Here’s a Sustainable Solution to Beat India’s Water Crisis

Mumbai recently hosted ENpower’s India’s Future Tycoons - Season 2 (IFT #2) grand finale. Having received registrations from 7,100+ school children across 130 cities, top 24 teams were shortlisted for the finale to ideate on innovative sustainable solutions for India’s Water Crisis. Water theme is focused on water availability & shortage, usage & wastage, cleaning & sanitation, transportation & shortage and so on UN GCNI was the Sustainability Partner and Atal Innovation Mission of Niti Ayog was the Knowledge and Outreach Partner.

                                                                                                                                  

ENpower’s IFT is India’s first-ever entrepreneurship search and mentoring platform exclusively for young adults aged between 13 & 17 years of age. It is a nationwide hunt for ideas for a better future, empowering children to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset and encouraging them to build perspectives about real-life problems and creating sustainable solutions. 

 

The top 24 teams across the country presented their ideas to an eminent panel of jury consisting of Kamal Singh – Executive Director, UN GCNI; Nikhil Vora – Founder, Sixth Sense Ventures; Lina Ashar – Founder, Kangaroo Kids and Billabong High and Elizabeth Venkataraman – Marketing Head, Kotak Mahindra Bank. The chief guest for the finale was Dr Bhalchandra Mungekar – Ex Vice-Chancellor of Mumbai University and President Ex MP of Rajya Sabha.

 

IFT #2 began with a two-day residential boot camp on 26th and 27th January 2020 in Mumbai for top 24 teams, which was a great interaction & mentoring opportunity for students from start-up owners, corporate domain mentors, design thinking experts to help them to build a robust execution plan around the idea.

 

‘Achelous’ from Karnataka, the winning team, built a prototype to extract ‘activated carbon’ from plastic waste. This promises to clean the rivers and oceans while building water purifiers. The winning team comprised Prajwal Erappa, Taran N and Suhas BG from Kendriya Vidyalaya Mysore. The first runner up Team ‘Bone-to-Backbone’ from DAV Model School Chitradurg, Karnataka built an automated water management system model that will help farmers to ensure appropriate auto-watering of their field, thereby saving time and efforts. This solution not only helps farmers to save water but also improves their productivity. The second runner up was an all-girl-powered team ‘Allamanda’ from Vidya Vikasa Vidya Samasthe, Durgapur in West Bengal built a water purifier model from a small garden flower. They researched the properties of ‘Allamanda Cathertica’ as a natural bleaching agent which is 60% cheaper than current bleaching powders in the market and can be a good product for rural India, thereby saving people of waterborne diseases. 

 

The top 3 teams will now present their ideas on the stage of the United Nations Sustainability Development Forum, India Chapter.

 

Commenting on IFT #2, Sushil Mungekar, Founder & CEO, ENpower, said that this season of IFT has gone beyond 'inspiring' students to think creatively to solve problems around them by 'empowering' them with tools and thinking framework to convert social problems around them into opportunities and convert them into meaningful business ideas. They are happy to see that many teams have used this platform in ideating ventures which not only underlines social impact but also builds scalable business ideas, he said.