The Sparks of Innovation That Assure India a Bright Future

This list should energise you to think that an innovative India is in the making.  APSWR school junior college girls from Visakhapatnam came up with sewage waste water purification and utilization solution. Students from Amity International School, Saket made their offering in smart food packaging design. Nootan Kannya Shala And Jr College Amravati, Maharashtra came up with an Agri tech solution in IOT based smart flower & energy utilization. Mother’s Pride Academy of Manipur came up with smart privacy attendance system. TKM Centenary Public School from Kerala’s Kollam offered a smart wheelchair solution. These are only few among the 150 winners in the national annual innovation Marathon challenge ATL Tinkering Marathon 2019 held over 5000+ Atal Tinkering Labs across the country.

The annual Marathon challenge conducted in partnership with MyGOV on MyGov’s Innovate Platform included two phases. Phase-I of the challenge included crowdsourcing of the problems faced by students in the communities surrounding them. Phase-I saw about 4300+ entries. Phase-II included voting on the shortlisted problem statements. The final phase of solution development received over 1191 entries from students across 29 States and UTs of the country.

The students who submitted their entries to the final stage had to identify community problems of their choice in one or more of the specified four problem areas and develop innovative solutions in the form of working prototypes or minimum viable product. Those four areas were: Enabling a Sustainable Environment and Justice, Enabling Outcome Driven Quality Education, Enhancing Health and Hygiene, Ensuring Inclusivity and Equality.

The sparks of innovation that can be seen in AIM, spreads across India and not just an urban phenomenon. 42% of the winning teams are from rural areas and 57% are from government schools. About 45% of the winning team students are girl students.

Mission Director AIM R Ramanan had this to say for the students:

“Your innovation journey has only begun. You have done the necessary research, you have ideated, you have created an innovation. Now the journey is about how to convert that innovation into a market ready product. We complement each one of you and ask you to remain inspired for the journey ahead – regardless of winning the competition or not.”

Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) started in 2015. AIM will provide grant-in-aid of Rs 20 Lakh to each school that includes a one-time establishment cost of Rs 10 lakh and operational expenses of Rs 10 lakh for a maximum period of 5 years to each ‘Atal Tinkering Lab’ (ATL).