Jugaad Vol II: 10 Young Indian Inventors You Should Know

It is said that the whole point of teaching is to awaken the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards. In a country like India where we are taught to simply read, memorise, and excuse our language, but shit it out in an exam paper in a bid to score more marks than our next door neighbour, the essence of youth and the curiosity of the mind takes a permanent blow. 

However, there are some rebels that fight the system and bend the rules to fulfil their dreams in an effort satisfy their natural curiosities. In today’s list, we take a look at 10 such brilliant, young minds to come out of India whose inventions changed the world as we know it.

I. Pranav Mistry

Age: 32

Dubbed as one of the 10 best inventors in the world right now, this Palanpur prodigy made heads turn with his work on sixth-sense, a device that works completely on a gestural interface software. His work and research on sixth-sense saw him win the 2009 Invention Award. In addition to that, Pranav also has a legion of other inventions, some of which include the Mouseless; (An invisible computer mouse), the SPARSH (novel way to copy-paste data between digital devices, Quickies (Sticky notes that can be searched, located and can send reminders and messages), Blinkbot (a blink controlled robot), a pen that can draw in 3D, and a public map that can act as Google of physical world. For these very achievements, he was honoured as the Young Global Leader 2013 by the World Economic Forum.

II. Arvind Thiagarajan

Age: 34

With more than 40 patents to his credit, Thiagarajan is one of the most successful inventors on the list. What started with the junior scientist award in 2001, a number of patents in years to follow saw his rise to prominence and today, he is the chairman and chief inventor for two companies – MatrixView and HD Medical Services. Perhaps the most brilliant invention of all is the HDFonDoc, a device that can analyse and document heart murmurs in real time. The device, the first of its kind in the world, saves vital time that doctors would otherwise use to analyse the murmurs if they were to use a normal stethoscope, thereby potentially saving a person’s life.

III. Remya Jose

Age: 23

What do you do when you have to wash clothes everyday but you can’t afford a washing machine? You go ahead and invent one of your own. Well, at least that’s what Remya Jose from Kerala did. Sickened by the burden of the tiresome chore of washing clothes every day, she went ahead and invented the washing-cum-exercise machine that uses pedalling, as opposed to electricity, to wash and dry the clothes. Not only can the machine wash close to three kilos of clothes at a time, the clothes even come out 80% dry, saving both time and energy. She has since gone on to win the national award for this feat, and now works at the National Innovation Foundation in Ahmedabad, using her innovative skills to produce many more such machines.

IV. Alefia Merchant

Age: 34

Here’s a fact: Close to 1.4 million children in the world are blind today, and close to 90% of them are from developing countries like India. To counter this, Alefia Merchant, a medical student, developed a novel way of screening eye diseases in children under the age of five. The method uses a digital camera to elicit red reflexes. If the reflexes are normal, so is the eyesight. If the reflexes are abnormal, it suggests asymmetry and could possibly be an eye disease. The method is cheap, and can be taught to rural health workers with little training. 34 now, Merchant plans on implementing this at a larger scale, and using it to cater the needs of the rural population that cannot afford expensive eye tests.

V. Susant Pattnaik

Age: 21

Fondly called the Serial Inventor, this whiz kid  lives up to the tag. Although he has 39 patents to his name, two of his inventions have really caught the eye. The first one is a wheelchair that a paralysed person can operate by simply breathing. The second, an anti-theft mechanism developed for cars, a variation of which can also be used for your homes. At the tender age of 21, he has already won multifarious awards, and was among the top winners at the seventh National Grassroots Innovation awards.

VI. Ajit Narayan

Age: 32

The inventor of Avaz, Ajit changed the world for the disabled. His invention helps generate speech in people with disabilities such as autism, mental retardation and cerebral palsy. For his work, he was awarded the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities by the President of India in 2010. Today, he continues to work hard in the same field to invent further gadgets that would help autistic children. 

VII. Srinivasan Jayaram

Age: 34

Srinivasan Jayaram’s device has revolutionised the biomedical field. His invention is a unique wearable ECG device with wireless capability that uses the human ECG to authenticate identity, aliveness and other similar aspects. The most beautiful feature of the device is that it is unique; it can even differentiate between a set of twins who share the same DNA. Unlike other similar devices, it is inexpensive, which makes it one of the best inventions in the biomedical field today.

VIII. Krishna Gopal Singh

Age: 31

The offset machines used by printing companies are the leading cause for global warming today. To add to that, the petroleum used in making the ink is potentially hazardous and can cause cancer if a person is exposed to it for long periods. How do we counter this? Well, Krishna Gopal Singh has a solution for it all. He has invented an offset machine that uses eco-friendly ink that reduces emissions by as much as 99%. The ink uses non-edible vegetable oils, which ensures that it dries faster after printing, and can be washed easily, reducing costs by as much as 80%. Currently, Singh is working on a mass production of these machines, something that could change the whole idea of printing on the whole.

IX. Mayur M Sadawana

Age: 28

With PhD in biomedical engineering from IIT Mumbai, Sadawana aimed to find a solution for the plights of the diabetic man. He has developed a chip that can be used in Diabetic Ketoacidosis testing, a form of diabetes that potentially fatal if not detected early. Long story short, his chip, a glucometer, helps cut down the error range to 4-9% from the 20% that exists in most glucometers today. Apart from that, it also cuts down costs by as much as 90%, making it one of the most promising and effective innovations to battle diabetes.

X. Harit Soni

Age: 29

In a country where power cuts are a norm, something had to be done. Harit Soni thus came to step up and create something known as the Zigbee metre. The metre, quite simply, helps in minimising the wastage of electricity during transmission and distribution. Supported by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy of the Government of India, this technology, tried and tested, could go a long way in solving the problems in a country where almost 300 million people live without electricity.

You can read our previous ‘Jugaad’ series on young Indian entrepreneurs here.