QUEEN’S ROAD: Five school girls from Bengaluru, who won the recent Technovation World Pitch Challenge 2015 held in San Francisco, will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday.
Sanjana Vasanth, Anupama N, Mahima Mechendale, Swasthi P Rao and Navyashree B, all Class 9 students of New Horizon Public School, developed a mobile app named Sellixo, which creates an online marketplace for dry waste.
The girls will meet the Prime Minister at 12 pm at Parliament House.
School officials told City Express and Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani would also interact with the students.
Technovation is an annual competition where teams of girl students are invited to develop applications that address a community problem.
The victorious team is eligible for a cash prize of 10,000 dollars as a seed fund to develop their app further.
The app Sellixo targets dry waste producers like small-scale shopkeepers, apartment associations, waste collectors and recycling agencies. They can sell the garbage through the app.
The girls started working on the app in January this year. A team from Goldman Sachs mentored them through the process.
The app is said to have a competitive edge as there is nothing like it in the market.
The girls say they were inspired by Modi’s Swachh Bharat campaign. Their school also donated `5 crore towards the mission recently.
Modi himself appreciated the girls on Twitter, where he said, “Congrats to these youngsters. Kudos to their innovative zeal and proud of their efforts to create clean India.”