Age Is Just A Number

Teenagers crowdfunding for social causes or innovations are taking people closer to everyday philanthropy, one digital campaign at a time.

- Divya J Shekhar

Madhav Lavakare, a 17-year-old from Delhi, hopes that his innovation will offer the Indian market what Google Glass could not: Mass affordability and social use cases. The student of Sanskriti School started experimenting with wearable technology after his friend, who was hearing impaired, dropped out of school because day-to-day communication with other students was becoming a problem. Lavakare’s innovation, called Transcribe, is a smart glass that converts speech-to-text so that the deaf can read what they cannot hear.

The hardware is based on a low cost microchip that is connected to Am bluetooth on the user’s smartphone and the screen of the spectacles. A custom Android application utilises Google’s API (application programming interface) to convert speech from 132 languages to text. The converted data is sent via bluetooth to the glasses, where it is displayed in the user’s field of vision. The device can be attached to any glass frame, empty or with lenses of a specific power.

After Transcribe received the Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Ignite Award by the National Innovation Foundation (an autonomous body of the department of science and technology, government of India) earlier this year, Lavakare set his sights on the next goal.

He wants to experiment with new designs, build prototypes with better-quality electronic parts and manufacture more units so that the device reaches the right beneficiaries. Lavakare’s project, therefore, has gone live on a crowdfunding site, where he has raised 2.57 lakh of his 3 lakh target.