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