Fresh air is a basic necessity. But with the increasing rate of air pollution and decreasing rate of air quality, it has been difficult to meet this basic need. An IIT Kanpur alumnus has come up with a natural but tech-induced way to solve this issue – smart plants.

Four years ago when Delhi was facing a serious pollution risk, Sanjay Maurya, a Mechanical Engineering graduate from IIT-Kanpur, was pursuing his MBA at the Faculty of Management Studies in the city.

He felt an urge to discover something that would solve the issue both in a household and a commercial space.

“I connected with some colleagues of mine from a startup where I worked briefly, and I reached out to some seniors from IIT Kanpur. Together, we conducted basic ground research and realised that the only air purifiers available in the market were natural plants or artificial systems that were expensive,” says Sanjay.

They soon came up with a device that combines the air purifying capability of plants with technology to amplify the output of purified air. The device uses a bio-filtration technique in which the plant absorbs polluted air, pushes it into the soil where the root takes care of suppressing the pollutants and gives out clean air. All this happens within 20 minutes.

UBreathe, which now sells five different plants that purify the air, is an alternative to expensive and artificial air purifiers in the market.

Watch to know how this amazing innovation works:

Edited by Yoshita Rao