Samsung India today announced top 50 teams in its Gen-Z education and innovation competition ‘Solve for Tomorrow’. The youth competition, which is running for the first time in India, has seen teams from across the country respond and submit ideas to help tackle problems that India faces in the areas of education, environment, healthcare and agriculture.

In the end of the competition, three national winners stand a chance to get mega support of up to Rs 1 crore and mentoring support for six months to take their ideas to the next level under the expert guidance of IIT Delhi.

Entrants who have applied to the competition have taken inspiration for their innovations from all areas of society, including events from the past year, with ideas looking to tackle waste management, electricity and water wastage, plastic waste in the oceans, speech disorders, farm rodents as well as pandemic prediction and creating an affordable ECG device. Many of the solutions that the teams suggested will use new-age technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence and augmented reality.

Among the top 50 teams, 62 per cent want to solve problems of healthcare, 22 per cent want to tackle challenges around environment, 10 per cent are focused on problems around agriculture while 6 per cent want to solve issues around education.

Solve for Tomorrow got over 18,000 registrations from youth across cities, towns and villages who are eager to turn their ideas into action. Ideas have come in from across the country, including small towns.

The chosen 50 teams, with youth aged between 16-22, are now through to the next phase of ‘Solve for Tomorrow’, where they will be further developing their ideas. With the support of Samsung’s knowledge partner Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) at IIT Delhi, the 50 teams will be mentored to help enhance their ideas.

In this phase, they will get training on the design thinking concept through online courses as well as at a bootcamp at IIT Delhi. Each of the 50 teams will also be assigned a campus buddy from IIT Delhi during the three-day bootcamp.

Over two days at IIT Delhi, seasoned experts will guide the teams on how to build their first prototype and effectively pitch their ideas in front of an expert Samsung jury on Day 3. The jury will select the top 10 teams for the final pitch event in November 2022.

Along with the bootcamp, the top 50 teams will also be given a certificate of participation and vouchers worth Rs 100,000 for online courses in design thinking, STEM, innovation, leadership, among others.

The top 10 teams will get the opportunity to visit Samsung India offices and its R&D centres where they will interact with young Samsung employees and researchers.