JOIN USPavan Srinivas was barely in high school when he came up with his first invention, using simple and ordinary things lying around the house. As a part of his school representation in Initiative for Research and Innovation in Science Fair (IRIS), Pavan developed an organic pesticide and tested it in his backyard.
He found it extremely effective in killing pests and this was the beginning of his tryst with innovation. Taking his invention a step forward, Pavan showcased it at a national symposium in Kolkata. He always wished to improve on it so that he can take it to the farmers in villages.
Today, Pavan is doing second year law at the National Law School of India University. “Confidence was everything in school. I always questioned my teachers and reached a stage when they asked me to keep quiet because they didn’t have answers to my questions. But I continue to question even to this day,” smiles Pavan, who is also a motivational speaker.
He takes sessions on confidence building for his peers and those in high school. Talking about the topics he chooses to discuss during his sessions on motivation, Pavan points out that most youngsters lack confidence. “Yes, the competition is intense but when you develop self-confidence, you can achieve what you think is hard to get,” he shares.
How does he motivate himself? He recollects that he attended a session on the ‘Power of Q (Questioning)’ and also won the Model United Nations back in school. “These two competitions changed my way of thinking and made me more confident about my skills and abilities. It is this confidence that helped me surge forward. This is exactly what I stress in all my talks on motivation,” he shares.
He states that he always told people to compete with themselves rather than get stuck in comparisons. “You must compete with yourself rather than rate yourself against others. Strive to be better with every step that you take,” he adds. Pavan says another thing that keeps him motivated to help others is that he took to sports even while he was at the peak of his academics.
“I was always an all-rounder and played just as hard as I studied,” he says. He is not one of those who has left his invention at school and forgotten all about it. Pavan wants to integrate law with science and work towards patenting his the product that he developed in class seven.
“Agriculture is the backbone of our economy and I want to develop the pesticide on a larger scale so that it helps increase production and in turn, boost profits of the farming community,” he sums up.