The winners of Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow Innovation Competition are here. Three young teams – Sputnik Brain from Bengaluru, Udaan from Port Blair & Delhi and Alpha Monitor Hyderabad won the first edition of the competition for their game-changing ideas that have the potential to impact society positively.
These three teams will get a total grant of INR 1 crore and a 6-month incubation by the Foundation for Innovation & Technology Transfer (FITT), IIT Delhi, to strengthen their prototypes, and seek real-world consumer validation for their products and services.
Sputnik Brain’s Shankar Srinivasan, a 22-year-old from Bengaluru, presented a wearable device that helps reduce stress using safe brain modulation while the all-girl trio of Prisha Dubey, Anupriya Nayak and Vanalika Konwar of Udaan, 16-year-olds from Port Blair and Delhi, have developed eco-friendly, affordable and washable sanitary pads using shredded sugarcane bagasse. 16-year-old Hemesh Chadalavada of Alpha Monitor from Hyderabad, has developed a smart wristband to monitor Alzheimer’s patients and alert their caregivers about changes in their behaviour.
For India, this was the first edition of the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition, which is now in its 12th year globally, and is present in 33 nations. It is a testament to India’s soft power, and a nod to our innovation potential that Samsung opened the competition to Indian youngsters this year.
To put it in context: 18,000 teams registered for the first ever Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Competition in India. From these entries, the Top 50 teams were selected, and then the Top 10.
Along the way, these teams attended a design thinking online training followed by an in-person bootcamp at the FITT-IIT Campus in Delhi NCR and then had the chance to visit Samsung employees at R&D centers at Noida and Bengaluru, Samsung HQ at Gurugram and the Samsung Opera House at Bengaluru. After all this mentoring, guidance and exposure, the teams were ready for the next phase in the competition: the Top 3.
In the grand finale of the six part Solve for Tomorrow series, Network18’s Shilpa Rathnam and Actor and Social Entrepreneur Kunal Kapoor introduce the audience to the Top 10 teams one final time, leading up to the announcement of the winning Top 3 teams.
Who are the Top 3? Let’s start with 16 year old Hemesh Chadalavada came up with Alpha Monitor, a wearable device that helps caretakers of Alzheimer’s patients track key parameters like the patient’s pulse, blood pressure and other vital readings, in real time. It is GPS enabled, and also comes with an SOS feature, which can automatically contact the caregiver and doctor, if abnormal readings are detected. The best part about the Alpha Monitor is that this is a device that would work for anyone who has a vulnerable elder in their home, and is not limited to Alzheimers!
22-year-old Shankar Srinivasan also ventured into wearable devices with Sputnik Brain which gamifies the way normal people can reduce stress. This is a non-surgical, chemical-free technology with no side effects. The best part here is that safe brain modulation doesn’t just work on stress, but has the potential to help with anxiety, depression and many other conditions. Shankar worked with doctors from the very beginning, to develop this impressive technology.
And finally, the all-girl trio of Prisha Dubey, Anupriya Nayak and Vanalika Konwar of Udaan: all of them 16, all of them brilliant. They’ve developed eco-friendly, affordable and washable sanitary pads using shredded sugarcane bagasse, which itself is a byproduct of sugar manufacturing. This makes the product a win on many fronts – sugarcane bagasse is technically waste. No one uses it! By using it to manufacture sanitary pads, it takes care of industrial waste, and passes on the cost benefit to the end user. Moreover, these sanitary napkins are 100% biodegradable.
The end of the competition feels bittersweet. While the Top 3 teams will now go on to their 6-month incubation by the FITT- IIT Delhi and use their Rs 1 crore grant money to further their projects. For the remaining 7 teams, this isn’t the end of the road – all teams were highly commended by the jury for their accomplishments and they all expressed confidence in their ability to take their ideas forward, on their own.
The Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition 2022 is at an end, but the journey for these 10 teams is in its early days. In the years to come, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow is going to bring us many teams of young innovators with world-changing ideas like Sputnik Brain, Alpha Monitor and Udaan.
For India, this ready pipeline of inventors and inventions is going to be another point of pride, another feather in our caps as we march steadily into a brighter future.
This is a Partnered Post.
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