The energy was palpable at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi as winners of the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2025 program gathered with senior technology journalist and consulting editor, Leslie D’Monte, in an exclusive podcast to share how a spark of curiosity evolved into tangible technologies that solve real-world problems.
Now Samsung is launching its fifth edition of Solve for Tomorrow in India The program is a global initiative that operates in 65 countries, transforming from a youth innovation competition into a rigorous launchpad supported by regional headquarters and established Research & Development (R&D) centres. For Samsung, this milestone coincides with a deep institutional anchor that marks 30 years of its operational and engineering presence in India.
The integration of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow into this three-decade legacy highlights how corporate R&D The infrastructure can be leveraged to mentor the next generation of technology pioneers, providing students direct access to advanced laboratories, patent guidance, and the industrial expertise needed to move prototypes into the real world.
Click here to watch the full podcast:
Seeing with sound and speaking with AI
Among the standouts at the reunion was Karnataka-based creator Tushar Shaw of Persevia AI, a solution. Tushar has developed a sophisticated wearable system built into a pair of glasses designed to give autonomous navigation to visually impaired users. This solution topped the theme of AI for a Safe, Smart and Inclusive India.
Using a 3X3 spatial grid, real-time object detection and a local large language model (LLM) that works in five languages, the glasses translate the user’s surroundings into haptic vibrations and clear audio signals.
Sitting next to him was Praneet Khaitan, a student from Haryana who had won the top entry in the topic Future of Health, Sanitation and Wellness in India for developing Paraspeak. This is low cost Internet of Things (IoT) devices use deep learning models to translate slurred speech or dysarthria caused by medical conditions such as stroke, paralysis, cerebral palsy and Parkinson’s disease into clear audio.
Paraspeak has the distinction of creating the first and largest database of Hindi dysarthric speech. Talking about the level of accuracy of speech recognition, Prunet said: “In silico (computer testing), the accuracy is around 96.7%. In real life, it varies between 80 to 95% depending on the severity, with a latency of only two to three seconds which we are actively working to reduce.”
Smart Waste and Democratic Coaching
Childhood best friends, Abhishek Dhanda and Prabhkirat Singh from Punjab took up India’s organic waste problem. Under his company Prithvi Rakshak, he created VermiKendra, an automated vermicomposting system that uses IoT sensors to monitor pH values, temperature, and moisture levels in the soil. This solution was the winner in the Environment and Sustainability through Technology theme.
Their mobile application is already helping local farmers optimize their organic composting processes. Abhishek said, “India generates 62 million tonnes of organic waste annually, and only 8% is recycled. We wanted to transform the hard manual labor into an efficient robotic process to enhance soil quality and clean our environment.”
Another pair, Bhagyashree Hiralal Meena and Aadish Abhijit Shelke, both college students from Maharashtra, won the top spot in Social Change through Sport and Tech: For Education and Better Futures theme for NextPlay.AI, India’s first AI-powered talent platform for athletes. As a national level tennis player, Adish experienced first-hand the lack of infrastructure and specialized coaching available outside major metropolitan cities.
Their mobile-first platform allows young athletes anywhere in the country to upload videos of their performances. The AI model uses advanced pose detection to analyze their form and provide technical coaching feedback.
lessons in patience
The path to success for these young innovators was paved with systemic challenges, failures and intensive research at the grassroots level. Tushar recalled his early days in blind schools, where administrators routinely rejected him as a second-year college student. To get his prototypes tested, he would often trick school principals into getting past security gates to directly contact them.
Shaw said, “You will face failures every time. But if even one attempt out of a thousand works, that is enough.”
Abhishek and Prabhkirat recalled how their team faced many hurdles while collecting raw waste samples, some including feces, at the landfill to calibrate their sensors, falling ill regularly. Meanwhile, PreNet’s early speech-recognition prototypes suffered from mathematical error rates up to 4,000% before extensive field testing at care centers brought the metrics to clinical readiness.
build the future together
The 2026 edition of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow is now officially accepting applications. The national competition encourages young minds across the country to apply Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) concepts directly to socio-economic and environmental challenges and provides students easy access to financial grants, expert mentorship and official incubation support.
It is open to Indian residents aged 14-22, who are keen to solve real-world challenges. Each applicant can submit one entry for any one of the four subjects AI for India Living, Health and Education, Sports and Tech and Environmental Sustainability. Four winning teams will receive cumulative grants ₹2 crore and incubation at FITT-II Delhi. Applications are open till 3 July 2026. Click here to apply.
As part of the initiative, 2,40,000 cumulative hours of training will be provided during the application phase, combining classroom guidance with practical learning opportunities. The design training workshops target 30,000 students across 100 cities through interactive workshops in schools and universities.
