From an idea that once existed on paper to solutions with the potential to make a real difference, the four winning teams of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2026 have taken home much more than an incubation grant.

They are carrying forward newfound confidence, conviction and the belief that their ideas can change the world.

For the four winning teams of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow (SFT) 2026, the moment their names were announced at the Grand Finale in New Delhi was about much more than winning a competition. It was the culmination of months of learning, experimentation, mentorship and pushing the boundaries of what they believed was possible.

For some, the victory still feels unreal. For others, it has opened doors they had only imagined. But across all four teams, there is one sentiment that resonates: the SFT experience has been nothing short of transformational.

“Wow!” is how Team QuantHunt from Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh, describes its SFT journey in a single word. “It was fabulous, amazing and transformational. The way the entire programme was planned and executed was excellent. It was designed to empower us, and that made all the difference,” the team said.

Led by 21-year-old Akul Attre and 20-year-old Saksham Shreyans, QuantHunt is developing an AI-based cybersecurity solution that identifies encryption vulnerabilities and helps organisations prepare their digital infrastructure for emerging risks associated with quantum computing. Winning in the AI Living for India category has given the young innovators not just recognition but also the resources and encouragement to take their ambitious idea further.

For Team morphism from Raipur, Chhattisgarh, the victory is still sinking in. “We still can’t believe we have won. It is the most amazing experience, and honestly, it feels surreal,” the team said.

Led by Ananya Agrawal and Adityasai Bakthashanmuganandam, morphism is working on an AI-powered system that helps autistic individuals better understand emotions by analysing subtle facial expressions and other behavioural signals, particularly addressing challenges associated with alexithymia.

Their journey from making it to the national Top 40 to emerging as winners in the Health and Education category has been one of persistence, learning and discovery. For the team, the recognition is an affirmation of their belief in building technology that can make the world more inclusive.

For Team InnoBotix from New Delhi, the SFT journey has been an opportunity to see its idea evolve into something much bigger than initially imagined.

“It has been a great opportunity, almost a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We are already receiving offers, both nationally and internationally. SFT has transformed our idea into something else altogether. We believe in our product much more strongly now,” the team said.

Led by Avi Mohan Kumar and Yash Varshney, InnoBotix has developed Sentinel, a solar-powered AI edge device that combines cameras, radar and seismic data to detect wildlife approaching human settlements and provide early warnings. The solution, which won in the Environmental Sustainability category, aims to address the growing challenge of human-wildlife conflict through technology.

For the young innovators, the experience has gone beyond developing a product. It has helped them recognise its larger potential, strengthen their confidence and see possibilities for taking their solution to a wider audience.

Team Somatrace from Hyderabad, Telangana, believes that one of the biggest takeaways from SFT has been the clarity and conviction it has brought to its idea.

“SFT was a great experience. It helped me put things into perspective. I feel even more strongly about our idea now and are determined to pursue it further. The programme made me believe that this is not something that has to happen someday in the future. It is something that can happen now,” Homanshika said.

Developed by a young innovator from Hyderabad, Somatrace is building a wearable IoT-based training tool that measures spinal angles and physical load during training. By providing insights into movement and potential injury risks, the solution aims to help precision-sport athletes and coaches make more informed training decisions.

Winning in the Sport and Tech category has further strengthened the team’s resolve to take its innovation forward and explore its potential to make sports training safer and more effective.

More than a competition: A journey of transformation

While the four winning teams have distinct ideas addressing challenges across cybersecurity, inclusion, environmental sustainability and sports, their journeys share a common thread: the transformation of an idea into a solution with real-world potential.

As they move into the next chapter, backed by Samsung’s incubation support and carrying the confidence gained through the programme, their journey is far from over. In many ways, it is only just beginning.

The Government, Innovation Leaders and the UN have lauded Samsung CSR’s focus to nurture young innovators, expanding access to innovation opportunities across India and helping transform ideas into solutions with real-world impact through Samsung Solve for Tomorrow.

Addressing Samsung leaders, industry experts, SFT mentors and participants at the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2026 Grand Finale in New Delhi, Sushil Pal, Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), said innovation must be measured by its ability to improve people’s lives. He commended Samsung for creating a platform that gives young people the confidence to dream and the opportunity to develop products and build startups.

“It’s very heartening to see that Samsung is doing so much for society through their CSR initiatives. I thank Samsung for creating a platform which gives young minds the confidence to dream and the opportunity to build their product and to build their startup,” Pal said.

The fifth edition of Samsung’s flagship CSR programme, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow received more than 34,000 student applications, with 60 finalists reaching the Grand Finale. The programme encourages young people to apply science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to address challenges in their communities, supporting them as they develop and refine solutions with the potential to create meaningful change.

Pal noted that the rise of artificial intelligence had changed the nature of innovation, with technology increasingly shaping how people learn, work, manufacture and access services. He urged young innovators to focus not merely on developing advanced technologies but on addressing pressing human needs.

“The real measure of innovation does not lie in how complex the algorithm is. It lies in what difference it can make to a common person’s life,” he said.

He cited challenges such as helping farmers save water and power, bringing health diagnostics to underserved areas, improving access to quality education in remote villages and enabling scientific sports training. These, he said, were opportunities to contribute to nation-building.

Pal also called on industry to help people adapt to a changing world of work, emphasising that as AI automates some tasks and augments others, preparing people for evolving job roles would be as important as developing new technologies.

Connecting young innovators with global challenges

Stefan Priesner, United Nations Resident Coordinator in India, highlighted SFT’s role in bringing young people’s ideas into the broader effort to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). He noted that global progress towards these goals remained too slow and uneven, making youth participation and scalable solutions increasingly important.

“Samsung Solve for Tomorrow is a strong example of the United Nations system and the private sector working together to advance a youth-centred agenda, amplify young voices, and give promising ideas the support they need to grow,” Priesner said.

He emphasised that the private sector could contribute beyond corporate social responsibility by aligning business priorities with environmental sustainability and social inclusion, while helping innovative solutions reach a wider population. Governments, universities, businesses and the UN, he said, all had a role in helping promising ideas scale.

Priesner also encouraged the finalists to remain connected to the communities they hoped to serve, continuously testing and improving their ideas to ensure they could deliver meaningful impact.

Taking innovation beyond metros and creating job creators

Dr Nikhil Agarwal, Managing Director of the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) at IIT Delhi, highlighted Samsung’s CSR efforts to help bring innovation opportunities to a wider pool of young people.

“Samsung Solve for Tomorrow shows the commitment as they have gone to Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns and different states for building that momentum. SFT got double the number of applications this year and it shows,” Agarwal said.

The programme’s outreach included more than 180 sessions across over 130 cities, helping engage students from diverse geographies and backgrounds. The growth in participation, Agarwal noted, reflected the momentum built by taking the initiative beyond major urban centres.

He also underscored the importance of translating student-led innovation into entrepreneurship, encouraging participants to build ventures that could create opportunities for others.

“You should become job creators, not job doers,” Agarwal told the students, expressing hope that future entrepreneurs would emerge from the programme and build companies that generate employment.

At the 2026 Grand Finale, four winning teams were selected to receive incubation grants totalling ₹2 crore from Samsung, along with mentorship and incubation support at FITT-IIT Delhi. SFT provides promising young innovators with mentorship and incubation support to help them develop their ideas further.

The speakers’ remarks underscored the value of platforms such as Samsung Solve for Tomorrow in bringing together government, industry, international institutions and academia to nurture young talent. By encouraging students to identify real-world problems, develop technology-led solutions and explore entrepreneurship, the programme seeks to help turn promising ideas into innovations that can make a difference at scale.

As artificial intelligence begins to reshape classrooms, learning is becoming increasingly interactive, digital and personalised. But for visually impaired students, accessing these new possibilities can present a different set of challenges. As educational tools evolve, how can students who cannot rely on screens navigate this changing landscape and participate more independently in their learning?

For Aditya and Sparsh, two 17-year-olds from Delhi, this is a question worth working on.

Together, they have built Team Equinox and are developing SARA AI, a voice-first, agentic AI companion designed to make digital learning more accessible to visually impaired students. Their idea is now among the Top 20 solutions submitted for Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2026.

A global problem-solving platform, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow helps youth around the world use STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) to build a better future. Participants identify problems in their communities and develop creative solutions with the help of technology.

The idea is rooted in a simple ambition: as technology changes how students learn, access to those opportunities should not depend on whether someone can see a screen.

SARA AI is being developed to let students interact with learning through voice commands, convert speech into text, track their learning progress and participate in tests and assessments. It can also check in with users after periods of inactivity, helping create a more interactive learning experience.

For the two young innovators, the challenge goes beyond building a piece of technology. It is about exploring how AI can support students in navigating their education with greater independence and confidence.

Building for the learner, not just the technology

Ideas often begin with a problem, but making them useful requires listening to the people who experience it. Team Equinox has tested SARA AI with more than 40 students in Delhi and engaged with schools and trusts to better understand the needs of visually impaired learners.

These interactions have helped the team explore how the solution might work in real learning environments, where accessibility, ease of use and reliability matter as much as the technology itself.

The experience has also highlighted an important lesson for the young innovators: a promising prototype is only the beginning. For a solution to make a difference, it must respond to everyday needs and work for the people it is intended to serve.

Team Equinox is among the Top 20 teams selected for Samsung Solve for Tomorrow (SFT), a global problem-solving platform that encourages young people to use science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to address challenges in their communities.

Through the programme, the team is receiving guidance to take SARA AI beyond its initial prototype and explore how it could become a practical, scalable solution for visually impaired students.

From a working prototype to a real-world solution

The SFT Bootcamp gave Aditya and Sparsh an opportunity to look at their idea from perspectives beyond technology. Sessions on design thinking, marketing and the startup ecosystem encouraged them to consider not just how SARA AI functions, but also how students might use it, how its reliability could be improved and what it would take to introduce it into educational settings.

Mentorship helped the team refine its prototype, while one-on-one sessions with Samsung and FITT, IIT Delhi, along with inputs from AI experts in Samsung’s R&D ecosystem, helped them work through technical challenges and explore a potential go-to-market strategy.

For two 17-year-olds navigating the journey from an idea to a potential real-world solution, this exposure has broadened the scope of what building technology entails. It has brought questions of usability, implementation and adoption into sharper focus.

The team is now exploring how SARA AI could be adopted by schools, non-governmental organisations and other institutions that support visually impaired students.

A bigger classroom for the idea

Team Equinox hopes to expand SARA AI across schools in Delhi, with the potential to reach approximately 6,000 students, subject to further development and adoption.

The ambition is significant, but the idea begins with an everyday need: making learning easier to access for students who may otherwise face barriers when educational experiences are designed primarily around visual interfaces.

For Aditya and Sparsh, the journey through Samsung Solve for Tomorrow is an opportunity to understand what it takes to turn that ambition into something practical. Their experience reflects a larger lesson about innovation: meaningful solutions are shaped not only by technical possibilities, but also by the willingness to listen, learn and keep improving.

As AI becomes a more prominent part of education, Team Equinox is working towards a future in which visually impaired students can engage with these tools on more inclusive terms.

At 17, the two Delhi students are still developing their idea. But with SARA AI, they are asking a question that matters far beyond their own classroom: as technology moves learning forward, how can we make sure everyone has a chance to move forward with it?

The next breakthrough may begin with a problem a young person sees every day: unsafe drinking water, stubble burning, barriers to communication or a gap in local services.

The 16 startup founders mentoring Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2026 finalists say young innovators are increasingly drawing on their own experience and understanding of the people they want to serve. Among them are Ankit Garg, Robin Singh, Samridhi Bhardwaj and Dishant Mishra. They see wider access to technology and information helping ideas emerge from smaller cities and communities across India.

“They really want to solve a problem that is actually hurting someone somewhere. Even if the market is looking small, these young innovators are attempting it, they are going for it, and they are solving those problems,” said Dishant Mishra, founder of IIT Delhi-incubated Water Resources. “Creating a market is going to be the second step, and they are not focused on the second step. Perhaps that is the refreshing change that I have observed with this year’s cohort.”

Robin Singh, founder of water-quality intelligence startup Cluix, has seen how an idea can continue beyond the programme. A team he mentored from rural Bihar developed a filtration system to address arsenic contamination in water, won the challenge and went on to commercialise its product.

“They came from rural Bihar and, essentially, they could see that there was no solution available in the field. At a very young age, when they were just students, they developed a filtration system. That filtration system won the challenge, and now they have gone on to commercialise the product,” Singh said.

This year, Singh is mentoring SignBridge AI, a team working to help people with disabilities communicate more independently. He said, “I think this increases inclusivity in the society, and we need such solutions.”

Samridhi Bhardwaj, a founder working in women’s health, said access to technology has changed the relationship between geography and opportunity. “Students across India, including those in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, have access to technology and the kind of exposure that many of their peers and seniors did not have. So, I don’t think geography is a hindrance anymore. Any innovative solution can come from any part of India.”

For Ankit Garg, founder of clean-label food brand EemuMasale, local problems can have relevance well beyond the communities where they first emerge. “Stubble burning is not a local issue. It is a national challange that they are working to solve. They have seemingly developed a prototype that could also address nutrition in India by providing alternative protein options,” he said.

Half of the ideas in this year’s cohort came from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, according to Singh. He said, “The ideas that people are getting in tier 2 cities are sometimes even better than the ones that you see in tier 1 cities. The exposure has increased, and the application of such ideas has become better.”

The founders see mentorship as a way to help young innovators move from identifying a problem to developing and testing a solution. Samsung Solve for Tomorrow brings finalists together with startup founders, academia and industry, offering guidance and opportunities to develop their ideas.

Samsung Solve for Tomorrow is Samsung’s global innovation and education programme for young people. The 2026 edition marks its fifth year in India.

What if the agricultural waste left behind after every harvest could become a source of protein?

That is the question driving Nitish Kumar and Gulshan Kumar, two young students from Sonipat, Haryana, who are exploring how artificial intelligence and biotechnology can transform crop residue into sustainable protein.

Students at the National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management (NIFTEM-K), Haryana, Nitish and Gulshan are the founders of Kinva Bio, a team among the Top 20 of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2026. Their idea addresses one of the biggest challenges facing the world’s food system: how to produce more nutritious food for a growing population without putting greater pressure on land and water.

Their solution starts with agricultural byproducts that are often treated as waste, including sugarcane bagasse. Kinva Bio uses fermentation, in which a fungal strain converts this biomass into protein. An AI-powered digital twin then helps the team predict protein production, allowing them to optimise the process and understand its potential at scale.

According to the team, the approach could use 98–99% less water, significantly reduce carbon emissions and require substantially less land than conventional protein production.

For the two young innovators, however, the journey has been about more than developing a scientific solution. It has been about learning how to turn an idea from the laboratory into something that can make a difference in the real world.

A global problem-solving platform, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow helps youth around the world use STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) to build a better future. Participants identify problems in their communities and develop creative solutions with the help of technology.

Who is the end user?

When Nitish and Gulshan started working on Kinva Bio, their focus was largely on the science behind their innovation.

“We were projecting our idea scientifically and without storytelling,” the team said.

Their experience at the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Bootcamp changed that perspective. Interacting with mentors, experts and fellow innovators exposed them to questions beyond the laboratory: Who is the end user? What problem are we solving? How do we communicate its impact? And what would it take to turn the idea into a viable startup?

“The biggest takeaway from the Bootcamp was the people we connected with and the exposure to the business environment,” they said.

The team began approaching their pitches differently. Instead of only explaining how their technology worked, they learnt to communicate why it mattered — to consumers, investors and society.

For Nitish and Gulshan, storytelling became more than a presentation skill. It changed the way they looked at Kinva Bio itself — from a scientific project to a potential business capable of creating real-world impact.

From Sonipat to the global food innovation stage

The team’s work had already begun attracting international attention.

The recognition offered the young innovators a glimpse of how far their idea could travel beyond the classroom and laboratory.

Their Samsung Solve for Tomorrow journey has since pushed them to think about the next questions: Who will use the solution? How can it be scaled? What would it take to build a user base? And how can an innovation rooted in biotechnology become a commercially viable solution?

As Kinva Bio moves towards the Grand Finale of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2026, Nitish and Gulshan are carrying with them an idea that began with a simple but consequential question: Can we produce more food while asking less of the planet?

For these young innovators from Sonipat, the answer could lie in bringing together AI, biotechnology and agricultural waste — and turning what was once considered residue into a building block for the future of food.

For Team Code Blooded’s 21-year-old Vatala Harika and 20-year-old Ritesh Routray, the idea began with a simple observation: talent can exist anywhere, but opportunity does not always reach everywhere.

Students from the same college in Sundargarh, Odisha, and friends long before they became co-founders, Harika and Ritesh began discussing the challenges faced by para-athletes during a trip. What stood out to them was the absence of accessible scouting infrastructure for talented athletes in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and rural areas.

Their idea, ParaSync, is now among the Top 20 innovations at Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2026. The AI-powered platform is designed to help discover and support para-athletes by allowing them to record or upload a 10–20-minute video of their sporting performance through a smartphone. Its computer vision system analyses sporting technique and physical mechanics, while the platform aims to connect promising athletes with national-level talent scouts.

A global problem-solving platform, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow helps youth around the world use STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) to build a better future. Participants identify problems in their communities and develop creative solutions with the help of technology.

The solution also envisages tailored warm-up routines, automated progress tracking and secure records that could support medical screening and athlete development.

For Harika and Ritesh, the challenge goes beyond simply identifying sporting talent. Para-athletes are not a homogenous group, they point out, with different athletes requiring different forms of adaptation, coaching and support based on their individual needs.

“We wanted to solve the exact problem we were seeing, and we knew we wanted to use AI to do it,” said Vatala Harika. “There is nothing for para-athletes and their recruitment. Para-athletes are a niche market, but they are not a singular group. There are different models that need to be built for individuals based on the challenges they face.”

The experience at Samsung Solve for Tomorrow helped the team look beyond the technology itself. When they entered the programme, their focus was primarily on solving the problem. The Bootcamp encouraged them to think about whether the solution could work at scale, who would use it, and how it could become a sustainable proposition.

“We were only thinking about solving the problem. But the Bootcamp made us realise that it should solve the problem at a much larger scale,” said Ritesh Routray. “We understood revenue models and got a much clearer sense of the market size. We are techies, so learning to look at the idea from a market perspective helped us understand how we could take ParaSync forward.”

For the students, mentorship became an equally important part of the journey. Harika says the mentors challenged them to look at the problem from different perspectives and, importantly, gave them the confidence to continue pursuing their idea.

“The mentors made me believe in my idea. They made me see the problem from different perspectives. Mentorship helped us understand the problem better,” she said. “Problem-solving depends on how well you understand the problem.”

Their own journey as a team also began organically. Having studied at the same college and being friends, the two were discussing the issue during a trip when the idea for ParaSync began to take shape.

What started as a conversation between two young engineers from Odisha has now evolved into an attempt to build a technology-led pathway between undiscovered para-athletes and the opportunities they need to progress.

For Harika, the journey also reflects a personal evolution. “I always wanted to be in the social space. But then I studied to become an engineer, and now I am using engineering to solve problems,” she said.

As Code Blooded moves forward as one of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow’s Top 20 teams, Harika and Ritesh hope ParaSync can help ensure that where an athlete comes from does not determine whether their talent gets noticed.

For Prabinder Singh, Anish Grover and Deepesh Kakkar, the problem they set out to solve was not an abstract one. All three young students from SAS Nagar, Punjab, have seen the impact of stroke on their own families. That personal connection led them to a question: what happens to stroke patients once they leave the hospital?

The three friends, who study at the same college and are currently in their third and fourth years of engineering, are developing NeuroTrace, an AI-powered smartphone solution designed to help families monitor stroke survivors at home. Their innovation is among the Top 20 teams of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2026.

The challenge they are addressing is the gap between hospital care and everyday monitoring. After discharge, families often become the primary caregivers, but subtle neurological changes may be difficult to recognise until they develop into a serious emergency.

NeuroTrace proposes an accessible, wearable-free approach. The platform uses a 45-second daily check-in through a smartphone’s camera and microphone to capture three signals: voice patterns, facial movement and reaction time. Over the first 35 days, the system learns an individual patient’s neurological baseline. It then looks for sustained deviations from that baseline.

To reduce false alarms, NeuroTrace uses multimodal AI, with alerts triggered only when two signals show a deviation simultaneously. Family caregivers can receive the alerts in plain-language Hindi through WhatsApp, creating a simple layer of monitoring without requiring specialised equipment or a wearable device.

For the three friends, the technology was only one part of the challenge. Their experience at the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Bootcamp pushed them to think more deeply about who would actually use the solution, whose needs they were solving for and how the idea could work beyond a prototype.

“Design thinking helped us understand who our end user really is and who we should be speaking to. The idea became much better once we started looking at it from the user’s perspective,” said Prabinder Singh.

The team also came to recognise the importance of medical data and the responsibility that comes with handling it. As they think about developing NeuroTrace as a long-term solution, data security and privacy have become central to their approach.

“We initially focused a lot on the technology and how to build the solution. At the Bootcamp, we started thinking about the larger picture—our end user, the problem we were solving and how we could make this a long-term solution,” said Anish Grover.

The personal nature of the problem has kept the team closely connected to their mission. “All three of us have family members who have experienced this. So this was a common problem for us, and we wanted to work on something that could actually help,” said Deepesh Kakkar.

Their ambitions extend beyond NeuroTrace itself. All three say they have wanted to become entrepreneurs, but for them, entrepreneurship is closely tied to solving a problem that matters.

“We all wanted to become entrepreneurs, but we also wanted to solve a real problem. Now we have the idea, and we will see what support we can get to take it forward,” said Prabinder.

As one of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2026 Top 20 teams, NeuroTrace is now focused on taking its technology and understanding of the problem to the next stage. For three friends who began with a problem they had witnessed within their own families, the journey is an attempt to build a simple, accessible safety net for patients and the people who care for them—long after they leave the hospital.

How does a visually impaired swimmer know when the pool wall is approaching?

Twenty-year-old engineering student Pasupuleti Ruthvik from Chittoor believes the answer could lie in a pair of smart goggles.

His innovation, Untethered, uses ultrasonic sensing to measure a swimmer’s distance from the pool wall and haptic feedback to provide a physical alert as they approach it. The technology could help visually impaired swimmers navigate pools with greater safety, confidence and independence.

Untethered is now among the Top 20 teams of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2026, a national education and innovation competition that empowers young people to develop technology-led solutions to real-world problems through design thinking, mentorship and hands-on learning.

The idea was sparked by an accident involving one of Ruthvik’s friends.

“One of my friends suffered a concussion in an accident, and that stayed with me. It made me think about how technology could prevent injuries and help people participate in activities without constantly depending on someone else,” Ruthvik said.

For Ruthvik, the innovation also brings together his childhood interest in swimming and his growing ambition to become an entrepreneur.

“I always wanted to do something in sports. After joining engineering college, I began thinking about entrepreneurship—not simply as starting a company, but as identifying a real problem, building something meaningful and creating an impact,” he said.

From Engineering Idea to User-led Innovation

Ruthvik entered the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Bootcamp focused primarily on whether the technology could be built. The experience pushed him to confront a more fundamental question: would visually impaired swimmers find it useful and comfortable?

“Earlier, I was asking, ‘Can I make this technology work?’ The Bootcamp made me ask, ‘Who will use it? What problem are they actually facing? Will it make their lives better, and would they want to use it?’ That completely changed how I looked at my idea,” he said.

Through intensive sessions and expert mentoring, Ruthvik began examining the product’s feasibility, user experience and potential for real-world adoption.

“My mentors helped me understand what was technically possible and how I could approach the problem differently. Their guidance helped me move from simply having an idea to thinking like someone building a real product,” he added.

A Chittoor Idea with Global Potential

While Untethered began with Ruthvik’s personal connection to swimming, its potential extends far beyond Andhra Pradesh. He wants to develop the goggles into an affordable and scalable assistive product that could help visually impaired swimmers in India and around the world.

“I do not want this to remain an engineering project or a prototype that works only in a laboratory. If a visually impaired swimmer can enter a pool and feel more confident and independent because of something we built, that would mean far more to me than simply developing a new technology,” Ruthvik said.

As Untethered progresses through Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2026, Ruthvik is demonstrating how an idea born in Chittoor could help make swimming safer and more inclusive around the world—one stroke at a time.

Avi Mohan Kumar and Yash Varshney are developing Sentinel, a solar-powered AI edge device that uses cameras, radar and seismic data to detect wildlife approaching human settlements and provide early warnings.

Watch the team share what making it to the Top 20 means to them and how they hope technology can help build safer coexistence between communities and wildlife.

Manoj Kumar, Jena R and Chriswin William D are developing NeuroStride, an AI-powered wearable that seeks to distinguish involuntary Parkinson’s tremors from intentional muscle movement and provide targeted electrical stimulation.

Watch the team share what reaching the Top 20 means to them and how they hope to explore new possibilities in assistive wearable technology.