This article has been published in partnership with vivo India.
No one would want a security camera inside a washroom, a hostel corridor at night, or the rooms of a home.
Yet these are often the spaces where people may need help the most.
At 14, Prateek Sethi found himself thinking about this gap: how do you make such places safer without watching people?
His answer came from something already moving through the walls around him: Wi-Fi.
Most people think of WiFi as something that streams videos or loads a webpage. Prateek saw something else in it, a signal that bends and scatters every time a person moves through a room, in ways specific enough to be read.
If those patterns could be understood, he believed, they could help identify when a movement inside a space looked normal and when it signalled possible danger. That became the base of his project.
“My project was about identifying criminal patterns using WiFi,” he says. “It’s everywhere, so I used AI to differentiate between what a normal person would do in a space, and what constitutes a violent or criminal act.” No cameras and no recorded footage are required. Just a signal, doing the work no lens ever could.
That idea won him the individual category at the third edition of vivo Ignite, vivo India’s Technology and Innovation Initiative, along with a Rs 4 lakh scholarship.
Now 15 and in Class 10 at a public school in a remote part of Odisha, Prateek is exactly the kind of story the programme’s fourth edition is hoping to find again.
Registrations are open to students in Classes 8 to 12 across India at vivoignite.com, and close on 10 July 2026.
How a 14-YO saw safety in Wi-Fi signals
Prateek’s interest in AI and IoT began during the pandemic, when his professor father asked if he’d like to spend his free time exploring technology instead of focusing only on schoolbooks. That early curiosity turned into years of self-driven learning.
When a spate of crimes against women in India drew national attention, Prateek found a direction for his skills. “That’s what sparked the journey of this innovation,” he says.
For the first time, students from India’s 112 government-designated “aspirational districts” will receive special weightage in the selection process, along with students from government schools.
He first learned about vivo Ignite through the programme’s website, and separately through a friend who had competed in an earlier edition and gone on to study at an IIT.
“I thought I should also enroll in this initiative,” Prateek recalls. “I wasn’t sure if I would win, but it was worth a shot.” His friend, an alumnus of vivo Ignite and currently a student at an IIT, helped guide him through the practical side of entering, from preparing a project synopsis to shaping the idea into something presentable.
The competition narrowed down to 200 finalists from thousands of entries, each supported through online mentoring before a two-day National Finale in Delhi. The finale included one day of workshops on entrepreneurial and critical-thinking skills, followed by a final showcase where participants defended their projects before a panel.
A mentor’s advice stuck with him. “He told me to stick to the problem and keep solving the small details,” Prateek says. “In the end, we may never solve the problem completely, but if we try, we’ll get somewhere.”
You have until 10 July to decide if your idea is worth submitting. Chances are, it already is!
He used his prize money to improve the project. He bought ESP32 transceivers to capture Wi-Fi signals, built an AI model on Ollama, and got a machine powerful enough to run the whole system.
A year later, Prateek’s system has moved beyond the prototype stage.
“Earlier it was between prototype and advanced stage,” he says. “Now I’m at a point where I can implement it anywhere.” It’s currently deployed across parts of his father’s college campus, including classrooms and hostel areas.
“I was able to catch up with one or two cases where some sort of violence was happening,” he says. “I recorded it, and I successfully identified it in real-time data.” His long-term goal is to bring similar sensors into ordinary homes.
“You can’t put a CCTV camera in a washroom,” he points out. “But with WiFi sensors, only when there’s activity, you can identify it without violating anyone’s privacy.”
Why vivo is betting on student innovators
For vivo India, Ignite reflects a strategic bet on India’s youth.
“India has nearly 250 million children, and one of the youngest populations in the world,” says Geetaj Channana, Chief Corporate Communications Officer at vivo India. “We saw enormous, untapped potential, especially with students from Classes 8 to 12.”
What was missing, he explains, wasn’t ambition but a platform capable of turning an idea into something real.
“We didn’t just want to fund a programme; we wanted to create an ecosystem that inspires joy to create and innovate. vivo Ignite is a bridge between ‘I have an idea’ and ‘I built something real.'”
The programme has grown substantially. Its third (previous) edition alone drew more than 37,000 registrations from over 9,000 schools spanning more than 660 districts — more than double the previous year’s numbers.
The programme is open for students from classes 8 to 12. Any school, any district, any PIN code. The only real requirement is that you’ve noticed a problem worth solving.
That scale of growth taught vivo something specific. “As we scale, mentorship needs more structure, not just more entries,” Channana says.
In response, Edition 4 introduces an “Achiever 30” cohort offering intensive mentorship to top performers, alongside a Teacher Innovation Fellowship, “because behind every brilliant student is an educator who fostered that curiosity, and they deserve to be supported too.”
Asked what has stayed with him across four editions, Channana recalls a changemaker from Odisha in the third edition who built an AI-based security system that detected suspicious activity purely through WiFi signals, with no cameras involved — a description that unmistakably matches Prateek’s project.
“What stayed with me wasn’t just the clever engineering, but the maturity of his thought process,” Channana says. “He didn’t chase the trendiest tech. He focused on building something practical, empathetic, and respectful of human dignity.”
Taking innovation beyond big-city classrooms
A central belief behind this year’s edition is that talent has never been India’s scarce resource, but access has.
For the first time, students from India’s 112 government-designated “aspirational districts” will receive special weightage in the selection process, along with students from government schools. These districts have historically faced gaps in infrastructure, healthcare and education.
Notably, 80 of the 112 districts had already participated in the third edition.
“Our deliberate shift to target these regions stems from a belief at vivo that opportunity must be distributed equally,” Channana explains. “It was immediately clear that the barrier was never a lack of ambition or intellect; it was purely a lack of access. We want to ensure that a student’s PIN code, or the resources of their school, do not dictate their chances of changing the world.”
The numbers behind the stories
“The biggest evolution is that we have transitioned from being a traditional competition to becoming a self-sustaining ecosystem,” says Channana. Across three editions, vivo Ignite has reached thousands of students across the countries. Edition 3 alone crossed 37,000 registrations from over 9,000 schools across 660+ districts, which more than doubled the previous years’ reach.
This year’s prize pool totals Rs 30 lakh, with the Top 10 finalists selected through seven stages leading up to the National Finale in Delhi on 11 October 2026.
Mentorship, a national stage, a shot at Rs 30 lakh in prizes — and a shift in how you see your own ideas. That part doesn’t end when the competition does.
vivo measures the programme’s impact through two lenses: reach and depth. “Reach looks at our macro-metrics, the growing number of registrations, schools, and districts,” Channana says. “Depth looks at what happens after the Grand Finale.”
While vivo doesn’t disclose individual career paths, he notes that alumni consistently choose higher education in advanced STEM fields and keep refining the prototypes they first built as teenagers.
“Proof of success lies in watching these students transition from learners into serious problem-solvers who are actively pursuing solutions to real-world challenges.”
What students get beyond the prize money
For Prateek, the lasting impact isn’t the trophy; it’s the system now running on a real campus, and an ongoing conversation with a fellow finalist working on brain-controlled robotic limbs, two teenagers already imagining where their fields might intersect.
Channana describes a similar transformation across hundreds of participants. “The real change we see is how confident, refined, and sure young students become after participating on a national stage,” he says. “They stop just dreaming about an idea and start understanding the mechanics of how to build it.”
Win or lose, he adds, that shift from raw instinct to structured thinking becomes an invaluable life skill: “Once a student realises they have the agency and the tools to solve a complex problem, that confidence stays with them forever.”
How to apply?
Somewhere in India right now, a student is looking at a broken system, an unsafe corner, or a gap everyone else has walked past, and already working out how to fix it. That’s exactly who vivo Ignite is built for.
If that’s you, apply with the idea you have, even if it is still taking shape. Registrations for vivo Ignite’s fourth edition are open to students in Classes 8 through 12 anywhere in India, and close on 10 July 2026, at vivoignite.com.
From there, the programme’s remaining stages will run through the year, building up to the National Finale in October.
Images courtesy of vivo India
