Inspiring story of young scientist who built 600 drones using E-waste, rejected foreign job offers to join DRDO

New Delhi: We have heard so many stories about the people who had absolutely nothing and yet they managed to achieve their dreams despite tough odds against them. Out of them all, we have a new inspirational story of NM Pratap of Karnataka who is very much in discussions these days.

Building 600 drones from scratch

NM Prathap is on a mission to save lives with his drones while preserving the planet by building them with e-waste. So far, he made over 600 drones and has already saved people’s lives during a massive flood incident.

Pratap won the 1st prize at a Drone competition in Japan, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has honoured him with an award and has asked DRDO to absorb him for his inventions in Drone technology.

Prathap’s a BSc grad from JSS College of Arts and Commerce in Mysore. He started tinkering with drones when he was 14 years old, and by the age of 16, he built his first drone from scratch that could fly and capture images all by himself.

While trying to create his first drone from eWaste, Pratap failed nearly 80 times. But he learnt a lot during his trials and was finally able to develop a drone that was good enough to participate in a contest. He took his drone to a Drone model competition at IIT Delhi.

Pratap, who was literally in shabby clothes compared to the other competitors at IIT Delhi, focused on the competition instead. Here he won the 2nd prize after which the organisers urged him to participate in the world-renowned International Drone competition in Japan that was to be held November 27 to December 2, 2017, where he won gold medal for India.

Coming to know of his struggle and accomplishments, Japanese Nobel laureate Hideki Shirakawa invited him to his home. It was an experience that Pratap cherishes very much. He was congratulated by MLA’s and MP’s of Karnataka and later by PM Modi to called and congratulated him.

When Karnataka was suffering from massive floods, Prathap NM’s drones helped in disaster management by providing medicine and food to people in need.

Accolades and awards

Prathap has been invited to over 87 countries to show his creations to the world. He has been awarded the Albert Einstein Innovation Gold Medal International Drone Expo 2018 held in Hanover in Germany.

He was also awarded gold and silver medal and $10,000 in the International Robotics Exhibition held in Tokyo in 2017. He has also been asked to give lectures at IIT Bombay, and IISc to talk about the application of drone tech in a time-sensitive scenario.

He is currently working on a project with India’s DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) for drone application in critical national projects.