A chair that helps a child sit upright through therapy. A straw grown from a coconut leaf instead of made from plastic. Two very different problems, solved by two founders from the same small incubator in Jaipur — and both are about to be recognised by the President of India for it.
Only 26 innovators out of more than 250 applicants made this year’s cut for one of India’s most competitive grassroots innovation honours. Two of them work out of the same incubator in Jaipur, building nothing alike — one an assistive chair for children with disabilities, the other a plastic-free straw made from coconut leaves.
Neha Solanki and Chirag M G, both founders incubated at the Atal Incubation Centre–JK Lakshmipat University (AIC-JKLU), have been selected for the Grassroots Innovator Recognition 2026. They’ll be felicitated by President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi, on July 31, alongside 24 other innovators from across the country.
The selection process, run under NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission, evaluated applicants on originality, grassroots relevance, societal impact, scalability, and — the hardest bar of all — whether the innovation actually solves a real-world problem people are living with right now.
The Buddy Chair: assistive tech that was missing
Solanki’s startup, Unnati Adaptive Devices, builds affordable assistive equipment for children with disabilities.
Its flagship product, the Buddy Chair, gives children aged four to twelve postural support, stability, and comfort during learning, therapy, meals, and daily activities that are otherwise physically difficult. The company isn’t stopping there. It’s developing Freedom Ride, an adaptive stroller for older children, and plans to expand into customised devices, caregiver support, and awareness programmes for families and therapy centres.
Straws grown, not manufactured:
Chirag M G’s Sunbird Straws uses a different raw material altogether. Dried coconut leaves and farm waste, turned into drinking straws. No chemicals involved.
It’s a plastic alternative that does double duty — using up agricultural waste that would otherwise be discarded or burned, while creating livelihood opportunities in the local communities where that raw material comes from.
The company is now testing whether the same approach works with pineapple and pandanus leaves, aiming to widen its sustainable product line beyond straws.
The Innovators Jam‘s take:
This year’s Grassroots Innovator Recognition list tells a story about where India’s innovation is actually happening: not just in metro tech hubs, but in Tier-2 and Tier-3 incubation centres. Karnataka’s AIC Nitte Incubation Centre, for instance, had three separate founders make the same 26-strong list this year — including Anusha Achar of MaVedas, who turned traditional postpartum nutrition recipes into a nationally recognised food startup, and Akshay Mashelkar of Experimind Labs, building hands-on STEM kits for children.
The pattern across almost all 26 honourees is the same: nobody’s chasing a global market first. They’re solving a problem they can see in front of them — a child who needs a better chair, a farmer’s leftover coconut leaves, a mother’s home remedy — and building something scalable out of it.
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