Vivo Ignite, the student innovation programme that funded Prateek Sethi’s breakthrough, is now open for its fourth edition, with applications closing on July 10
The problem started in Prateek Sethi’s mind when he was only 14. Spaces like bathrooms, corridors, and cabins need a way to monitor safety. Still, they can’t have cameras, which raises the question of whether there might be another way to detect a safety issue or danger besides watching.
His answer was Wi-Fi.
The Idea That Won
Most people think of Wi-Fi as the signal that loads a webpage. Prateek saw something more specific in it: a signal that bends and scatters differently every time a body moves through a room. If an AI model could read those patterns, it could distinguish between ordinary movement and something that looked like violence or criminal activity, without recording a single frame of footage.
That project won him the individual category at Vivo Ignite’s third edition and a Rs 4 lakh scholarship. Now 15 and in Class 10 at a public school in a remote part of Odisha, he used the prize money to buy ESP32 transceivers, build an AI model on Ollama, and upgrade his computing setup. The system is now deployed across parts of his father’s college campus and has already flagged real incidents in real time.
The Programme Behind the Idea
vivo Ignite is vivo India’s student innovation initiative for students in Classes 8 to 12. The third edition alone drew over 37,000 registrations from more than 9,000 schools across 660 districts. The fourth edition introduces an Achiever 30 mentorship cohort for top performers and a Teacher Innovation Fellowship alongside a total prize pool of Rs 30 lakh.
For the first time, students from India’s 112 government-designated aspirational districts will receive special weightage in the selection process, alongside students from government schools, addressing what the organisers describe as an access problem rather than a talent problem.
Applications close July 10 at vivoignite.com, with the National Finale scheduled for October 11 in Delhi.
