Five teenage girl students from Bengaluru won the Technovation challenge at a global pitch event at San Francisco city in the US.

Sanjana Vasanth, N. Anupama, Mahima Mehendale, Swasthi P. Rao and B. Navyashree, all aged 14, won the award for their app Sellixo which provides an online marketplace to buy and sell dry waste.

Inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi‘s Swachh Bharat Mission, the girls have have made an app where you can sell your garbage by just clicking on an ‘app, and a recycling unit comes to collect it!’

The girls beat 400 other teams from 64 nations to bag $10,000 on June 25 with their app, which caters to dry waste producers like small shopkeepers, dry waste collectors (raddiwalas), recycling agencies and others. “In India, we have scrap dealers who go from house to house collecting waste. It is a tiring job, so we want to connect the buyers and sellers of dry waste,” said team member Swasthi P. Rao to media.

“Once people know that they will get money for it, they will be motivated to actually collect it (dry waste), segregate it and dispose it properly,” added B. Navyashree to media.

The girls competed under the team name Pentechan and pitched their idea to top female technology executives in the challenge organized by Adobe Foundation, CA Technologies, Google, Verizon, United Nations Women, UNESCO and MIT Media Lab.

Pentechan started the app development process in January 2015 with the mentorship of Goldman Sachs company, and spent six months fine-tuning their business planning, marketing, communication, technology research and leadership.

Technovation is a technology entrepreneurship programme for girls which aims to inspire the next generation of young women entrepreneurs.

Sellixo is an android mobile application which provides an online marketplace for users to buy and sell dry waste. It targets the following customer segments: dry waste producers like small shopkeepers and apartment associations, dry waste collectors (raddiwaalas) and recycling agencies.