Karnataka Team wins ENpower's India's Future Tycoons Season 2 grand finale to beat India's water crisis

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], Jan 30 (ANI/PRNewswire): ENpower's India's Future Tycoons - Season 2 (IFT #2) grand finale was held in Mumbai yesterday. Having received registrations from 7,100 plus school children across 130 cities, the top 24 teams were shortlisted for the finale to ideate on innovative sustainable solutions for India's Water Crisis.
The theme of the event is focused on water availability & shortage, usage & wastage, cleaning & sanitation, transportation and shortage and so on UN GCNI was the Sustainability Partner and NitiAyog's Atal Innovation Mission was the Knowledge and Outreach Partner.
ENpower'sIFT is India's first-ever entrepreneurship search and mentoring platform exclusively for young adults aged between 13 and 17 years of age. It is a nationwide hunt for ideas for a better future, empowering children to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset and encouraging them to build perspectives about real-life problems and creating sustainable solutions.
The top 24 teams across the country presented their ideas to an eminent panel of jury consisting of Kamal Singh - Executive Director, UN GCNI; Nikhil Vora - Founder, Sixth Sense Ventures; Lina Ashar - Founder, Kangaroo Kids and Billabong High and Elizabeth Venkataraman - Marketing Head, Kotak Mahindra Bank.
The chief guest for the finale was Dr BhalchandraMungekar - Ex Vice-Chancellor of Mumbai University and President Ex-MP of Rajya Sabha.
IFT #2 began with a two-day residential boot camp on 26th and 27th January 2020 in Mumbai for top 24 teams, which was a great interaction & mentoring opportunity for students from start-up owners, corporate domain mentors, design thinking experts to help them to build a robust execution plan around the idea.
The winning team 'Achelous' from Karnataka, built a prototype to extract 'activated carbon' from plastic waste. This will clean the rivers and oceans while building water purifiers. The winners are PrajwalErappa, Taran N and Suhas BG from Kendriya Vidyalaya Mysore.
The first runner up Team 'Bone-to-Backbone' from DAV Model School Chitradurg, Karnataka built an automated water management system model that will help farmers to ensure appropriate auto-watering of their field, thereby saving time and efforts.
This solution not only helps farmers to save water but also improves their productivity. The second runner up was an all-girl-powered team 'Allamanda' from Vidya Vikasa Vidya Samasthe, Durgapur in West Bengal. They built a water purifier model from a small garden flower.
They researched on the properties of 'AllamandaCathertica' as a natural bleaching agent which is 60% cheaper than current bleaching powders in the market and can be a good product for rural India, thereby saving people of waterborne diseases.
Besides rewards and recognition for winning teams, the top three teams will present their ideas on the stage of United Nations Sustainability Development Forum, India Chapter.
"This season of IFT has gone beyond 'inspiring' students to think creatively to solve problems around them by 'empowering' them with tools and thinking framework to convert social problems around them into opportunities and convert them into meaningful business ideas," said IFT #2, Sushil Mungekar, Founder and CEO, ENpower.
"So happy to see that many teams have used this platform in ideating ventures which not only underlines social impact but also build scalable business ideas," he added.
Besides the IFT competition, ENpower offers a plethora of courses and workshops on innovation, design thinking and entrepreneurship life skills to school children in the age group of 8-18 years that helps them to be change drivers of tomorrow.
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