Five Teenage Girl Students From Bengaluru Won The Technovation Challenge In US

You can sell your garbage by just clicking on an ‘app, and a recycling unit comes to collect it!’ Sounds strange! Most likely this will be possible soon with the efforts of 5 teenage girls from Bangalore. Impressed..? Not only you but entire world is impressed by them and they have won the Technovation challenge at a global pitch event at San Francisco city in the US.

Sanjana Vasanth, N. Anupama, Mahima Mehendale, Swasthi P. Rao and B. Navyashree, all aged 14, won the award for their app Sellixo which provides an online marketplace to buy and sell dry waste.

The girls beat 400 other teams from 64 nations to bag $10,000 on June 25 with their app, which caters to dry waste producers like small shopkeepers, dry waste collectors (raddiwalas), recycling agencies and others. “In India, we have scrap dealers who go from house to house collecting waste. It is a tiring job, so we want to connect the buyers and sellers of dry waste,” said team member Swasthi P. Rao to media.

(App Sellixo connects waste producers with recyclers. Image By WSJ)

“Once people know that they will get money for it, they will be motivated to actually collect it (dry waste), segregate it and dispose it properly,” added B. Navyashree to media.

The girls competed under the team name Pentechan and pitched their idea to top female technology executives in the challenge organized by Adobe Foundation, CA Technologies, Google, Verizon, United Nations Women, UNESCO and MIT Media Lab.

We congratulate the team for showing the world that ideas are nobody’s monopoly. Hope we learn from them and give much needed opportunities and praise to the daughters of India.

Image Source: WSJ