Bangalore teens think 'Swachh Bharat'; develop mobile app to clean up India: Report

Young female teenagers from India are in San Francisco this week and have pitched for a mobile app, which has been built by them to encourage recycling along with help people fight diseases. The new app reportedly connects waste producers with recyclers. For instance, tea vendors can alert recyclers of empty used plastic cups. The recyclers in turn also share the money they collected for the plastic with the vendors.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal , Swasthi Rao from Bangalore said, “We have, quite simply, created a mobile marketplace for waste,” as she stood along with her teammates in the Technovation World Pitch Challenge. The report added that the Bangalore teens are among 43 girls and young women, on 10 teams from around the world, competing for $20,000 in seed funding.

On June 24, they pitched their apps, and business plans, to a panel of five female tech executives. The five young entrepreneurs explain the app’s pay-as-you-go and subscription models that could generate an estimated $24,200 in revenue in its first year and their jungle ends with, “Why trash it when you can cash it?”

Swasthi stated that they team was inspired by Indian PM Narendra Modi when he launched a nationwide campaign to address health issues associated with overflowing garbage in India’s cities. Other finalists took on childhood obesity, sports concussions, drunken driving, and water waste as well as waste disposal, added the report.

This isn’t the first time we are witnessing young talents from the ages of 11 or 13 who are helping in mobile app developments, thanks to the huge demand for content by the proliferating phone and tablet market. According to a previous report , the duo of brothers 13-year-old Sanjay Kumaran and 11-year-old Shravan Kumaran from Chennai have shown how app development is child’s play. Shravan and Sanjay have together created a company called GoDimensions. Under the GoDimensions banner, some of their notable work are apps like Catch me Cop, Prayer Planet and Color Planet.

They have built apps for both Android and iOS platforms and their total download figure is more than 20,000 from over 42 countries. They want to build the thinnest and fastest tablet for the rural areas, and even have a name for it – “GoSheet”.

Building an app is almost child’s play these days, and several teens and even pre-teens who have been actively creating applications will vouch for it. As apps become the focal point for Internet usage in mobile devices , we will see more amateurs step up to the plate with their ideas.

Today, almost all giants from Apple and Samsung to Amazon and Micromax, have their own app stores, thereby offering developers the opportunity to showcase their skills. More importantly, it has paved the way for many more job opportunities.