A Moment with University Students who developed a Bio gas Powered TriCycle

Neccessity has surely been the mother of great innovations. The world is surely in great need of ingenious solutions to effectively harness mother nature .Hinding to such a call for great innovators to challenge conventional rules and boundaries in food and agricture, Team FRUTI-CYCLE was born.by ordinary students from Makerere University and Kyambogo University from different disciplines with the goal of producing a Bio Gas Powered Tri Cycle to help reduce loss of fruits and vegetables as they are being transport to the Market

 Our Team at the Student Hub caught up with the on of the  brains behind this innovation Mr Ben Wokorach and basically shared with us how they made it big at the recently concluded Thought for Food Gobal Summit in Zurich Switzerland and this is what he had to say

What the Thought for Food Global Summit pitch about?

The pitch at Thought For Food Global summit was about, How to fight food insecurity be able feed 9 B people by 2050.

Our proposal was about eliminating post-harvest losses in fruits and vegetables in the distribution chain which currently stands at 45% according to FAO. The losses are due poor means of transportation, poor handling and poor storage.

We innovated Fruiti-cycle, an electric tricycle manually powered by cycling. It has a detachable low tech refrigerated storage unit to prolong the shelve-life of fruits and vegetables during transportation.

With Fruiti-cycle a farmer can carry up to 300kg of produce at a time; he can make 1-5 trips to the market within a distance of 1-80km giving him the ability to conveniently reach further markets. With the electric power system, he can conveniently offer door to door sales of his produce to the immediate consumers hence eliminating the middle men. The low tech refrigerated storage unit uses evaporative cooling system powered by solar making it environmentally friendly and most importantly prolongs the shelve-life of the fruits and vegetable on transportation when well package within the cool storage unit. Fruiti-cycle has an after sale service SMS phone application system to help fruits and vegetable farmers has access to market information about prices and locations to increase market accessibility

What was your inspiration?

Our biggest inspiration came from the life we lived while growing up. We all come from an agricultural background and helping in the farm during school holidays was part of our responsibility. Sometimes the responsibilities also extended to selling the produce in market to supplement the household income that supported our education. We have experienced the problem and what made it profound is the fact that this problem is a global phenomenon.

These experiences and the global reality gave us the passion, the conviction and the drive to pursue the problem and provide solutions for our immediate communities, and communities in other parts of the world.

What kept you going?

We had so many challenges along the way! One of them was finance. We fundraised amongst ourselves, but it was still hard. We would borrow money the pay back later. Another challenge was discouragement from people we shared the idea with, some said it is impossible! Others said you need a lot of money! Others told us the idea has already been thought about, so many reasons enough for us to drop the idea and give up, but we did not. We believed in the idea, we persisted. What keep us going was the picture of the experience after winning the award, what it would mean to us personally and intellectually, and most of all the dream that this idea can actually solve our communities problem someday.

What your experience has been?

The experience has been epic! I am afraid my words may not be able to fully describe the experience! But anyway the all TFF(Thought For Food) experience started when we were selected among top 10 teams globally, from over 500 submissions from 100 countries.
What followed was a 9 weeks online boot camp were Startup Pirates took us through business model mentorship. On the last week we travelled to Zurich, Switzerland to join the other 9 teams to prepare for the summit. One week from Zurich was initially training us how to pitch at the summit and several social events for us within the city.
The summit was GREAT! EPIC!......we got to meet and network with several powerful people. The last amazing thing was our pitch! It wowed the audience and the judges. That earned us the fourth prize, 2,500$ TAKE TO THE FARMER AWARD, first of its kind sponsored by Norman Borlaug Foundation. NBF is chaired by Julie Borlaug, the granddaughter of Norman Borlaug. Norman Borlaug, a Nobel Peace Prize winner considered the Father of Modern agriculture. The award means a lot for us not only because it has given us the ability to continue with the project, but there are also powerful people behind us who are willing to give us a shoulder to stand on.

What advice you can give to a student out there?

Most times students are afraid to participate in international competitions. There is a belief that other students out there are brighter; students in developed countries have better opportunities. Our advice to other students is that try out the challenges, they will help you develop whether you win or not. It’s very possible to win and when you do you will realise that you are as smart as the other students in developed countries or even smarter.

So when you birth an idea, believe in it 100%! Never give up! When you fail, learn from it and keep trying out, keep improving until you get that very thing that works.

Here is Mr Ben Wakorach Sharing about the Tri Cycle

For more information abou the Tricycle, visit http://www.tffchallenge.com/team/2015/fruti-cycle/