Delhi: Water-soluble plastic to low-cost computer, school students pitch their projects to entrepreneurs

As part of its ‘Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum’, the Delhi government started the Business Blasters programme across all its senior secondary schools in September by giving Rs 2,000 as seed money to class 11 and 12 students to develop their entrepreneurship ideas. The programme is intended to help the students attract larger investments by pitching their projects to established entrepreneurs.

In the third episode, a project called ‘Biothene’ received a combined investment of Rs 1.5 lakh from Suta Co-founder Sujatha and Lepton Software CEO Rajeev Saraf.

“Bioethene was born out of the need to reduce plastic pollution in our environment. With rigorous research and our collective vision, we created a plastic that is water-soluble, decomposable, and safe if ingested by land or aquatic animals. We did over a hundred experiments to create our product… we are now trying to market it effectively,” said Wasim, a student of School of Excellence Dwarka.

Another project called ‘Gr8’, which designs advertisements for shopkeepers and vendors, received a collective investment of Rs 70,000.

“In a Diwali mela organised by our school, we sold diaries, bookmarks and business cards to over 40 customers, which boosted our confidence. Our first big breakthrough happened when a printing vendor gave us the contract of printing visiting cards for his company. We did all of this using our parents’ phones to design the ads.” said team leader Sneha.

Another team’s project ‘Tech Up’ — modifying current operating systems to make them compatible with older hardware and selling the machine at a lower cost — received an investment of Rs 75,000 from Sujatha.