The brainchild of Electrofoodies, a group of final-year engineering students from Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) of Manipal University, Karnataka, the innovation has bagged the first prize at the national finale of Ink Makers held at T-Hub in Hyderabad.
The lure of paani puri is such that one can never say no to another helping!
Despite being one of the most beloved of street foods, it is often avoided over concerns of hygienic.
Well, the good news is that a group of engineering students have come to the rescue with a unique innovation – a paani puri dispenser!
The brainchild of Electrofoodies, a group of final-year engineering students from Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) of Manipal University, Karnataka, the innovation has bagged the first prize at the national finale of Ink Makers held at T-Hub in Hyderabad. Sahas Gembali, Sunanda Somu, Neha Srivastava and Karishma Agrawal are the team members.
It was the shortage of manpower at a local chaat wala that ignited a light bulb in the innovators’ heads.
While it is common to find a single person behind the stall catering to all people, the task can get pretty tiresome.
Coming up with the idea of making the entire process automated, the group realised that they could also tackle concerns over hygiene as well. “We hence decided to develop a machine and started working on the prototype,” Sahas told Bangalore Mirror.
Spending about six months in the process, the students devised a contraption that does a variety of functions at the push of a button.
Starting from dispensing of puris, the device makes holes on the puris, fills it with the stuffing and dips it in the paani!
With a control panel in the front, the group suggests that the machine is ideal to be placed in shopping malls and complexes. This clubbed together with a smart panel that can display advertisements makes the innovation quite awesome!
“We would like to develop the product in the future and bring in more options of customisation. Right now, only one flavour of paani can be served. Another feature in the prototype is the multiplayer mode where friends can challenge one another while eating paani puri. It maintains the scores on who has eaten how much. The automated vending machine needs a person only to refill the raw materials,” he said.
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The team also plan on taking the device to a global level, with many Indians living abroad who can’t find too many options to cater their chaat cravings. Though initially they had faced mixed feedback, post their win, they feel that the product has a great potential of making it to the markets.
If things work out well, the commercial launch of Electrofoodies’ paani puri dispenser is soon on the cards.
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