This 17-year-old innovator has designed 'ElectroShoe' to help women fight rapists

Monday September 18, 2017 , 2 min Read

17-year-old Siddharth Mandala has designed 'ElectroShoe' that will help women protect themselves from rapists and sexual predators. Though he is a teenager who just completed High School, he designed it with the basic Physics and coding he learnt at school.

Siddharth has applied for a patent on the product and is working to make it more appealing in the market space. The shoe will inflict 0.1 amp electricity and electrocute the perpetrator. At the same time, it will also send out an alert message to police officials and family. Talking about the technology involved in designing the shoe to India Times, Siddharth said,

The shoe was created using a unique circuit board that uses footsteps to charge itself with the help of a concept called the "piezoelectric effect". The more the user walks, the more energy is generated and stored in a rechargeable battery.

Image: (L) – Deccan Chronicle; (R) – India Times

After obtaining the patent, Siddharth has plans to approach startup incubators in Hyderabad to understand how to make the shoe more viable.

Siddharth, the only son of Sreeram Mandala and Sashikala Mandala, was disturbed by the Nirbhaya gang rape in 2012. Despite the fact that he was a twelve-year-old kid then, he took part in the protest and vowed to do something to help women from becoming victims of such heinous crimes. And it took two years for him to successfully complete designing the shoe. According to The Deccan Chronicle, he said,

The basic idea was that it had to be something that women would have with them all the time. Women might forget to carry tasers or other protective devices, but no one forgets to wear shoes before they step out. It was very challenging for me to think of a solution dealing with footwear. My product is basically a prototype. I’m still figuring out ways to make the shoe water resistant and overcome other limitations.