Pranav Shikarpur

The Problem

Water bodies are lifelines of cities. However, water quality has become a global issue. Bangalore has become one of its victims. Bangalore was once called the “city of lakes”. Records from the Government of Karnataka's ENVIS Centre show that till 1960 there were 262 water bodies in Bangalore. Today the figures have declined to about 81 of which 34 are recognized as live lakes. These figures denote a reduction of lakes as high as 69.4%.

The Solution

Due to lack of real-time monitoring of lakes, the dumping of sewage and industrial effluents persists unabatedly. The Testing Waters team built a cost-effective portable mobile and floating device called FLoBoT that can monitor the pollution levels of lakes in real-time.

The Venture

They have tested the device in 8 different lakes with the help of the city's lake conservationists. For the scientific aspect of the project, they received mentorship from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). The team now aims to install the device in many water bodies and increase the device’s application to other fields.

The Person

Pranav is a musician, web developer and designer. His interests are music, computer science and environmental engineering. They also won the 2nd Grand Award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, as a result, having a minor planet named after them. Pranav is also collaborating with 'Why Waste?' a water conservation organisation co-founded by Garvita Gulhati (May 2016, India Cohort) in web development and scaling the initiative.