Tomorrow’s innovators unleash new ideas

Amrita Nair-Ghaswalla | TNN

Mumbai: Fifteen-year-old Varun Vasudevan from Bangalore was ‘cheesed off’ with the constant power cuts. He dreamt of uninterrupted power supply sans cables, on the lines of Wi-fi.

Pune-based Tejas Modak wanted a device to track and erase air pollution. Pranjal Chaubey of Lucknow dreamt of smart utensils that would indicate the nutritional value of each meal.

Crazy stuff ? Not exactly, if today’s dreamers turn out to be tomorrow’s innovators. In a bid to develop technologies for a better tomorrow and ignite the power of ideas, Intel teamed up with The Times of India to enable consumers come up with futuristic solutions for today’s problems.

The ‘Innovators of Tomorrow’ contest invited participants to share their vision of how technology could change lives. Ten people were felicitated for dreaming it big.

So, while Nikita Wankhede from Nagpur dreamt of a ‘substitute planet residence’ based on the basics of a satellite revolving around a bigger planet—to combat the growing population on earth, Sachin Chalapati from Hyderabad ideated on a process where water molecules could be transported in nano level jets in designated streams so that there would be no wastage.

Modak dreamt of an unmanned craft orbiting the earth that would convert pollutants like carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide into fuel, to power its flight around the earth. “The function of the craft would be to monitor and map the maximum emission areas and suck in pollutants,’’ Modak said. “As long as the craft is up there, pollutants could be checked. And the day it ran out of fuel, the earth would have been rid of its pollutants,’’ he added cheekily.

Could it be done? Are the ideas too far-fetched? “Not at all. All the ideas are feasible,’’ said Ryan Lemos of Akamai Technologies, whose ideation of a software to convert a written story into a full length movie, could well be under production, with a little help from private equity investors. As Navin Shenoy, V-P, Asia Pacific at Intel noted: “We had asked for the most wackiest of ideas, and were pleasantly surprised at the overwhelming response.’’ Over a threemonth period, the ‘Innovators of Tomorrow’ campaign received 22,000 entries from across the country.

From home-makers to IT professionals—even an IIT Kanpur aspirant—contenders came from every walk of life. Rather than classify them as “fit for the loony bin for their out-of-this-world crazy idea’’, 10 of them were shortlisted and felicitated as inventors. As Prakash Bagri, marketing director, Intel added, “Innovation is not quick or simple, nor easy to come by. We wanted to communicate the ‘science’ behind innovation, which is core to any firm’s long-term success. And since the idea was to fire the passion of an imaginative mind, the contenders turned out to be superstars in their own right.’’

Winners of the ‘Innovators of Tomorrow’ contest organised by Intel and The Times of India