If you take a trip to the south Indian countryside, you will notice acres and acres of coconut trees all around you. Towering over everything else, these skyscraper-like trees magnify the beauty of the landscape. However, this same towering quality also makes it hard for us to pluck the coconut fruit, used for its oil, water, pulp, fibre and shell. So how do we get this very useful fruit to make its way down from its home up in the tree?

Snake attacks in villages are significantly higher when compared to those in cities. A major cause for this is inadequate lighting in rural areas. The lack of well-lit streets in villages also restricts movement. Come nightfall and villagers hesitate to step out of their homes for fear of an unexpected encounter with a snake.

Young Mathews was reading in his room in Kottayam, Kerala, when a mosquito flew towards him. He brushed it off and watched as it made its way towards a glass pane and attempted to fly through it. A few months later, Mathews noticed a giant cloud of mosquitoes in a cowshed in his neighbourhood, especially swarming around its urine tank. These were the two “aha!” moments that inspired Mathews K Mathew, a Kottayam-based inventor, to create the ‘Hawker Solar Mosquito Destroyer’ some fifteen years later.