Worli 17-yr-old creates app to help you locate dustbins near you, so you don't go around in circles hunting for one or throw the trash on road in frustration
Rishy Rane shows his GARBO app. Pics/Pradep Dhivar
Last October, Rishy Rane was out gorging on fast food with his friends in South Mumbai, when he couldn't find a dustbin around to throw the trash. Not one to litter, the teenager walked for 20 minutes, asking passers-by for directions, to find a bin. And thus, the idea to make this process easier via technology took root in the mind of the computer science and programming enthusiast.
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Nearly eight months on, the Worli resident has developed GARBO, a mobile app to locate dustbins around the city.
Rishy Rane shows his GARBO app. Pics/Pradep Dhivar
The eureka day
The DY Patil International School student says, "My friends and I were at Marine Drive... After finishing our snacks, we looked around for a bin to throw the containers and tissue papers, but there was none. I then started thinking that I can do something about this, in a different way.
"Most people own a smartphone now; so I worked on making an app to locate a dustbin near one's location with the help of GPS. All one has to do is open the app and click on 'Find the nearest dustbin' option, and the app will give directions to the nearest one."
The secret code
The actual process of developing the app took him just a few weeks. "I started working on it last winter. Initially, it looked like a difficult task; meanwhile, there were school exams to study for, and I couldn't devote much time to it. Then, during the summer vacation, I did an internship with a software developing company, where I learned about app development, and that finally helped me to design GARBO," he said.
Five to six hours every day for three weeks, Rane worked on coding and developing the app. On June 22, he launched it on Google Play store, allowing his friends to look at it and adding a few more dustbin locations. "So far, it's been working fine; my friends have been helping to add dustbin locations as and when they think of them," he added.
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