?

Professor Gettu notes, “Most of the waste concrete in India has been dumped in landfills and low-lying areas, or used as a base in construction sites. Many cities have recently set up recycling plants to process waste concrete brought to them. They segregate, crush and sort the crushed concrete for use in many applications, including new concrete. However, the cost to the buyer may be higher than pristine aggregates from quarries. Also, there is hesitation among users about the use of recycled concrete as the origin and processing are not evident.”

A rational way to provide an alternative supply of aggregates is through recycling C&D waste, which would curtail mining for aggregates and free up space used in landfills. The present study attempts to mitigate the limitations of conventional thermomechanical techniques with regard to harmful emissions through the utilisation of concentrated solar energy.

The process

According to the press release issued by the Institute, “By using concentrated solar energy for the heating, the thermo-mechanical beneficiation of the concrete waste results in high-quality recyclable materials. This can substitute stone (blue metal) aggregates and sand in concrete.”

“In this pioneering study, concrete from a demolition site was heated using solar radiation concentrated through large reflectors and cast iron receivers to more than 550 degrees Celsius and subsequently scrubbed mechanically to yield coarse and fine RCA, with properties similar to those of pristine aggregates,” the press release goes on to add.

So what does “thermomechanical beneficiation of concrete waste” mean?

Professor Gettu explains this process to us. “In thermomechanical beneficiation, the waste concrete from demolition is heated to about 500 degrees Celsius, cooled to ambient temperature, and mechanically scrubbed by milling. The process of heating and cooling weakens the bond between the old cement mortar and the stone aggregates due to the differences in thermal expansion between them, resulting in ‘cleaner’ aggregates without adhered mortar. Therefore, the quality of the aggregates is better,” he says.

What were the key conclusions from this study? There are three, according to Prof Gettu.

1. It was observed that the required temperature of about 500 degrees Celsius could be achieved and maintained for a long duration with the reflector-receiver setup used.

Elaborating on this point, he says, “The first challenge in using concentrated solar radiation was to ensure that the chunks of waste concrete could be heated to 500 degrees Celsius for about one hour, as this has not been demonstrated before. This was made possible in the India One Solar Thermal Power Plant due to the sophisticated reflector that tracks the sun and focuses the energy onto a small area, which is the mouth of the receiver. The receiver is made of cast iron that absorbs the heat and keeps the concrete waste uniformly heated.”

2. The properties of the aggregates produced were found to be comparable with those of RCA produced in an electric furnace, with the total yield of recycled products being 90% of the feed concrete.

3. Preliminary results on concrete made with the RCA indicate its suitability for typical concrete applications.

Solving a problem

The history of this research initiative dates back to 2016 during a discussion on sustainability of construction with the former director of IIT Madras, Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthy. He had asked Prof Gettu about the challenges of recycling concrete and the higher energy requirement for crushing old concrete.

“Prof Ramamurthy asked me if there was any other way to make it more feasible. I said that heating the concrete would make it easier to separate the ingredients, but that would again require a lot of energy. Later, he called me and a colleague who worked on solar energy and asked if we could work together to see if concentrated solar radiation could heat up the old concrete, making it easier to recycle,” he recalls.

Soon after this meeting, there was a PhD applicant, Rohit Prajapati, who told them at his admission interview that he wanted to work on the recycling of concrete. So, the concerned professors took him into the doctoral programme and he started working on this topic.

“We initially heated the concrete in an electric furnace to study the temperature and duration of heating required. The results were very promising. However, we could not get anyone to allow us to use a solar reflector to heat concrete. Either the temperatures produced were too low or the equipment was engaged by other projects, or they were worried that the concrete pieces would break the mirrors in the reflector,” he recalls.

During this desperate juncture, Prof Gettu’s colleague casually mentioned that a solar plant run by the Brahma Kumaris had huge reflectors. Following this, Prof Gettu contacted a relative who was a follower of the Brahma Kumaris. That person eventually put him through to Dr Jayasimha, who runs the India One Solar Thermal Power Plant.

“When I explained to him what we wanted to do, he readily allowed us to use two reflectors, and as they say, the rest is history,” he recalls.

Real-world applications

“The main intention of the present study was to develop the proof-of-concept that solar radiation could be used in the thermomechanical beneficiation of concrete waste to produce good-quality recyclable material for new concrete,” says Prof Gettu.

This study presents strong evidence for using concentrated solar energy to recycle waste concrete with promise for large-scale waste concrete recycling. This would significantly reduce the energy footprint of construction and demolition waste processing, and lead to savings in raw material and electricity. The end result is also the creation of a circular economy.

However, he goes on to add, “We need funds to set up a pilot plant to study the feasibility of scaling up. We are quite positive that it can be done. We have not yet had anyone reach out to us as we only recently published our findings.”

Edited by Pranita Bhat; Images courtesy IIT-Madras

To change these horrific statistics, Prabhdeep Singh, along with co-founders Antoine Porson and Jose Leon, started StanPlus, a health tech company that offers ambulance service in 15 minutes.

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The health-tech company claims to pick up emergency calls in less than six seconds and get ambulances on the road in under four minutes.

StanPlus ensures a seamless end-to-end emergency medical service network. It is a “full-stack medical assistance” venture which addresses everything from software and hardware to telephony systems, ambulance drivers and paramedics.

Apart from 24*7 ambulance services, they also operate a fleet of 900 Advanced Life Support, where paramedics offer “360-degree emergency care service”.

The company offers ambulance services across Hyderabad, Raipur, Bengaluru, Coimbatore, Bhubaneswar, and Visakhapatnam. “We are currently partnered with 50 hospitals across five cities, but our objective is to take it to 500 hospitals over 15 cities in the next 18 months,” says CEO and co-founder, Prabhdeep Singh.

The co-founders of StanPlus say that they are building an operating system that, in the event of a medical emergency, patients or their loved ones could contact them directly or through their insurance company, employer, family physician or hospital.

The team has raised $20 million to further reduce response time to eight minutes.

You can contact StanPlus at the 24*7 emergency helpline 1800 121 911 911 or www.redambulances.com

(Edited by Pranita Bhat.)

This is India’s first transformable EV, say the founders. 

“As Indians, we are known for our jugaad. A significant chunk of people using two-wheelers in India use their vehicles for more than just mobility — from carrying goods to setting up shops on two wheels. All of this is actualised using makeshift solutions risking their own safety. We decided to address this problem by providing swappable attachments that could cater to the varying needs of the customers, making our vehicles a truly transformable EV,” says Pritesh Mahajan, co-founder and CEO of Revamp Moto. 

These swappable parts include a child seat, a backrack, an insulated box and a carrier. The company claims that Buddie has been completely built in-house with locally sourced components except for lithium-ion cells.

On Shark Tank, Revamp Moto raised funding amounting to Rs 1 crore from Aman Gupta, co-founder of boAt, and Anupam Mittal, founder of People Group, for 1.5% equity. After the show, however, other sharks like Ashneer Grover and Peyush Bansal also came in to invest Rs 50 lakh each.

Being an EV, Buddie does not require a license or registration to be driven. It will be available to consumers at prices starting from Rs 66,999. The deliveries of pre-booked Buddies are expected to be done by April 2023.

Watch this video to know more about this ingenious EV.

Edited by Divya Sethu

Claiming an accuracy of 90 per cent, Swaasa is an artificial intelligence-based software that analyses human coughs to identify any kind of abnormality in the lungs. With the help of additional data such as the patients’ medical history, temperature and vitals, the software helps in the early detection of lung infections and diseases. 

Launched in 2017 by a trio of techies — Venkat Yechuri, Narayana Rao Sripada and Manmohan Jain — Salcit Technologies realised the need for an AI-based sound analysis system that caters to lung health specifically. 

“Right during the time the idea was in its formation stage, we realised its potential and need. We were enthralled by what it could mean for the healthcare sector,” says Manmohan, co-founder of Salcit technologies, to The Better India. 

The platform has conducted over 3 lakh assessments so far with partners such as Apollo, Piramal Swasthaya, Andhra Medical College; Visakhapatnam and AIIMS; Delhi. 

Behind the interface

Manmohan and Venkat were friends who worked for software company Zensar Technologies, while the brain behind the idea, Narayana, was invited to be an advisor to a project sponsored by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. 

“During the project, I met with PhD students and scholars who were researching heart and lung sounds. We started with the acoustics of heart and lung sounds and subsequently narrowed it down to cough sounds to determine the prevalence of underlying disorders,” Narayana says. 

“During a conversation with Dr Ananta Krishnan from AIIMS, I became convinced that there is an unmet need for screening software, especially in rural areas. It is practically impossible to set up a spirometry test (a pulmonary function test) in remote and rural health centres. We needed an easy-to-install method to determine lung health. This became the driving force behind Swaasa,” he explains. 

With Venkat and Manmohan on board, Narayana soon quit his job and founded Salcit technologies in 2017. On how the software works, he explains, “To know how healthy your lungs are, you have to cough on to your mobile phone. The software uses imaging sound waves to analyse the cough and within 15 seconds, it will show possible abnormalities in the lungs. If there are any, one can visit a specialist.”

Venkat explains further, “The cough bouts are symmetric for asthma while for pneumonia they progressively increase. So the bright yellow spots or energy remains consistent in the case of asthma but drops with time in pneumonia. Our approach is deeply rooted in cough physics.” 

“The concept of cough as a biomarker to determine health issues has been there for decades. But not many people have leveraged that information to make a product out of it,” Narayana says. 

While there are technologies like Google Fit that also determine a person’s health and check their vitals, there is nothing dedicated to lung health specifically, which is what makes their approach unique, Narayana points out. “We are like the Google Photos of respiratory diseases.” 

(Picture above) 

Bigger aim: Improving rural healthcare 

With six clinical validations including from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, Swaasa is now being used by PHCs in Visakhapatnam and aims to reach those in rural areas. 

“We want to make sure that the technology gains the trust of users. While India has a great programme for tuberculosis eradication, a 2019 survey shows that we are still missing two out of three symptomatic patients. If we want to reach all of them, we have to triple the investments in terms of labs, manpower etc which is not feasible. This is where Swaasa comes in. The software on the phone can reach the remotest of places,” explains Narayana. 

Manmohan adds, “We want to reach places where there is a lack of quality healthcare. Respiratory health is neglected in rural areas and by the time a patient reaches the doctor, it is often too late. We strongly believe that we can prevent deaths due to respiratory illnesses in India.”

Roadmap for the future

The startup has received funding from USAID through its partner IP Global for third-party validation.

The company aspires to reach five million assessments and as many countries as possible in the future. 

“We plan to collaborate with state governments to make the software available to the public at large in rural areas. We are also planning to reach countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Bangladesh etc. We will go through insurance and pharmacy companies for developed companies,” says Manmohan. “We also hope to expand our horizons and include analyses of breath sounds. We want to be the go-to place for audiometric analyses.”

“In terms of science, we would like to develop the software to detect more diseases. We don’t have any institutional funding other than grants. This year we are looking to fundraise so that we can achieve all the above-mentioned goals,” says Venkat. 

Edited by Asha Prakash

Dr Thalappil Pradeep, an institute professor at the Department of Chemistry, IIT Madras, received the VinFuture Prize at the award ceremony in Hanoi, Vietnam, last month. This isn’t the first time Prof Pradeep has been recognised for developing technologies delivering clean water to over 1.2 crore people in India. He is also the recipient of the Padma Shri, Nikkei Asia Prize, and Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water, among others.

An award sponsored by the Vingroup, the largest Vietnamese conglomerate, the VinFuture Prize honours breakthrough scientific research and technological innovations that create meaningful change in the everyday lives of millions of people. Along with this prestigious award, innovators like Prof Pradeep also received prize money of $500,000. 

What has Prof Pradeep done to receive such recognition globally? His research group at IIT Madras discovered affordable and sustainable nanomaterials that can remove impurities — like arsenic (primarily), manganese, uranium and iron — from groundwater and produce clean water.

Employing simple designs, his retrofitted technology provides a means to purify groundwater at a low cost to reach millions of impacted households. In remote areas, this technology is more advantageous because it does not require electricity on its own. However, the larger rural water supply system to which this technology is retrofitted to does require some electricity for pumping, distribution, monitoring and control. 

Understanding the basic technology

Before addressing other impurities in our groundwater, Prof Pradeep’s technology began by finding ways to remove arsenic — one of the most commonly found impurities in several States. Exposure to arsenic from drinking water causes heart disease and diabetes, and may even cause death by cancer. But there are problems in existing purifier technology regarding arsenic:

1) Arsenic exists in two ionic forms — Arsenic (3+) and Arsenic (5+). The general methods of removal by materials do not remove both of these ionic forms effectively. Certain methods remove As+5 more and less of As+3. As a result, you still have arsenic in the water.

2) The kinetics of arsenic removal may not be fast enough for community units which need larger flows. 

3) Arsenic removed by a material may not stay on it causing recontamination of water.

“We addressed these problems with materials, i.e. our technology removes both As+3 and As+5 effectively, the kinetics of removal is fast at any kind of flow rates from two litres or one million litres a day, and the removed/absorbed arsenic does not get leached out from the material,” explains Prof Pradeep, in a conversation with The Better India.

“If it’s possible to do it at a cost affordable to people, the technology gets adopted. These materials are also sustainable because they’re not using additional energy for their production and they do not cause recontamination of water in the course of its production after its useful life,” he adds.

Besides arsenic, the research group at IIT Madras also found that in different regions across India, there are also manganese, uranium, chromium, mercury and fluoride contamination of groundwater. With a few modifications, they found that the same nanomaterials materials can remove or absorb these impurities as well. “Our technology can effectively address contaminants of relevance to those water samples and can purify a maximum of two million litres a day,” he says.

But what are these affordable and sustainable nanomaterials?

“These materials have to be locally available and sustainable, and I do not want to work with any synthetic material to cause additional problems. What we have done in this particular case is to produce ‘metastable iron oxy-hydroxide’ in its nanoscale form, and this removes both As+3 and As+5 efficiently,” explains Prof Pradeep.

“When I got into the water space, I set a target a long time ago — to produce 5 paise/litre of clean water conforming to World Health Organization (WHO) norms. This cost includes equipment (capital), consumables and maintenance together. Today, the price is 2.5 paise (or less) per litre of clean water,” he adds.

Advancements in technology

The discovery and practice of this technology aren’t recent. In 2013, his team developed an affordable nanotechnology-based water purifier to address arsenic contamination and other chemical or microbial impurities. Since then, there have been major advancements.

“In terms of material, what was used earlier was also iron oxy-hydroxide, but with modifications, today they’re also handling uranium and manganese. These nanomaterials are fitted into devices that are more compact in appearance. Typically, any new technology for water takes about eight years to transition from the laboratory to the field. Our technologies in the field today are significantly better than the ones we made in 2015,” he says.

“But what has also been very new in this area is the capability to measure arsenic at that concentration by hand-held devices. These devices are going to the field very soon. Another new development is to ‘digitally make water available’ — in the sense that you collect data and control these devices through automation. We have implemented many such systems,” he adds.

Requires no electricity

Producing this technology does not require electrical heating and organic solvents.

“We produce these nanomaterials in water with naturally available materials and in the absence of heating, there is no energy spent there. The process of utilisation is absorption, which doesn’t require any energy. The energy requirement is in terms of water pumping. Water has to be stored in an overhead tank or flowed through a pipe which requires pumping. The process of removing arsenic or uranium itself does not involve any energy,” explains Prof Pradeep.

“For a given community water purifier, there will be an overhead tank. In that rural water distribution line, we install a purifier unit. Input water goes into the purifier and output water goes into the distribution line. This treatment unit will occupy a land area of one or two cents of land, or slightly less. It’s positioned on a cement platform which can be erected in typically three to four days. Building the larger civil structure, however, will take some time depending on the local contractor, and it’ll take a few days for cement curing,” he adds.

His technology requires conventional power for automation, but this can also be done with solar energy. Additional power requirements are only for water to reach these purifiers.

Process of implementation

Typically, a state government identifies a state or a district where it has a groundwater contamination problem. Buying and installing a unit of this technology costs several lakhs of rupees depending on the size.

“We have several startups and established companies incubated at IIT Madras who undertake the responsibility of implementing our technologies in the field. As an institution, we are also ready to assist in the installation process. We are not on the field directly but take up an advisory role. These companies are also free to interact with governments directly,” explains Prof Pradeep.

Take the example of Punjab, where community water purifiers have been set up in 97 rural locations in 2020-21 with capacities ranging from 35 KLD to 1,000 KLD (kilolitres per day). There were more units installed earlier. 

This water purifier is called AMRIT (Anion and Metal Removal by Indian Technology or ‘nectar’ in Hindi). All these plants have been installed by Hydromaterials Pvt. Ltd, a company incubated by IIT Madras which specialises in water purification.

The plants are cleaned once every 15 days through a process called ‘backwash’. When the nanomaterials which absorb the impurities reach saturation capacity, the active materials are replaced, and the state has arranged for the safe discharge of this material.

“Saturation of the media depends upon arsenic concentration in the input water, amount of water passed, and other contaminants in the water. Generally, in community water purifiers, it takes about two to three years to reach saturation point. To address this concern of safe disposal and spent media, the Government of Punjab has identified safe disposal sites as per protocol. They maintain such sites. Saturated media conform to guidelines in terms of leaching,” claims the professor.

The largest plant in operation is in Chaudhri Wala, a village in the Ropar district. Here’s a 1,000 KLD plant delivering clean water to about 650 households, almost 4,000 people at 70 LPD (litres per day) per person. These community-based projects are monitored centrally with IoT technology.

However, there were challenges in implementing the nanomaterial-based arsenic and iron removal technology in community water purifiers. 

Speaking to The Better India, Jaspreet Talwar (IAS) — former Principal Secretary, Water Supply and Sanitation, Government of Punjab, between 2017 and 2021 — elaborated on these concerns. Today, she serves as Principal Secretary, Higher Education and Languages, and Principal Secretary, School Education, Government of Punjab.

“There are costs involved in not just the initial installation of the technology but also for replacing the media once it reaches a saturation point. These community-based arsenic and iron removal plants—retrofitted into the existing water supply system—are a very good idea but require money to sustain periodical media replacement, running costs including routine upkeep and power bills year after year,” says Talwar.

Who’s going to give the money for that? How do you sustain it? 

They needed to look at long-term solutions. Where the communities were sizable, the idea was to obtain contributions from the wealthier residents in addition to the money coming in from the tied Finance Commission grants of the Government of India for water and sanitation in Punjab. 

“We felt that some percentage of these grants could go into an account which could sustain these projects. We eventually set up the Water Quality Kosh, a ring-fenced bank account, and the idea was to put some money into this from State funds, CSR funding, private donations, and contributions from the affected residents who could afford to contribute,” she explains.

Despite coming up with these mechanisms, state officials approached the researchers at IIT Madras to develop a cost-effective and more sustainable solution which could be individual household based. After all, individuals look after their own assets well. 

Prof Pradeep’s team came up with a household arsenic water filter consisting of two steel drums which have candles that contain the same nanomaterials. These candles help in the adsorption of arsenic and iron from groundwater to produce potable drinking water. 

These purifiers work on gravity and do not require power to operate.

“The state government initially distributed household water purifiers to each household in 54 arsenic-affected villages for free to encourage greater community-level adaptation of the technology,” explains Talwar. Residents from arsenic-affected areas of rural Punjab could meet their individual drinking water needs from these household purifiers while their other requirements were met by the regular piped water supply of the village.

“Running cost of these household nanomaterial-based purifiers is negligible. After all, each household does its own maintenance. The requirement to replace the media candles will be there in a few years, for which the government may again need to step in to provide support to these households or provide for these candles through the market.” she adds.

The researchers at IIT Madras especially helped design these prototypes along with the Department of Water Supply and Sanitation, Punjab. 

They also supported the department by designing and implementing an IoT-based monitoring system for large arsenic and iron removal plants (AIRPs) installed across rural Punjab. Also, they set up a grievance and monitoring call centre for AIRPs and individual household units. 

This system allowed officials to check telephonically whether people were using these units given that a unique number was engraved on each purifier distributed and a central record was maintained household-wise.

“After addressing a few in-use issues, these AIRPs and filters began to work well. This academia-government collaboration did help mitigate the environmental and social problems. Yet a fresh assessment will be needed to gauge the long-term sustainability of this technology and its health outcomes,” she adds.

Recognition

“Most of the recognition I have received is for fundamental science. While doing fundamental science, it’s also possible to do applied science. My message to students is that you can work in both fields parallelly because it’s imperative to solve problems like these,” says Prof Pradeep.

Meanwhile, Prof Sir Richard Friend, VinFuture Prize Council Chair, said during the award ceremony, “The VinFuture Prize Council is honoured to award brilliant scientific minds for their outstanding innovations. It is my hope that the prize will contribute to promoting scientific research, creating more breakthroughs that can positively impact society, and helping build a better life for everyone. This is a mission and responsibility that we take very seriously.”

This is Professor Pradeep’s hope as well.

(Edited by Pranita Bhat)

(Images courtesy IIT-Madras, Professor T Pradeep, Pradeep Research Group)

The dense smoke spread through the area, polluting the air and making it difficult for the residents in her village to breathe. This made her ponder about cleaner solutions to treating agricultural waste, which eventually led her to pursue an education that would provide greener solutions.

Now an award-winning environmentalist, Dr Karve began studying methods to convert agricultural waste to coal in 1997. After getting a special Central Government grant ‘Young Scientist Scheme’, she was able to discover technology that converted agro-waste to biochar briquettes.

Biochar is another name for charcoal produced by plant material. When stored underground for long periods, it can emerge as a natural solution to combat climate mitigation and abide by sustainability goals.

Her method involves biomass gasification with a controlled air supply that leads to the volatile gas burning off. This process leaves behind ‘biochar’ — almost pure carbon. Incidentally, her research also led to the development of a unique stove that could cook rice-based meals with just 100 grams of biochar briquettes.

After several improvements, her revolutionary design — now called the Samuchit Transflasher Kiln, has aced garden waste management in urban homes. Another product — the smokeless Samuchit Steam Cooker Stove, has also proven to be more effective than traditional firewood stoves.

In a career of environmental conservation spanning 20 years, Dr Karve’s inventions have reduced urban dependence on firewood, often known as the ‘kitchen killer’ for its toxic impact on women’s health.

“In rural India, the waste biomass is widely used as a fuel in traditional stoves but is highly inefficient. The idea was to develop a high-performance fuel and a stove designed specifically for its efficient use,” Dr Priyadarshini Karve tells The Better India.

During the late 1990s, she worked at the Appropriate Rural Technology Institute and managed to convert sugarcane crop waste to biochar, which was then compressed to produce biochar briquettes. However, sugarcane farmers did not opt for her slightly labour-intensive solution. The process required the deployment of several workers that would convert waste into coal briquettes.

“Also, since 1965, the urban population switched from charcoal to LPG cylinders for cooking. As the rural population aspired to an urban lifestyle, shifting from biomass to biochar briquettes was not aspirational,” she adds.

So, continuing with her journey towards finding greener solutions for agro-waste disposal, she joined an academic study at the UK Biochar Research Centre at the Scotland’s University of Edinburgh in 2004, which hoped to understand the use of biochar in Cambodia, India, and the Philippines. The project, she says, allowed her to interact with a number of researchers to improve biochar technology and discover its true capabilities.

With an enhanced interest in climate change mitigation, two years later, she began marketing her biochar kiln as a garden waste management unit through Samuchit Enviro Tech, a company she now heads.

Tired of waste from leaves in their gardens, urban residents often resorted to composting it. Her kiln offered an easier, time-saving solution. The kiln, which was altered for managing garden waste, has double walls with strategically located holes. “The first layer of dry organic waste is lit and covered by a lid. The air from the holes enters the chamber, initiating the natural draught gasification process. The heat from the first layer percolates to the other layer, drives out the volatile gases, and converts the waste into biochar,” she says.

Additionally, its foldable design permitted users to dismantle and store it in dry places during monsoon. Her design, now more attractive and compact, is now oriented towards the needs of an urban resident. Over the last few years, she has managed to sell nearly 10,000 pieces, priced at Rs 7,000.

The biochar briquettes make gardens more fertile and serve as smokeless fuel. Their ability to lock 30 per cent of the carbon in garden waste also fights climate change by not contributing excessive toxins to the atmosphere. “The demand for such products is growing,” she says.

Dr Karve’s Steam Cooking Stove became an attractive solution for urban citizens who were intrigued by charcoal-based cooking. After a few modifications, the stove managed to cook a meal for four — including dal, rice, and vegetables, by using only 100 grams of biochar briquettes or charcoal and a glass of water. She explains, “The fuel burns out in 30 minutes, and the food cooks in the steam and heat remaining from the burning.”

The company has sold over 60,000 stoves so far, with most of the buyers hailing from urban areas in South and South-West India.

Another invention — the Samuchit Carbon Footprint Calculator for Urban Indians, has helped rope in the realisation of the carbon footprints Indians leave behind.

Dr Karve’s work offers a clear solution for climate change mitigation from the production of biochar with accessible technology. Wingify Earth promotes such clean-fuel alternatives in urban Indian areas riddled with smoke and pollution.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

When Tarun Jami, a civil engineer, was driving around in the national capital during a trip in 2019, he says he “almost crashed the car due to smog and low visibility”.

“I even felt affected health-wise,” he recounts, adding that when he probed into the deteriorating air quality in Delhi, he was astounded at the statistics.

“Stubble burning contributed to 44 per cent of Delhi’s poor air quality,” he says.

Hence, Tarun decided to take it in his stride and do something about this problem. Today, his company GreenJams, founded in 2017 in Vishakhapatnam, is creating carbon-negative building materials from agricultural biomass and hemp blocks. This was all directed towards changing the course of conventional construction.

How is the construction sector contributing to climate change?

Conventional construction materials — gravel, sand, and cement — pose a threat to the environment due to the emissions that they create. The process is extensive and begins with limestone and clay extracted from quarries, and crushed and mixed with iron ore or ash. The mix is then fed to cylindrical kilns at around 1,450 degrees Celsius.

The next step is calcination wherein the mixture is split into calcium oxide and CO2, giving out a grey marble-sized product — clinker. This product is then cooled and mixed with gypsum and limestone and sent to concrete companies. Right from the first step to the last, the process leads to a tremendous release of carbon dioxide.

In light of this, GreenJams and its eco-friendly construction techniques focus on more sustainable alternatives.

Tarun employed the knowledge he gained during his graduate years into coming up with Agrocrete — a product made of upcycled material. Agrocrete had the ability to reduce construction costs by 50 per cent while increasing thermal insulation by 50 per cent and cutting down on the time required for construction.

“In 2013, during my graduation, I came across the material Hempcrete and was impressed by its carbon-negative qualities and thermal capabilities. I decided to study it,” he recounts. Agrocete is a version of this same technology made from agricultural residue and industrial by-products.

A brick that stands the test of time

Explaining how the process works, Tarun says they collect residue from farmers, and then chop and process it.

“The residue is mixed with our innovative product BINDR — a 100 per cent up-cycled low-carbon replacement of Portland cement made from industrial by-products of steel, paper and power industries. As it comes in powder form, the material also becomes useful for masonry mortar and plastering,” he says.

He elaborates that the resulting product is as strong as a conventional brick, but with improved thermal conductivity, less water absorption tendency, the ability to capture tonnes of carbon emissions, and a life duration of at least 75 years.

“The blocks are 30 per cent lighter, making it convenient for masons to work on. They’re also bigger, which reduces the construction time and cost of labour,” he adds.

Excellent performance and durability

In Tarun’s own experience, the bricks performed well when he worked with them in the endeavour to build a 1,100 square feet load-bearing structure while extending his office space into a manufacturing unit at Roorkee.

“We built it for Rs 1.95 lakh, as against the Rs 5.5 lakh that would have been required if we used conventional materials. It also captured 3.1 tonnes of CO2 emissions in the process, making it a carbon-negative building,” says Tarun.

In addition to this, the bricks were simple to work with. “We finished the work in about four days, which would have otherwise required 10-12 days for the same amount of construction,” he says.

Though a global community today, Maker’s Asylum’s journey began in a small room in a Mumbai office that was, quite tellingly, deemed an ‘asylum’ for “like-minded DIY enthusiasts”, founder Vaibhav Chhabra recalls.

It became a safe space for these makers when, in 2013, around eight people — mostly strangers — showed up to help Vaibhav repair broken furniture in his old office at Eyenetra, a health-tech company, after he put out a call for help on social media.

What transpired was an agreement that they would meet every Sunday to “build fun things”.

Today, Maker’s Asylum is taking this fun and love for creativity to the rest of the world and has become India’s first community to offer such a space.

Since 2013, they have encouraged thousands across India to collaborate and innovate in the spaces of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math (STEAM) by “providing them the confidence, tools, knowledge, space, and communities they need to change the world and become globally-conscious problem-solvers”.

Among these programmes is the SDG School — a remarkable platform that combines people’s love for innovation with the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations. The result is a host of ideas and solutions that cut across sectors like healthcare, education, energy, waste management, and more.

The upcoming edition of the programme will be held in the third week of February – next year, in collaboration with The Better India.

We sat down with Vaibhav to understand how the activities at Maker’s Asylum gave shape to this peculiar ‘school’, which has, since its inception in 2016, seen 2000  alumni members tackle 12 SDGs with their solutions.

A bit of ‘jugaad’ and a ticket to France

Vaibhav, who began his career as an engineer, tells The Better India, “Over the years of Maker’s Asylum, a lot of people from different backgrounds and age groups began coming to us to understand how they could bring their ideas to life. So we started designing programmes to facilitate that growth. Now we have programmes for ages 13 and above, tailored to go through the process of design thinking, learning about jugaad, frugal innovation…”

Over the years, the community saw a host of projects — from devices to communicate with satellites to robotic arms and leather made out of flowers. The journey of the SDG School, Vaibhav notes, arose naturally from these innovations.

“It was a very organic journey that started as an Indo-French collaboration. The science attache of the French Embassy came to visit us; she was curious about what we were doing. She really liked what was happening and suggested we check out makers’ labs in France as well, and see how we can share this culture together. This was the deal given to me, along with a flight ticket to France,” he laughs.

Vaibhav spent about a month in the country, travelling from university to university to understand their makers’ labs, many of which were government funded.

“That’s when we tied up with CRI (Centre for Research & Interdisciplinarity) in Paris, where they were bringing people from different backgrounds to work on various problems and design curriculums to tackle real-life problems. We started working with them and thinking about how we can help people find their passion. Because once people do that, they begin learning from the things around them. That was a theory I instantly fell in love with.”

Later on, Vaibhav and his team met with officials at UNESCO. “We also had author Navi Radjou, a former advisor with Maker’s Asylum, advising us on all the jugaad innovation, and UNESCO helped us streamline with respect to the SDGs,” he says.

“The sustainable development goals set by the United Nations are quite vast and complex. But we wanted to look at achieving them as beyond problems that the government or an authority has to solve. We decided to incorporate these SDGs to sort of localise the solutions. At the time, we hadn’t heard of anyone else doing this.” 

The ‘curriculum’ 

Vaibhav says that since it began in 2016, the programme has taken shape in various formats. In the initial years, it took place once a year in Mumbai. Eventually, they changed this to twice a year, with the second edition being held in Paris.

During an edition of the Bonjour India cultural festival, Vaibhav had the opportunity to meet the French President. “He invited us to initiate the programme in France, and we held our first edition there in 2019. We saw students from India, as well as Europe.”

Since the pandemic, the programme has shifted online, but many universities have continued to join, and many offer this programme as credits for their students, he explains. “Last year we had Ashoka, NID and a few others who gave credits for students to be part of the SDG School,” he adds.

“The way SDG School, previously called STEAM School, functions is that students from across the world — India, Europe, Asia, and more — come to form an asylum. It’s a two-week programme, and in the first week, we go through a design thinking process. Folks from UNDP and UNESCO come to introduce them to SDGs. Then we have team mixers and events, based on which the participants form teams and choose what solutions they want to work on.”

“What’s amazing is that these teams see people from all walks of life, from different backgrounds.”

“Then we move on to assumption testing, understanding facts, problem statements…there is a steering committee that gives the go-ahead to participants for their problem statements. Then we begin creating prototypes. We host a skill bazaar day so participants can learn different skills like digital fabrication, app design, and video editing….It’s all very hands-on. The last couple of days is for understanding the impact model and how to create a business with it.”

Vaibhav notes that this programme does not have juries and winners. “We tried to be different from the usual hackathons that you see. I believe that if you put a prize at the end, it limits your creativity and makes you think more about what will make you win the prize. But we’re working towards the planet, so our focus is on helping each and every team do that.”

As for this year’s edition, he says, “There will be about 40-50 teams as part of the online programme; that’s about 200 participants attending virtually. The programme will be held from 5 pm to 8 pm and will go on for 10 days. Later, we will invite 10 teams for the project acceleration phase, which will happen in Maker’s Asylum in Goa. Over the course of three days here, participants will interact with mentors to help improve and finalise their prototypes.”

Day 4, he says, will be The Better India Summit, wherein all teams, regardless of the invite for the project acceleration phase, can showcase their projects to incubator partners.

Innovations that change the world

Needless to say, the most exciting part of the programme has been the kind of creativity that people display with their projects.

There is, for instance, Bulls Eye — a workshop and game designed for primary school teachers to address bullying in school, and in turn tackle one reason for high dropout rates. The first activity is a video that shows what bullying is, followed by a debate for the kids to understand the aim of the game. The third step is a board game wherein the child chooses different paths to make ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ decisions, followed by a discussion to reflect on what they learned from the process.

“There was a project around inclusivity called Make it Loud, which I really liked. It was a simple glove that a person with speech impairments can wear, and it would translate sign language and essentially ‘speak out’ and convert it to speech,” Vaibhav explains.

There was also First Steps, designed by Zaberi Ansari and Anas Shaikh, residents of Dharavi who, based on their own struggles with education and learning English, designed a low-cost game using bamboo and pipe cleaners to help children from low-income backgrounds learn the English alphabet. This innovation also won Rs 10 lakh on the reality show — Inventor Challenge.

“One story was of Saba, whose mother has ALS. She worked on an app for people with similar issues,” he says. “There was Chetan, who worked on BullsEye. He came back to work on a project called YAWO — a sensor that goes inside your shoe sole to observe how your pressure points are changing through the course of your diabetes. What’s beautiful is that many people, like Chetan, come back to the programme.”

Another interesting aspect of the SDG School is that it is open to all ages above 18.

“The oldest person was about 57 years old, and the average age is around 27-28 years,” Vaibhav explains. “We see people in their 40s and 50s coming in, and it’s really wonderful to see the diversity that comes with them. We also have a scholarship this year that has 10 spots reserved for 13 to 18-year-olds. Many young students want to be part of the programme, and they’re all amazing.”

‘It started with a simple thought’

“The programme has always been very emotional; going through the whole journey together of finding a problem and working through it together. It is a fun experience for everyone to learn together,” Vaibhav says.

“Even when the programme became virtual, you could see parties in breakout rooms, people not wanting to leave…we’ve had to stay up all night because the conversations kept going,” he smiles. “What’s wonderful about the SDG School is the human connect.”

As for his own journey of using his learnings to make something meaningful, Vaibhav says, “When I was growing up, I wasn’t a very confident child. I had some difficult times in school. But when I started making stuff, I became more confident in myself. When you’re actually able to open something up and put it back together, solve problems, figure a new space out….that beauty, that maker’s spirit is the culture I wanted to share through this programme.”

“Of course, it has been a challenging journey — we were kicked out of our office spaces, I had no background in business….but it started with a simple thought, and we’ve built on that for the last 10 years.”

“I also wish something like Maker’s Asylum had existed when I was a child,” he notes. “I wanted to normalise and make technology and tools for change more accessible, to reduce that barrier. I see that with young adults when they use the machines for the first time; the way their eyes light up and how empowered they feel to use a device like that…it’s beautiful to see.”

Have an idea that could meet SDG goals? Applications for the programme are now open until 31st January 2023. Anyone above the age of 18 can apply — click here for details!

Within the portals of the Indian Institute of Science — one of the top-ranked universities in the country, a one-of-a-kind research technology has emerged.

It is now possible to obtain hydrogen gas using biomass as an energy resource. The research was spearheaded by professor S Dasappa who heads the Interdisciplinary Centre for Energy Research at the institute.

Interesting to note is the sustainability quotient of this new technology in contrast to the conventional one, and how it can impact India’s hydrogen requirements.

What is green hydrogen?

The traditional method of producing hydrogen gas is by taking the steam-methane reforming route. In this method, natural gas comprising methane reacts with steam under the conditions of high temperature (700 to 1,000 degrees Celsius) and pressure (3 to 25 bar).

The reaction yields hydrogen gas along with carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

Following this, a water gas shift reaction takes place, wherein carbon monoxide reacts with steam to yield carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas. The impurities along with carbon dioxide are then removed from the mix using pressure swing adsorption, leaving only hydrogen gas behind.

However, this conventional route necessitates a lot of heat and is cumbersome.

S Dasappa’s new technology operates in a slightly different manner. The two-step reaction is a “highly efficient method of generating green hydrogen,” said IISc in a statement.

The first step yields a hydrogen-rich fuel gas mixture from biomass while the second step yields pure hydrogen in a low-pressure gas separation unit. The institute went on to highlight that the reaction was able to produce 100 g of hydrogen from 1 kg of biomass, even though only 60 g of hydrogen is present in 1 kg of biomass.

A boon for India’s green goals

According to research by NITI Aayog, “Hydrogen demand in India could grow more than fourfold by 2050, representing almost 10 per cent of global hydrogen demand”. In addition, the paper postulated that the adoption of green hydrogen will also result in 3.6 Gigatonnes of cumulative CO2 emission reductions between 2020 and 2050.

In light of these figures, Dasappa says his technology can be put to use in the steel industry to decarbonise steel as well as to manufacture green fertilisers in agriculture.

“The same platform can be used for methanol and ethanol production,” S Dasappa was quoted saying as he elaborated on other uses of this technology.

While the project was supported by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India, the Indian Oil Corporation Limited will be closely involved in scaling up the technology to produce 0.25 tonnes of hydrogen per day for use in hydrogen-powered fuel cell buses.

Sources

Generating green hydrogen from biomass, an abundant renewable energy source by IISC. 

Harnessing Green Hydrogen by NITI Aayog.

His farming method saves both space and water. Called multi-layer farming, Akash’s method allows farmers to grow multiple crops on a smaller piece of land.

As a young boy from Bundelkhand, Akash always dreamt of becoming a doctor. But his career path took a turn as he grew up. “I realised that the root of all illnesses is what we eat and drink. So, I decided to deal with the root of the problem through farming,” he says.

After speaking to several farmers, he found the major problem plaguing the farmers was a lack of water and space and weed growth.

As a solution to these problems, in 2014, Akash planted two layers of crops on the same piece of land to save space. He built a 6.5 feet structure out of bamboo and put a jaali (mesh) on top so the structure was partly exposed to sunlight and partly shaded, preventing evaporation and hence saving 80 per cent water.

To combat weeds, he planted leafy crops like spinach, coriander and fenugreek.

With over 20 national awards under his name, Akash has given practical training to around 80,000 farmers and educated around 12 lakh others about multilayer farming. He also has a YouTube channel with informational videos to help farmers learn more about multilayer farming.

Want to know more about his journey? Watch this video: 

Edited by Pranita Bhat

In 2008, he started thinking of ways to make products out of banana waste. He found the idea of making ropes interesting. 

“The idea struck me when I saw banana threads being used to thread flowers for garlands. I used the machine that turns coconut husk into a rope as the base and modified it to work well for processing banana fibre,” says the innovator.

He patented the machine by investing Rs 1.5 lakh and decided to make items like baskets, bags and mats using the ropes. After a lot of trial and error, he came up with a machine that produces an average of 15,000 metres in a day and needs just four people to work.

“We started with five people, which grew to 10, then 20, and today, we employ more than 350 people, many of whom are women,” says Murugesan, the founder of M S Ropes Production Center in Madurai.

The venture processes over 500 tonnes of banana waste and earns about Rs 1.5 crore annually. The products made out of the ropes are exported to foreign countries including Malaysia, Singapore, France and the Netherlands.

Watch Murugesan’s innovative journey here:

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Edited by Divya Sethu

In Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow, four school-going children have built three environment-friendly cars, which cause neither sound nor air pollution. Instead, they clean the surrounding air when driven.

An 11-year-old, Viraj Amit Mehrotra is one of the manufacturers of these battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs).

Explaining their features, he says, “Our cars have a BrushLess Direct Current Motor of 1,000 Watt, 1200 Watt, and 1400 Watt. They come with a special feature called DFS or Dust Filtration System, which acts like an air purifier for a car. It cleans up to six feet of dust-laden air from the surroundings.”

Viraj manufactured these cars along with three other young innovators — Garvit Singh (12), Shreyansh Mehrotra (14), and his younger brother Aaryav Amit Mehrotra (9). The kids say they were inspired by Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, an automotive company that makes electric cars.

“Presently, EVs in India are too expensive to be afforded by everyone. They can cost up to Rs 60 lakh per car; the Tesla car itself costs up to Rs 2 crore. So, we wanted to build cost-effective cars that also clean the environment,” says Viraj, who has made his friends and family proud with the innovation.

He aspires to become a teacher of engineering and help his students chase their passion.

What is Dust Filtration System?

The young manufacturers designed a very unique concept called Dust Filtration System or DFS, which is a multi-channel layer pollution-absorbing technology. It captures suspended dust from the tyres of the car while taking in the polluted air, which then goes through multiple channels to finally emit fresh air.

“If cars running on DFS are used everywhere, the outdoor air quality will get better than the indoors,” says Milind Raj, the founder of a robotics and innovation company called ‘Roboz.in’.

The young innovators who refer to themselves as ‘Four-ever’ were mentored by Raj.

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“These children are very curious about science and technology. In 2020, when schools in many cities started shutting down due to rising air pollution, these kids came up with an idea to make a net zero emission vehicle to make India pollution free,” he says. “Soon, they came up with designs and processes, and after around 250 days of hard work and multiple failures, they manufactured three different EVs — Murcielago, GSM, and VJS.”

Raj continues, “These kids used to work on the prototypes after school and even on holidays including Sundays. They never went out on vacation or even celebrated their birthdays during this time. Instead, they invested their time to completely focus on these machines. Their entire ecosystem, their thoughts and approach towards life has changed.”

A four-wheeler at the cost of a two-wheeler

Unique in designs and specifications, the electric cars are drivable and are first prototypes of a net zero emission EV, designed by the youngest scientists, claims Raj.

He says that the battery-powered EV runs on a lead acid battery, which is detachable, making it a good fit for a battery swap. “It takes around three hours for the electric cars to charge. With 1.6 horsepower, these vehicles have a range between 70 and 90 kilometres per hour,” informs the robotic expert.

Among the four-wheeler electric cars, one is a three-seater, another is a two-seater, and the third one is a one-seater. “While the research and development cost the team Rs 1.5 lakh, the estimated cost to manufacture one such car is Rs 95,000,” says Raj. “The annual maintenance is expected to be between Rs 2,000 and Rs 3,000.”

These days, even a two-wheeler costs around Rs 90,000, he says adding, “We are going to keep a profit margin of up to 25 per cent, and it will still be affordable for every section. Our aim is that every family, including the middle and lower middle class, should have access to an affordable electric car. Many people are waiting for the launch.”

The kids received financial support from their families and their mentor.

“We tried to bring down the cost of manufacturing with minimum resources to get maximum output. So, we used scrap and recycled materials such as metal rods, metal sheets, and simple machinery hardware systems. The kids even performed gas welding and arc welding all by themselves,” explains the mentor.

Raj shares that in 1895, Lord Kelvin stated that “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible”. A few years later in 1903, the Wright brothers invented and flew the first aeroplane, recognised as the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight.

So, it’s not uncommon in science to turn implausible situations into real possibilities.

कल 5 दिसम्बर को विधानसभा के सामने आयोजित कार्यक्रम में श्री मिलिन्द राज जी के पर्यवेक्षण में विशेष इलेक्ट्रिक वाहनों को बनाने वाले देश के सबसे कम उम्र के नन्हें भारतीय वैज्ञानिक/ अभियंता बच्चों से मिलने का सुअवसर मिला।

देश के नौनिहालों की प्रतिभा देखकर अत्यन्त प्रसन्नता हुई। pic.twitter.com/Brsr8Fd987

— D.S. Mishra, Chief Secretary, GoUP (@ChiefSecyUP) December 6, 2022

“No one believed that these children could create these cars on their own. But, after just two years, these cars were right in front of Vidhan Sabha, where the government acknowledged their efforts. So anything you imagine can be real,” concludes Raj.

The team aims to add 5G features to their electric cars in 2023, which will allow them to be moved anywhere using mobile phone applications.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

“By 2050, India will need a landfill the size of New Delhi.” 

The frightening statistic echoed loud amid the silence in the hall where Pernod Ricard, the global leader in wine and spirits, was hosting their event in Mumbai on 7 December 2022.

The industry’s first such initiative ‘#OneForOurPlanet’ —  focusing on the removal of permanent mono cartons from the packaging — was the first of many sustainable steps that the company is taking to reduce their carbon footprint. 

But even as cheers accompanied their promise of achieving this ambitious goal by June 2023, Kartik Mohindra, chief marketing officer of Pernod Ricard India, warned that this will be only a small step against the large problem of climate change. 

“Even if we are successful in doing away with the permanent mono cartons, we estimate that we will prevent carbon emissions of 7,310 tonnes every year, save 2.5 lakh trees, and reduce waste-to-landfill by 18,745 tons. This, though a lot, is still little,” he noted. 

Reducing environmental impact from grain to glass

Ranjeet Oak, chief commercial officer of Pernod Ricard India reiterates that the company wishes to not only create an environmental impact, but also let it continue. They are hopeful that this initiative will influence eco-conscious purchase decisions among people. 

“We aim to inspire consumers to champion this cause and help us evangelize this into a larger movement,” agreed Mohindra, adding that it hasn’t been an overnight decision. 

“There was a lot of reconfiguring to do with respect to our supply chains and traders. But they are aligned with our plans,” says Gagandeep Sethi, vice president, manufacturing, Pernod Ricard India.

Assuring customers that mono cartons were being eliminated would in no way compromise the quality of the liquid within, he said that the outer cartons were being bolstered to ensure the strength of the packaging. 

Would customers miss the mono carton? 

“Unknowingly, customers sometimes purchase from their preferred brands which do not have a mono carton. Even though they may not be aware, they have accepted this change,” adds Oak. 

“In fact, according to the findings of our consumer research, one in two consumers discard the mono carton right after purchasing. This goes to show that this packaging is not really essential.”

‘It is not an initiative. It is a movement.’

As the company highlights, this sustainable step is only one under the umbrella of its many goals. 

They add that another is having “100 per cent of the packaging be made recyclable, compostable, or reusable by 2025, and employing the use of 40 per cent recycled glass content by the same year”. 

“We are looking at reducing our overall carbon footprint by 50 per cent by 2030,” adds Oak. 

Along with this, recyclable neck tags will enable consumers to go to a micro-site explaining more about the initiative. 

Even as guests mulled over the eco-conscious points mentioned, there was much to admire in the way the event was set up — the ‘forest-themed’ decor with succulent plants on shelves, being the main draw. 

Glass bottles on every table substituted the usual plastic ones. In addition to this, separate bins for recyclable waste and food waste were placed at strategic spaces around the room, and the company promised that all leftover food would be shared with NGO Aasra. 

“Practice what you preach” seemed to be the mantra of the day, as guests were treated to a musical show by famed percussionist Taufiq Qureshi and his team, who stunned the audience not only with their beats but also by making music using discarded items, such as trash cans, old buckets, dustbin bags, old glasses and used wood.   

As the global beverage brand spearheads this campaign, the first of its nature, it creates hope for a chance at a better planet and a better world.

Check out more about the initiative at: https://oneforourplanet.com.

But rather than being a traditional farmer, Pradeep wanted to innovate something that would benefit the farmers and improve their lives. This is how he ideated installing solar panels, which are prevalent in urban areas but not in villages.

“In 2009, I attended a six-month course offered by the government about solar panels. This motivated me to launch a business to provide panel installations,” says Pradeep.

His first customers were farmers from the village who began using the panel for pumping water and other agricultural needs. Even though the business was a success, frequent theft and breakage of panels caused worry.

The farmers asked for compensation and discouraged others from buying their products. That’s when Pradeep thought of a solution to this issue, which came in the shape of a trolley.

Using the trolley or even the farmer’s tractors, panels were made which could be transported anywhere to generate electricity. This ‘Solar-on-Wheels’ idea gained appreciation from the farming community.

Pradeep has been able to sell over 2,000 solar trolleys to date for around Rs 48,000 through his company, TG Solar Pumps.

“The trolley can be mounted on the back of a tractor and has sturdy wheels that allow it to move over uneven surfaces. The trolley size can be customised according to the user’s requirements,” says the innovator.

Edited by Pranita Bhat

Researchers at IIT-Madras have achieved a real breakthrough in the renewable energy sector, with a way to generate electricity from sea waves. Called the ‘Ocean Wave Energy Converter’, this device was deployed at a remote location 6 km off the coast of Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu, and placed at a depth of 20 metres.

In the second week of November, the team completed trials of this device and now targets generating 1 MW of power from ocean waves in the next three years. The team is led by Professor Abdus Samad, the scientist behind the establishment of the Wave Energy and Fluids Engineering Laboratory (WEFEL) at IIT Madras.

Prof Samad, who has been working on wave energy for over a decade, with his team designed and tested a scaled-down model. Aside from generating electricity, WEFEL is also researching other applications for this breakthrough technology, such as producing power for smaller devices for the ocean like navigational buoys and data buoys, among others.

Speaking to The Better India, Prof Samad says, “The ocean is harsh. There are forces — tidal, waves, wind, tsunamis, cyclones, etc. Sea water is corrosive, and there is an issue of marine algae growth on the machine element. The installation needs special skilled persons like divers. Deploying and maintaining this device in the ocean is also challenging. So, when we design any system, we need to consider all these factors. Finally, the whole task becomes expensive.”

“Also, the wave energy system concept came up about 100 years ago. The idea of generating electricity from sea waves is not new, but the challenges are how you develop the technology and make the system feasible, cost-effective and reliable,” he adds.

This device is targeted towards remote offshore locations that require reliable electricity and communication — either by supplying electric power to payloads integrated directly in or on the device, or located in its vicinity as on the seabed and in the water column. The targeted stakeholders are the oil and gas, defence and security installations, as well as the communication sectors.

IIT Madras and a Visakhapatnam-based startup titled Virya Paramita Energy (VPE) have a joint development agreement to commercialise the technology.

How does the technology work?

The resultant product is called ‘Sindhuja-I,’ which means “generated from the ocean”.

A press release issued by IIT-M states, “The system has a floating buoy, a spar, and an electrical module. The buoy moves up and down as the wave moves up and down. In the present design,  a balloon-like system called a buoy has a central hole that allows a long rod called spar to pass through it. The spar can be fixed to the seabed, and passing waves will not affect it, while the buoy will move up and down and produce relative motion between them. The relative motion gives rotation to an electric generator to produce power. In the present design, the spar floats, and a mooring chain keeps the system in place.”

Simply put, here’s how Prof Samad explains it: “Our system has a buoy with a central hole like a doughnut. When waves come, the buoy moves up and down with it. Now a vertical rod passing through the hole touches the sea bottom and does not move with the wave. Hence, we get relative motion between the rod and the doughnut. We put a rack and pinion system so that when the buoy moves up and down, the pinion (wheel) rotates. The wheel transfers power to a generator to produce electricity. I have a few relevant patents on wave energy. The present design will be filed shortly,” he says.

Sindhuja-1 comes from invention and rigorous academic research, notes Prof Samad. Suman Kumar, who completed his Master of Science (M.S.) under Prof Samad, left his lucrative corporate job and joined his team to develop a wave energy system. Besides him, Prof Samad’s team has four PhD scholars working on different aspects of developing the product — study of ocean waves, cost aspects, design and deployment, and numerical analysis.

“We are considering all the known aspects before designing the systems. We feel our system is robust because we tested it in the ocean when the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) reported a red alert weather prediction, and the system produced power,” he says.

Generating electricity

In India, the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), Chennai, installed a plant at Vizhinjam (Kerala) to produce electricity using a turbine based system in the 1990s. Later, they designed a ship navigational system with a turbine-based system.

“Globally, a few companies are trying to commercialise different wave energy technologies. We often can not compare the technologies as the ocean is vast, and the application area can be different. Some can be installed near the coast; others away from the coast, etc. We installed our small basic design and observed it produces about 100W peak power,” says Prof Samad.

“We received a DST (Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt of India) project approval of Rs 1 crore. Using that amount, we will produce a more extensive system to reach a few watts to a few kilowatts (kW). We planned to make systems with more than 15 cm diameters producing about 80 kW power. So, an array of 15 systems will produce 1,000 KW or 1 MW of power. We are seeking funds from investors and government agencies for this big plan,” he adds.

Prof Samad says that Sindhuja-1 has some innovative advantages over other existing technologies in this space. “Efficacy-wise, it can be installed anywhere within 10 to 6,000 metres of water depth. It’s not dependent on bathymetry, does not harm sea life, includes no digging of the sea bed and is easily deployable, and portable. This will generate power 24X7 with almost negligible battery storage. It can be an excellent choice for sea surveillance, offshore desalination, coral reef regeneration, offshore communication, drone charging/underwater vehicle charging, weather buoy, navigational buoy, etc.”

How does it compare to other renewables?

Solar and wind are mature technologies, and their cost has significantly reduced since inception. Also, solar and wind need battery storage and are also expensive when running in the ocean. In fact, wind turbines may not be able to handle 6km of water depth.

“On the other hand, wave energy is 24×7, with low battery requirement (less than 10% of the battery requirement of the solar energy system) and we can go to any depth. Also, solar energy can be harvested for a few hours during daytime, so you need a larger battery source. Our system is still in the research and development (R&D) stage.” he says.

The origin story

A couple of years ago, Prof Samad was designing turbines for NIOT for their navigational buoy. Meanwhile, he was also studying wave energy technologies. An important stage in the development of this technology came with the arrival of Vishnu Vijayasankar as an MS student under Prof Samad. Today, he’s doing his PhD at Virginia Tech, USA.

It was Vijay who came up with the idea of designing a 15 cm diameter buoy. Along with a couple of MTech students from the Department of Ocean Engineering, Vijay left for Coimbatore to design and manufacture the Point Absorber Wave Energy Converter, a precursor to the current device. After spending a week, he got the device tested, graduated and left for the US.

Following Vijay, another MS student under Prof Samad, Sumar Kumar, conducted multiple tests, performed analyses and after graduating found work in the corporate sector. However, Suman soon left his job and returned to continue working on developing the wave energy converter. Similarly, other research students also joined Prof Samad in this endeavour.

As he says, “I set off alone towards my goal, but people came along and it began to turn into a caravan.”

“We started designing this device when Vishnu was a student at IIT Madras. Then once Suman rejoined us, the lockdown started. Our original design got disposed of, but Sai Karthik Sunkara, the CEO of VPE, approached us in mid-2020 and explored the possibilities of bringing it into reality, following which we started working on it together. In 2022, when students again came back to IIT-M, we received funds from the Australian and Indian governments to develop the device jointly with team VPE. Finally, real ocean testing happened in November 2022. We are discussing manufacturing with some companies, but the deal has not been finalised yet,” says Prof Samad.

Immense scope

India has a 7,500 km long coastline capable of producing 54 GW of power and satisfying a substantial amount of the country’s energy requirement.

“Among them, the harnessing of 40 GW wave energy is possible in India. Even single devices in different locations along the Indian coastline can generate large quantities of clean power. We are also contemplating placing multiple devices in an array configuration for maximum wave power extraction from the location. Our vision is to make India sustainable by tapping marine energy and net zero carbon emission to mitigate climate impact,” claims Prof Samad.

The success of this project could help India meet its climate change-related goals of generating 500 GW of electricity by 2030 through renewable energy.

Speaking about this project, Sai Karthik Sunkara of Virya Paramita Energy (VPE), said, “Ocean has enormous opportunities, and exploring with proper technology is the need of the time.”

The project received funding support through ‘Innovative Research Project’ of IIT Madras, TBI-KIET under DST Nidhi-Prayas Scheme and the Australian Alumni Grant Scheme 2022 by Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australian Government. 

The institute has also partnered with  VPE, a Visakhapatnam-based startup, and Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, for this test. The electrical storage system was designed by GKC Institute of Engineering and Technology and MCKV Institute of Engineering, West Bengal. Waterfront Engineering and Infrastructure assisted in deploying the system in the Ocean.

(Edited by Divya Sethu)

(Images courtesy IIT-Madras)

The summer of 2022 was unforgiving for India, and more so for its villages, which often bear the brunt of extreme heat. One such village is Nande in Maharashtra.

While the farmers wished for some respite from the scorching sun, they feared the oncoming monsoon season for the harsh rains they can bring, which can be equally damaging. Year after year, farmers have been devastated as their crops are submerged and the produce destroyed.

So, this year, the students of class 8 of the Zilla Parishad School in the village decided to bring in a change.

The school had recently had an Amazon Future Engineer (AFE) Lab equipped with raspberry pi and physical computing sensors set up by the Pi Jam Foundation. Along with the resources and necessary tech tools to give the students hands-on experience in computer science, the AFE program also provided a dedicated mentor who helps kids learn computer science.

The students began to wonder if they could put their lab time to greater use.

“Why not use these tools to help the farmers?” they thought.

A weather station brings hope to Nande

Under the guidance of their mentor Manomeet Paikroy from the Pi Jam Foundation, the students began ideating and troubleshooting.

The problem they wished to address through the innovation was simple — help the farmers get information on the weather that lay ahead, so they’d have ample time to prepare their fields and secure the produce.

The children coupled the knowledge they gained in science class — scientific principles of temperature, pressure, humidity and wind speed — with the tools provided in the AFE Lab. 

Within a month, they had their innovation ready to be tested.

What influenced this radical transformation in the children, where they no longer see a problem as an obstruction but rather a challenge?

Their mentor says their confidence stems from the access that they now have to various resources.

“The kids in these rural schools had limited access to various learning tools. Because of this, they weren’t able to explore new learning opportunities,” he says, adding that today, this reality has changed by associating with the Amazon Future Engineer (AFE) programme.

The Pi Jam Foundation, a non-profit venture, has been enhancing the quality of computer science education across India since 2017. As Pranjali Pathak from the foundation explains, “they envision a world where all children have access to excellent and relevant computer education.”

The foundation is dedicated to bringing computer science to kids and Amazon is supporting them in setting up labs as centers of innovation to demystify technology education for students, educators and the government school systems.

Pranjali emphasises that these labs are hubs where children can learn to code and also build live projects while adhering to the school curriculum.

“The labs have sensors, computers and more that children can use while they work on a project,” she adds.

Elaborating on how they built the weather system in the lab, Pranjali says it was a series of steps that led to the final outcome. 

“The children knew how they wanted the final weather system to perform and worked backwards. They knew they needed to understand concepts such as temperature, humidity and pressure thoroughly, and they were learning these in their classes at school. They would then chart out the tools they would need from the Pi Lab and also ideate on how to write codes for the different functions,” she adds. 

From access, to the outcome: Bridging the gap in technology

“We want to democratise computer science learning”, says Pranjali when asked about the objective of these labs. “The goal is to remove access barriers to affordable and high-quality computer science education for underprivileged students.”

She notes that the first step is to empower educators – by arming them with the necessary knowledge and skills so that children can learn core concepts right in the classroom instead of depending upon an external source.

“But it does not end here. The problem is deeper,” she says. “Even with educators having the right knowledge, there must be a means through which they can communicate the same to the students. This is where labs come into play. Unfortunately, the government schools we are speaking of either don’t have computer labs or have labs that don’t function.”

“The AFE Labs are a space brimming with innovation and ideas and we achieve this at one-third the cost due to the use of Rasberry Pis. The labs allow for a lot of tinkering and hands-on practice, enabling the students to explore problems, and possible solutions and learn computer science in the process,” she adds.

“Students are encouraged to spot problems in their surroundings and come up with solutions using resources in the lab. For instance, the weather station they built was a solution to the summer heat.”

In partnership with AFE, 15 such labs have been set up in schools across Maharashtra, and they claim to have “brought about a transformation in students”. These labs combined with the voluntary computer science fundamentals course offered to educators are building the overall capacity of the education system to deliver high-quality computer science education.

Pranjali says they now use technology to solve problems they encounter. “The curriculum too is highly on par with national and international schools, and I can see an improved level of skill,” she concludes.

Unable to complete his Class 10 due to the financial constraints, Mahipal took up the job of a bike mechanic in a town near his village in Hyderabad. He started out as an assistant, but soon became good at repairing vehicles. 

“In the early 2000, my father transferred the land to me. I returned to my village and took up farming, but began facing the same issue of labour costs. After spending thousands as wages and rent for animals, there was nothing left as profit. As a side business, I began repairing tractors and used some to work on my farm,” Mahipal tells The Better India. 

The 42-year-old began thinking of how he could solve his woes, and arrived at the conclusion of building a cultivator of his own to save some money. 

“In 2011, I began trials by using an old auto rickshaw engine. But the attempt failed. Later, I went to Hyderabad city and purchased an engine made in China. When it worked well, I incorporated other parts using scrap materials and built a cultivator machine by the end of the year,” he explains. 

This machine, he says, can run for three hours on 1 litre of diesel. In this duration, it can cover an area of 3 acres. Only one person is required to operate the device, he adds. “Running the machine is simpler than riding a scooter. There is an accelerator in the left hand grip and the machine can be run by placing both hands, like in a two-wheeler,” he shares.

Becoming an agripreneur

“While other farmers spent upto Rs 1 lakh as rent and labour charges for the process, I spent less than half of it to build this machine, which can be used repeatedly without further maintenance. Due to this reason, I started getting requests to build more of it, available for purchase,” he says.

In 2012, Mahipal launched Varun Engineering Works, from where farmers could buy cultivators and other farming-related machines “at an affordable price”. Mahipal also customises machines based on preferences.

“My innovation came under the limelight after being featured on a Telugu news channel. By then, I had sold over 13 machines. I now have 12 employees and my other innovations include a power weeder and a mini-tractor. The latter can be connected to a trolley and can carry upto 1 tonne of weight. I also built a hydraulic lift that can lift upto 500 kg which can be utilised in other industries as well,” notes the agripreneur.

“The plight of farmers in India is one reason why I opted for this field. Like me, many of them are left battling poverty due to high labour costs and unavailability of affordable machinery. I am on a mission to change this narrative,” he adds.

Varun Engineering Works is located in Mahipal’s native area Parkal.

‘Affordable and user-friendly’

The innovator shares that he now builds the machines by assembling engines from Kolhapur, and material as well as gears from Hyderabad. “Till date, more than 4,000 cultivators have been sold for a price between Rs 45,000 to Rs 55,000,” he says.

Viswesara, a farmer who bought the cultivator machine two years ago, says, “I am able to save at least Rs 50,000 every season with the help of this machine. Buying this was a one-time investment and I have not done any maintenance till now. I handle the cultivator easily without anyone’s help, saving labour charges. I hope Mahipal comes up with more innovations to make our lives better.”

Currently, Mahipal is working on a mini tractor that runs on battery. “Given the high price of petroleum products, it is better to shift to other alternatives,” he says.

For his innovations, Mahipal was given the National Grassroots Innovation Award by the President of India in 2015 and the National Entrepreneurship Award in 2018. “Both of these were big honours but what means the world to me is the farmer who struggles to make ends meet even after receiving a good harvest. I am glad that my machines are making their lives easier,” he notes.

Contact Varun Engineering Works on 9866922168. 

Edited by Divya Sethu