My Journey From Puttur to Planet

hello everyone

i am swastik i am 17 year old innovator

interdisciplinary researcher and an

imaginator

and of course bathroom motivation maker

so i developed solutions

for various global issues global

problems like plastic waste management

protein energy malnutrition oral cancer

diagnosis

and sea water desalination

today i’m going to share my journey from

puttur

to a planet so i started as a kid

by breaking toys but my interest

was to reconstruct reconfigure it to

meet my imagination

screwdrivers spanners and players were

my childhood best friends

so at the age of 11 i started developing

solutions developing machines

for agricultural problems after seeing

many problems in our farm

so next when i was 14 i was in bangalore

and i saw plastic flying everywhere so

and that made me to think

why this is happening and can i do it

do something and i got an

idea to do a blast a

brick or pavement blocks from plastic

so after coming back home without

thinking much

i started experimenting i took plastic

bottles in a heated metal pan

and melted it down and created the

first material and it was like puppet

you could

really break it and uh my mom actually

laughed at me

oh this is what you created after your

brainstorming

so then i thought to give a second

chance

so this time i was doing the same

procedure but

this time i had a plastic bag i was

curious what happens to a bag

if i put that into a pan so i put the

bag into the pan and it caught fire

so to extinguish fire i threw some sand

so this plastic and sand combined to

form a black mass i cooled it down and

tried to break it

it did not break so there was an eureka

moment for me

and then out of excitement i went to a

professor

to test the material he said that it is

impossible

to create a composite out of ldp plastic

plastic bags because it’s a

non-recyclable kind of plastic

and uh sand and also allies that i must

have

mixed rubber so it was a major setback

and then after some time again i

thought to give a second try then this

time i went to another professor he

tested it immediately

and it did not break he actually

impressed and he advised

me to do it in a scientific steps as a

research

so after two years of continuous

development and testing i developed a

material

out of waste plastic and sand

which is 24 times stronger than concrete

eight times

lighter than concrete and 12 times

cheaper than concrete

and more greener than concrete it has

wide range of applications

starting from uh screw and nut you can

construct an entire building with this

material

and it can save number of houses being

washed out due to coastal erosion

so i was fortunate enough to represent

our country

at the international science and

engineering fair

i took a guidance from various

professors various of

people and they actually misguided me so

i presented that even though i

did not win an award it gave me a

confidence

to do more and to do it better and after

coming back

i was watching a ted talk of professor

manu prakash

he told that paper is the next

generation diagnostic tool

so that inspired me to do something out

of paper

and i came to know that protein energy

malnutrition

is one of the major cause for child

mortality

across the globe so along with my friend

mohammed suhil i designed a low-cost

non-invasive pre-symptom pre-symptomatic

diagnostic

tool for protein energy malnutrition

which can detect

protein energy molecules with with just

paper saliva and a smartphone

so and it costs only two rupees and uh

uh this time like uh uh when we present

it to people

they were telling to concentrate on one

field like this project was a

combination of

chemistry biology and computer science

and

interdisciplinary research is not

appreciated by the professors and

like scientists in india so and

but this time i had made sure that i

will follow only my ideas i will not

listen to anyone

and again i was selected for

international science and engineering

fair

and uh this time we had a stall

we had a stall to present our project

and the people and the

you know participants from the other

countries were laughing at the by

looking the size of the project

and uh fortunately we won the second

grand award

and uh mit lincoln laboratory an

international astronomical union has

named a minor planet after me

considering my research

interdisciplinary research

and frugal innovation thank you

and what was exciting and what made me

proud was

uh after winning an award i came back to

my stall

a professor came to my uh came to me and

said

you indians are really genius you

guys bring project in your pocket and

get back awards

in your bag and he said that you are

really

like

[Applause]

thank you and uh like

and developing this project was not easy

as it works

like uh uh it was we did not had any

like sufficient funding we did not had

any labs

we often complains about the lack of

resources what we have

but that actually helped us to make

it more simpler and it more cheaper and

i believe that less is more and

uh till that my goal like my initial

goal

was to win an award and later i thought

the worst

scope of the projects and the how

innovation can benefit other people

and now i believe that my greatest award

will be when i recycle at least 10 tons

of plastic

every day and or when a child’s life is

saved by my paper strip

and i came to a point where

i had a lot of confusions a lot of what

to do what to do next

i had a product in my hand whether i

should give it to

a mass manufacturer for royalty or

should i start my own company

i had a lot of a lot of confusions in my

head

and what i did was i went to himalayas i

went to himalayas alone

and i started thinking what’s my next

step what should i do next

and i realized that i should make

it my own because if i give it to

someone else

my vision will be lost only my product

will succeed

and i’m an entrepreneur so

then i have like

i do now i’m working on sea water

desalination and other technology

you may find my story like uh

like funny right this guy

has become like succeeded because of an

accident but

i believe that i succeeded because of

forces

that is uh i was crazy to start without

any knowledge about plastic

i was curious that what happens to a bag

if i put that bag into a pan

and i was conscious to observe the black

mass formation

and i use my common sense to cool it

down

and create a material and uh

the greatest like the greatest of all

like the success for me

was uh when i went to a professor with

the pack of sweets

and told him that i won the president’s

award for this

for the innovation which uh he told that

impossible

that was like a a big moment for me

and i also like believe that

4i plays an important role ideate

innovate implement and inspire

if you implement what’s your idea what’s

your innovation

it’s useless if you don’t inspire others

after implementing

it’s worthless and i want to end the

talk by saying that let’s smoke

make our earth more livable not a big

change but let’s make our earth more

believable

thank you thank you