Covid-19: Warangal man’s foot-operated sanitisation device gets NIF funding

Hyderabad: Telangana man’s innovation, a foot-operated hand sanitisation device to fight against coronavirus, gets recognised by India’s National Innovation Foundation (NIF).

Raju Mupparapu, from Warangal, while speaking to NewsMeter said, “When Lockdown 1.0 was announced, I started thinking of innovating something and it took me a month to develop this device.”

The NIF states that the device is a timely solution ‘in response to need for contactless devices in the prevailing Covid-19 environment.’

Explaining how the device functions, Mupparapu said that the device dispenses soap and water when it is operated by foot. This ensures that there is no hand contact with the washing tap or any other container fitted with the device.

Mupparapu developed 20 such devices and set them up at the Mahabubabad collectorate, Warangal police headquarters and a few other municipalities. Mupparapu said, “I came to know about NIF challenge and applied for it around 10 days back and they said that it is a timely innovation and that they will support me.”

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The NIF sanctioned Rs 75,000 to Mupparapu so that he can develop the innovation further.

NIF is an autonomous foundation of Department of Science and Technology and it run a campaign called ‘Challenge Covid-19 Competition (C3)’ from March 31 to May 10. Through this campaign, they invited innovators to showcase their solutions to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic.

Apart from Mupparapu’s innovation, another novel sprayer capable of sanitising or washing large areas like roads, societies, doors, compounds, walls, etc., used by the Nashik municipality in Maharashtra was also supported by the NIF.

The Foundation, in its statement, said, “The sprayer consists of two radial fans of aluminium moving opposite to each other. In terms of mechanism, each fan sucks air from two opposite directions, which is released through nozzles at high pressure in the size of minute droplets. As the panel rotates 180 degrees, it can cover 15-feet tall walls from the ground.”

This is not the first innovation of Mupparapu. Earlier, he has developed solar-powered groundnut harvesting machine and streetlight sensors which can automatically switch on or off by detecting if it is day or night.