PANAJI: While most people have heard about India’s early physicist Aryabhata but the names Venkatesh Bapuji Ketkar, Bibha Chowdhuri and even contemporary scientist Tessy Thomas may draw a blank. With exactly this in mind, a trio of Class IX students from Navy Children’s School, Dabolim, designed a digital quiz game to highlight India’s contribution to the field of science.
What they did not expect is to win the first place at the recently concluded
Toycathon
2021 where Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with the participants.
Toycathon 2021 is an inter-ministerial initiative organised by the Union education ministry’s innovation cell with support from All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and other Union ministries. As part of the ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ Modi flagged off the nationwide Toycathon-2021 in January to conceptualise novel toys and games based on Indian civilisation, history, culture, mythology and ethos.
“We began working around March. There were two prototypes. One was a website and the other was an app. We decided to go with the app, which had a scoring system and levels, while the website just required users to login and play,” said 14-year old
Mayank
Yadav, the team leader of the trio.
Yadav, along with
Krishang
Joshi and
Tanishq
Bhatnagar, designed the game during the peak of the second Covid-19 wave in Goa, using calls to coordinate their efforts. The three of them, aided by their chemistry teacher Neera Singh, are self taught and plan to improve their app by making it visually attractive in the months to come.
“I watched a lot of YouTube videos to learn how to build mobile applications,” said Joshi. “The game that we are making, is made for the age group of nine and above.”
Their efforts paid off as they were declared as winners of Toycathon 2021 digital edition. “Everybody knows about Einstein and Newton, but very few have heard about Venkatesh Bapuji Ketkar, CV Raman, Aryabhata, Shushruta or Tessy Thomas,” said Yadav.
Though the boys are still in school, they know that the app development industry is a big market and that as India grows, there will be a huge growth in the field of online games, interactive websites and social media that caters to the Indian audience. They hope to make a mark for themselves.
Stay updated with the latest news on Times of India. Don't miss daily games like Crossword, Sudoku, and Mini Crossword.