School teacher Swati Harit, who heads the science department, said students were suggested to look at solutions for dairy farmers and after a month of research, students came up with an idea to develop a product for cleaning and massaging cattle.When a team of six students from Pune’s Sanskriti School were given a brief by their teachers to come up with ideas for a national competition on rural innovation, little did they know that they were setting up the base for all their future batches.
But such has been the hard work that the team put in over the last 10 months that not only did it win them the top prize at the Future Entrepreneurs 2021 challenge on June 29 but it also inspired their school to set up an innovation and incubation lab for future batches.
The students – Shashank Shivanandan, Karmanya Patil, Chirant Morti, Shalmali Kulkarni, Meher Talreja and Chintan Udupa from classes IX and X – who won the national level product design competition organized by La Fondation Dassault Systèmes along with Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog have designed a farmer-friendly product based on the theme of rural ecosystem. About 50 schools from across India were chosen for the final challenge from which the Pune school team has emerged victorious.
About 50 schools from across India were chosen for the final challenge from which the Pune school team has emerged victorious. “We were given three broad themes – science toys, biomimicry and rural ecosystem. The first is too common and several videos are available on YouTube. We went through many ideas and weighed their pros and cons. Ideas like clean electricity generation, fertilizer spray, soil test kits and so on. But either such products are available in the market or hard to manufacture in the budget given to us. We had a budget of Rs 7,000 which the school gave us as a seed fund,” said Morti.
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School teacher Swati Harit, who heads the science department, said students were suggested to look at solutions for dairy farmers and after a month of research, students came up with an idea to develop a product for cleaning and massaging cattle.
“We wanted to create a product for small farmers, not the rich ones who can buy expensive machines. Today, the small farmer uses traditional methods of coir brushes and nylon gloves to clean cattle. It is time consuming, takes a lot of water as well. The product we have innovated can help to clean cattle in 10-15 minutes with longer brushes which are automated. Instead of two buckets or 20 litres of water, one cattle can be cleaned in 2.5 litres of water. More importantly, we added two functions of massaging cattle to boost milk production and relieving the heat stress which is harmful for cattle,” said Shivanandan.
But the journey to final product development was not an easy one.
The school and students are now going to file a patent with the help of an Intellectual Property Rights expert and the team has also received encouragement from the team from La Fondation Dassault Systèmes, who offered help to market the product. “We first met a few farmers and understood their current methods and needs. We then met two veterinary experts. We designed a prototype and tried 3D printing in school itself but several attempts failed,” said Patil. “Our school then arranged for us to visit a 3D printing factory where we learnt so many technical things. In 3D printing, there are several factors to consider of which major one is temperature, which has to be perfect. The calibration of the build plate needs to be properly levelled to get the perfect print and design has to be perfect with the measurements…it goes into a software called slicer. After that, we came back and did the printing all over again. We then gave the farmers the prototype to use as a demo and got their feedback,” Patil added.
However, unlike other competitions, the journey hasn’t ended with winning; it has just started.
The school and students are now going to file a patent with the help of an Intellectual Property Rights expert and the team has also received encouragement from the team from La Fondation Dassault Systèmes, who offered help to market the product.
Devyani Mungali, founder and director of Sanskriti Group of Schools, said the school is in the process of setting up an innovation and incubation centre which can help promote original and creative thinking in children. “We are committed to fostering creativity, original thinking and an entrepreneurial spirit for our students,” she said.
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