Written by: Aditya Dongre, Prithvi Harikrishnan, Rishabh Manikandan, Grade 9

“And the second place goes to Team 13 - Windication!”. Our hearts burst open with joy upon hearing that our team from GIIS SMART Campus had won second place at a national level competition.

A team of three from Grade 9 - Prithiv Harikrishnan, Rishabh Manikandan and Aditya Dongre, participated in The Young Technopreneur Challenge 2020, conducted by Junior Association (JA) Singapore and sponsored by HP inc. with the aim of training students to take ownership in the world they live in, and actively develop solutions to the UN Goals for Sustainable Development (UNSDG).

The competition was held in stages. At the first stage, teams had to select a problem related to a UN Sustainable Development Goal. Next stage was to come up with an innovative idea that would solve that problem. The third stage was to register the teams for the competition by indicating the broad problem related to UN Sustainable Development that we had selected to address.

We named our team “Windicators”!

The topic we selected was “food wastage” and the challenge was how to recycle food waste to produce energy. To come up with a viable solution we explored many local and international restaurants.

As we explored we learnt that food waste contains high quantities of carbohydrates that can be processed to produce energy. Our team came up with three prototypes named “The Great Forge” which will use the bacterium Clostridium Acetobutylicum, “The Mighty Dragon” which will use the fungus Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, and “Composmart”, an efficient compost generator that will process any leftover waste. These micro-organisms can convert Carbohydrates into hydrocarbons that release a tremendous amount of energy which can be used to generate electricity. We thus provided a sustainable solution to this problem.

The final stage was to capture these solutions and ideas into a website which our team designed using HTML and CSS. The interactive website featured all the details on our innovative ideas and the overall project.

Finally, the D-day arrived and all the teams had to showcase their innovative ideas at the innovation expo & presentation which was conducted virtually. Six teams advanced to the final round of the competition and presented the project to the judges and audience. Winning the second place in this competition was not easy but the experience was gratifying.

To enhance the learning experience for the Young Technopreneur Challenge, three bootcamps were held virtually to help us ideate and implement our solutions in an effective manner. We were taught HTML for creating a website, trained in Design Thinking and taught the basics of creating a perfect pitch.

We were joined by our mentor from HP, Mr Rajinder Prasad who guided us along the journey to success.

Thank you GIIS for providing this opportunity to participate in the event.  We would also like to thank JA and our mentor, Mr Rajinder Prasad from HP inc. for their guidance and cooperation.