Five girls from Bengaluru have won an award of $10000 in funding at the 2015 international Technovation Challenge, for an app which literally lets users sell their crap. The winners, Sanjana Vasanth, N Anupama, B Navyashree, Mahima Mehendale and Swasthi P Rao, are all just 14 years old. Drawing inspiration from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Campaign), the team from Bengaluru formulated Sellixo, an Android app backed by an online marketplace.
The Sellixo application is designed to let people vend their dry waste through the Internet. It connects sellers and buyers by targeting shops, building societies, roadside stalls and other small establishments which may want to dispose of their garbage in the most convenient manner possible. If there’s a small profit to be earned by sending waste to recycling agencies or ‘raddiwalas,’ it’s possible that some people might be more eager to engage in the task of keeping their surroundings clean.
The Bengaluru students from New Horizon Public School (ICSE) were among 43 kids in 10 teams from across the globe. They competed in the middle school category and earned $10000 in funding to continue developing their Sellixo app. For the winning application to work, it needs to be heavily tested in the real world. But the idea is an excellent one by all means. The girls intend to add various categories of dry waste to select from, support for additional Indian languages, more cities and municipalities.
Launched in 2010, Technovation is meant to get girls from all over the world interested in technology. The challenge is to create a mobile app capable of addressing a community problem. The participants do not need to have any programming experience in order to pitch their ideas at the event.