The School being in Koyambedu, one of Asia’s largest perishable commodity market, students very easily understood the problem of unhealthy food in their daily diet. Inspired from the movie 36 vayathinile and their recent experience at the Schools annual health checkup where they found themselves and few of their friends being diagnosed with vitamin inadequacy leading to health conditions. Students were inspired to club both of these challenges, they stressed on the old Tamil Saying, “One house, one farm”. They understood how the modern lifestyles in cities hinder people from farming or growing crops for themselves. So the product they decided to build was a mobile Polyhouse. A farm that can be grown inside houses with minimum intervention and assured returns. One of the major problems they were addressing was to keep it safe from the dust in cities and free from pesticides. They started working on it and began building prototypes. The first challenge was that of natural light.Sunlight being one of the most important aspect of photosynthesis any growth without it is not possible. This research got them to know more about Grow LEDs. Grow LEDs are widely used in Western countries and is one of the proven methods for indoor farming. Only when the team started searching for Grow LEDs, they found how it was not common in India. Infact kids got an appointment with a renowned LED manufacturing company and their R&D team in Chennai to enquire about grow LEDs, but couldn’t find success. It is this search and spirit not to give up helped them reach Mr.Abdul Kareem, an electronics enthusiast who was the only maker of Grow LEDs in fact in the whole state. He offered to help the students and gave few of his samples for free. Students successfully solved the first challenge coming their way. They continued their search for the structure and sourced an old AC case from one of the neighboring terraces and started building the prototype. 

The second challenge came as Weight, the weight of the steel structure was enormous and couldn’t support the idea of being mobile.  Students started searching for alternative ideas and materials to build the structure. They soon found Bamboo was a good option and started enquiring about it, only to find the monetary block coming their way. Students did not want to give up, they decided to use PVC pipes for the model and paint them Bamboo to give the product their look and feel. They finished setting up the structure all by themselves and tested the weight to make sure it was portable. Now the next thing they had to sort was of water and temperature, they build a simple moisture, temperature and light sensor to control other growing aspects and ensure optimal growing conditions. The moisture sensor senses presence of water in the soil and pumps water as soon as the level comes down. The light sensor detects sunlight presence and switches off Grow LED to save electricity. The temperature sensor detects the degree of hotness/coolness inside the Polyhouse and ensures optimal growth conditions. The team was thoroughly surprised by the growth of plants in the condition in the first four days. Compared to their counterparts growing outside in the sun, the plants in the Polyhouse exhibited exponential growth. 

The test for the team came on the fourth day of their experiment, on fourth day they opened their classroom to find that the crops were damaged by Rats the night before. It was a test for the team’s character, the event was only a week away and their results have been eaten by the rats. The team backed themselves and replanted the seeds in the next two hours and set it for growth under the Polyhouse. Not only did they prove that growth was possible in such a condition they gave a strong response to all the challenges that came their way that too under limited time. All throughout the event, the members exhibited values of ownership and hard work while designing and setting up the model. As a result out of the 280 finalist two of them were selected to fly to Singapore for more exposure to technology learning.

In this journey the team was able to meet some of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, namely Zero Poverty, Reduced Hunger, Good health and wellbeing, Innovative infrastructure, Conscious consumption and clean energy. The team is committed to realize this product, create a more sophisticated model and hit the market to solve the problem of unhealthy food reaching people. These four school students might’ve come up with the next big thing that could transform our lifestyle and food habits. Best wishes to their initiative!