Guntur, Chittoor and Visakhapatnam Young Innovators Make Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Top 40 with Solutions for Healthcare Access and Inclusive Sports

From exploring ways to make specialised healthcare easier to access to enabling visually impaired swimmers to train with greater independence, four young innovators from Andhra Pradesh have made it to the national Top 40 of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow.

Kotipalli Siva Sankar, Shaik Nehaal Khasim, Pasupuleti Ruthvik and Kolla Venkata Siva Surya are among a new generation of young Indians looking at challenges around them and asking a simple question: can technology help solve them?

Samsung Solve for Tomorrow is Samsung’s flagship CSR innovation programme for young people aged 14 to 22. Through design thinking, mentorship and hands-on learning, the programme enables young innovators from across India to identify real-world challenges and develop potential solutions, helping them take ideas from the early stages towards prototypes.


For Kotipalli Siva Sankar and Shaik Nehaal Khasim from Guntur, the challenge is access to information around specialised healthcare. Their solution explores how technology could help international patients more easily discover specialised healthcare options in India.

The proposed platform looks at differences in the cost of procedures such as knee replacement, cancer surgery and spine surgery in India and overseas, while exploring how patients could be connected with JCI-accredited hospitals with relevant expertise and capacity. Their approach focuses on making information about potential healthcare providers easier for patients to access when exploring treatment options across countries.

Pasupuleti Ruthvik, 21, from Chittoor, is developing a technology-led solution to help visually impaired swimmers recognise when they are approaching the end of a swimming pool. While coaches may currently use a tapping stick to provide swimmers with a physical cue, his solution explores how technology could provide this information and potentially help swimmers train with greater safety and independence.

In Visakhapatnam, 16-year-old Kolla Venkata Siva Surya is exploring a solution to address veering — the unintended sideways drift that can make it difficult for visually impaired swimmers to maintain a straight path while swimming. His approach looks at how technology could help swimmers better understand their movement and maintain direction, with the aim of supporting a more inclusive sporting experience.

Three solutions. Four young innovators. And challenges spanning healthcare access and inclusive sports.

Their achievement comes as India’s innovation map itself is expanding. More than half of the national Top 40 teams in this year’s Samsung Solve for Tomorrow are from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, highlighting how young innovators from different corners of the country are bringing fresh perspectives to real-world challenges.

For Andhra Pradesh, the presence of young innovators from Guntur, Chittoor and Visakhapatnam among the national Top 40 reflects this growing breadth of India’s innovation landscape. Their solutions span healthcare access and inclusive sports, demonstrating how young people from beyond the country’s major urban centres are identifying challenges around them and exploring technology-led ways to address them.

The innovators are currently at the ideation stage and will now receive mentorship and prototyping support as they work to test, refine and develop their solutions and compete for a place in the Top 20.

The Top 40 teams will collectively receive INR 8 lakh, while every team member will receive a Samsung laptop to support prototype development. They will also participate in a 10-day Innovation Bootcamp, where they will receive intensive mentoring from startup founders and industry experts at FITT-IIT Delhi. As part of the Bootcamp, the teams will also get an opportunity to visit Samsung R&D Institute India – Delhi, Samsung R&D Institute India – Noida, Samsung R&D Institute India – Bangalore, Samsung Design Delhi, and Samsung’s Regional Headquarters in Gurugram.

The teams will then compete for a place in the Top 20, which will receive further support to strengthen and advance their solutions ahead of the Grand Finale.

At the culmination of the programme, the four winning teams will collectively receive incubation grants worth INR 2 crore, along with incubation support from FITT-IIT Delhi, helping them take their solutions towards further development and potential market-readiness.

For Kotipalli Siva Sankar, Shaik Nehaal Khasim, Pasupuleti Ruthvik and Kolla Venkata Siva Surya, reaching the national Top 40 is an opportunity to take solutions rooted in everyday challenges to the next stage — exploring how early concepts can evolve into prototypes with the potential to make a difference in people’s lives.