CHENNAI: Mahindra and Mahindra chairman Anand Mahindra has congratulated the 14-year-old girl sensation Vinisha Umashankar from Tiruvannamalai, who bagged the prestigious Children's Climate Prize for innovating solar-powered ironing cart.
The New Indian Express had profiled Vinisha and the story went viral attracting international attention. On Tuesday late evening, Anand Mahindra shared a video of Vinisha on Twitter and promised support for her future projects under Mahindra Research Valley.
He wrote, "Bravo Vinisha! Your project: a. addresses a serious environmental problem, b. helps the self-employed and c. apart from being environment friendly, the mobile cart enhances revenue potential. @Velu_Mahindra can we give her the support of Mahindra Research Valley in all her future projects?"
R Velusamy, Senior Vice President , Head -Automotive Product Development , Mahindra Research Valley, replied to Anand's tweet saying, "Yes Anand. We will definitely do and reach out to her."
When contacted, Vinisha's father Umashankar told The New Indian Express that he was happy for all the attention she is getting. He said few companies have contacted Vinisha to build the full-fledged prototype of the solar ironing cart, but the deal is yet to be finalised.
"I think Mahindra Research Valley would be an ideal opportunity to scale-up the project. Vinisha has plans to improve the design and add more elements to the ironing cart to make it more feasible," Umashankar said.
Vinisha said she was working on more products like tapless handwash and converting plastic waste into insulated roofs
Vinisha was conferred with the 2020 Children's Climate Prize for Clean Air, a Swedish award that recognises climate champions globally. She won Rs 8.46 lakh in prize money. For the same project, she also bagged the National Innovation Foundation's Dr APJ Abdul Kalam IGNITE award in the engineering category.