India Proud On These Young Peoples_Part 3

NRI creates headsets that will help you meditate:

Rohan Dixit's innovation may not seem like much at first glance but his brainwave headset that helps you meditate aided by technology might be twenty first century's most revolutionary innovation in preventive healthcare.

Child prodigy to Innovation Jockey:

“My innovation – the app Sales Desk is developed with a mission to lead in the retail industry.”

Coming from anyone else this would sound like an idle boast, but Yuvraj Singh is no ordinary 18 year old. The Jalandhar boy was computer literate before he had even learned how to read, a fact that led him to be nominated for the Guinness and Limca books of world record, and made him the local media darling at the tender age of four. He would also go on to launch his first website www.yuraj.name at 12 years old and followed that up by starting his own company Devil’s Infotech in 2010. He names his parents, both software engineers, as his inspiration.

Sales Desk, a mobile app to help retailers keep track of their sales records is the result of his interaction with his father’s clients, mostly retailers who he says were constantly exasperated by current methods of tracking sales. The innovation helped him get shortlisted from among four and a half thousand hopefuls for Innovation Jockeys season 2. “Sales Desk filters data in four categories that are daily sale, weekly sale, monthly sale and yearly sale. The user can view the total sale and generate tax and email reports very easily using my application,” Yuvraj explains. The app aggregates sales data in a way that also allows the retailer to monitor sales data at multiple venues.

Yuvraj is currently pursuing his Integrated B.Tech – M. Tech Diploma in Computer Science Engineering from Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar. When asked about his hobbies and passions the 18 year old innovator says there is little outside the world of computers that interests him. His current obsession with mobile platforms ensures that he spends most of his time ‘exploring different parts of upcoming apps and technologies’ to inspire and improve his own creations. He is currently working on an Instant Messaging Application which he promises will be worlds apart from existing apps. 

So what inspires him to keep innovating?

“I am constantly inspired by Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. They achieved so much at a young age. I may not have the platform and access to resources they did but that will never stop me,” is the quick reply.

Next on agenda for the wildly ambitious teen whiz is expanding his company to start an R&D centre with a focus on mobile platforms. He hopes one day to branch out internationally. Innovation in itself, Yuvraj says, is not that difficult but to keep innovating is a challenge. And one needs to constantly innovate to stay in the game.

Boy wonder creates a system that makes car keys redundant:

 

Imagine using your smartphone to access and control your vehicle. If 22 year old Arvind Sanjeev had his way that is exactly what we would all be doing. His Remote Vehicle Activation System using the Android operating system allows you to switch on the air conditioning, turn off the headlights, open the boot of the car and even have the engine running, all without leaving your bedroom. He intends to make the smartphone smarter and do away with bulky car keys in the process.

“This application gives the user all the features that he would like to access without even entering the car. The phone along with the custom hardware module installed within the car enables the driver to access features like air conditioning, engine Start, parking lights, central locking, power windows, music players, boot access, etc all from within a distance of about a 100m (ideal) from the car,” explains Arvind.

However, convenience, Arvind says, is secondary. The primary objective of his remote vehicle activation system is to offer a more enhanced security to vehicles. The number of vehicles on the Indian roads is on a rise and so are car thefts. The current remote locking system is inadequate and in desperate need of an upgrade. Well Arvind is here to provide one.

According to Arvind, “These systems apart from being overpriced, provide only one basic feature that is central locking and that works only within a distance of 10-20 m. The system operates at 300-600 MHZ frequencies and can easily be hacked or may get triggered accidentally as it is at lower frequencies. The conventional system also has only one function which is to lock and unlock doors and has a limited range of control of about 10-15m.” He further adds, “The system is also costly and maintenance is required.” In contrast his product “does not demand any additional service charges or maintenance. It is a onetime fit and forget system.”

The response to the Remote Vehicle Activation System has been huge. Given an opportunity to present it at the Blackberry 10 launch in Mumbai early this year, Arvind has been floored by the positive reception his system has generated. Although still in the prototyping stage he soon hopes to be able to tie up with an industrial original equipment manufacturer to commercialize his invention.

However, the remote vehicle activation system numbers only one amongst a dazzling inventory of innovations. The born and raised Cochin boy who is currently pursuing his engineering bachelors in Electronics and Telecommunications from the TocH Institute of Science and Technology is a prolific innovator to put it mildly. Fanatical about robotics and electronic system design, Arvind already possesses an exhaustive stockpile of inventions and creations, all of which are testimony to his budding genius. Some of his projects integrate mobility and robotics and include an Android operated miniature robot car, an Android controlled Honda dio scooter and an autonomous line following robot. His work with GPS technology has yielded a portable GPS navigation module, a glove controlled Hovercraft, a digital speedometer for scooters based on GPS and a keypad protection and anti-theft system for vehicles. He also continues to experiment in related fields creating an Auto-stabilization system for quad-rotor helicopter, an interactive voice response systems and finally an Electric ignition based rocket using his own solid fuel mixture. An innovator truly worthy of the name.

So what drives the 22 year old to invent so furiously?
Arvind's answer is simple - passion. 

Arvind is also Innovation Jockeys' biggest success story. He is a part of the jury for Innovation Jockeys Season 3. 

From failing in engineering to co-founding a million-dollar company:

In a world where everyone around us want us to "think" and follow the conventional route to success, Varun Agarwal shares a very different mantra of success -- "Don't think." Varun shares his fascinating story of starting India's largest college merchandise company and becoming a bestselling author, while braving a certain 'Anu Aunty'.

A low-cost speed controller:

 

India has the world’s worst record in road safety. More people die in road accidents in India than anywhere else in the world. Recognising the desperate need for a solution, R Keerthivasan an engineering student from Coimbatore, set to work on a device that would prevent drivers, specially those of public vehicles from driving rash. The result is his version of a low-cost speed controller, which when fitted into any automobile would prevent the vehicle from going beyond a certain speed limit.“Basically, when the user rotates/presses the throttle in an automobile, the force is used to open a valve proportional to the throttle movement. More the throttle is pressed, more the valve opens, and more power is given to the engine.” Keerthi explains, “In the proposed design, when the speed of the automobile exceeds a desired limit, then the force applied by the driver to the throttle is isolated. So even if he gives force to press the throttle of the automobile, this will not be passed on to the valve.”

Force isolation, he says is the USP of this design. That and the fact that its 40 per cent cheaper than any existing speed control systems. While various state governments have tried to make speed controllers mandatory in public transport vehicles, the prohibitive cost of installing these speed control systems has made implementation tough. It takes as much as 15 to 20,000 rupees for each installation and modifications have to be made to the fuel supply system. This makes it uneconomical specially for small time contract vehicle owners.

This is where Keerthivasan's speed controller comes in. “Other products manipulate the fuel supply system, while I do it by manipulating the throttle wire movement,” points out Keerthivasan. “Also, other products are dependent on the type of fuel used, while my design is fuel - independent. It can be fitted to any vehicle that has a throttle.”

Keerthi, as he’s fondly called, has already created a prototype and fitted it in his bike. He now wants to turn his model into a product but the challenges are tremendous for this budding entrepreneur. The first hurdle is getting your idea patented. Having applied for a patent in 2011 he might have to wait for as long as five years for it to come through.

However, this has not deterred the 22-year-old innovator from continuing with his quest of making technology affordable. He is currently working on a charger for electronic devices that cuts off power after a specified time. There is already a similar product in the market that costs 2200 rupees but his will be a cheaper design.

Still in his final year at college in PSG Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, Keerthi already has big plans for the future. He dreams of running his own innovative solutions enterprise. The Steve Jobs fan says, anticipating the wants and needs of a consumer before he/she recognizes it, sets successful innovators and entrepreneurs apart from the rest of the crowd. A quality that makes him stand out from the rest of his contemporaries.