Mysuru students come up with sustainable cooking solution to help street food vendors

The cooking solution — Agnipath — was designed by Shruthakeerthi V. and Aditi V., students of Excel Public School (EPS) in Mysuru. It was pitted against close to one lakh entries from across India in the latest edition of School Innovation Marathon (SIM) organised jointly by Union Ministry of Education, Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) and Niti Ayog.

A sustainable cooking solution designed by two class 10 students of Mysuru, which seeks to help the street food vendors by reducing fuel consumption and minimising environmental impact, has qualified for funding by the Ministry of Education to not only develop the product, but also for its commercialisation.

The cooking solution — Agnipath — was designed by Shruthakeerthi V. and Aditi V., students of Excel Public School (EPS) in Mysuru. It was pitted against close to one lakh entries from across India in the latest edition of School Innovation Marathon (SIM) organised jointly by Union Ministry of Education, Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) and Niti Ayog.

The cooking solution won a grant commitment of ₹82,221. According to EPS, the students have already received the first tranche, and are expecting the second tranche in late May following submission of the progress report. The funding will enable the students to create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), test variants, and target market launch in the next 12 -14 months.

The SIM is considered as India’s largest school innovation challenge that brings together students from across the country to identify community problems of their choice to develop innovative solutions in the form of working prototypes.

Project Agnipath is a flame guide system designed to enhance the cooking efficiency of gas stoves. The innovation primarily targets street food vendors and small eateries by reducing their fuel consumption and lowering environmental impact.

Shruthakeerthi and Aditi developed Agnipath over four-and-a-half months while being mentored by Gopinath Subramaniam, Research Specialist at Excelsoft Technologies, who provided hands-on guidance in research methodology, design principles, prototyping techniques, and pitch preparation.

The students began by interviewing street vendors to understand fuel cost and inefficiencies in day-to-day cooking. They conducted research at the school’s Innovation Centre, studying various existing gas stove designs. They discovered the problems with the existing design to be poor heat utilisation, high LPG consumption, and inefficient flame distribution caused by factors like large gaps between the burner and pan, and the lack of insulation. This has significantly increased costs for vendors, sometimes up to 20% of their earnings.