How this 7-year-old conceptualised an app to help plant more trees and make the planet greener

How do you talk to a seven-year-old about starting up? The conversation happens in short, exciting bursts, punctuated with helpful prompts by her father.

Like children her age, Agrata Tiwary wants to explain it all on her own, even if she has to stop and think about the right word to use while explaining what her app is all about. In between, she asks her father, mera interview hai ki aapka (is it your interview or mine?) and both the adults in the conversation burst into laughter.

The precocious seven-year-old has just finished her coding class for the day. She’s taking 50 classes online to hone her skills and develop more games and integrate them into her app, Trilovera.

Reducing the carbon footprint

It all began last Diwali when Agrata noticed the number of times delivery persons used to drop off packages to their doorstep. Her Mumbai-based parents were on an online shopping spree for the festival, and she thought that was a lot of carbon footprint.

How did she know about the environment and carbon footprint? Her father Bikrant Tiwary is the CEO of grow-trees.com, a web-enabled cost-effective service for individuals and companies globally to enable planting of trees.

“When I saw my family members shopping online, I thought of the different ways they are creating carbon in the atmosphere, directly or indirectly, and thought of suggesting to the local government to punish/charge every user when they shop or order online. But my parents told me that was not a good idea. After discussions with family members, I thought the best way was to plant trees and reduce the effect of carbon on the environment as I have been taught about it since I was very small,” she says.

This brainstorming and Agrata’s idea led to the birth of Trilovera, an app which was developed by her aunts, who are software developers.

Use the app and plant trees

The concept is simple. Trilovera, developed from two words “tree lover”, integrates all popular ecommerce websites like Flipkart, Amazon; ride-sharing apps Ola and Uber; food delivery apps Swiggy, Zomato, and others like BookMyShow, MakeMyTrip, and Oyo as a one-point solution for users to access the app of their choice.

When they use Trilovera to access these apps, the transactions will help Trilovera plant trees in India at no cost to the user. Trilovera will plant trees from the money received on Google Ads, marketing on the users’ behalf.

Apart from these, Trilovera also integrates games for users, most of which have been developed by Agrata herself.

She explains there is no such platform in India that cares for the environment by planting a tree free of cost for using an app.

Bikrant informs that there is a web search engine called ecosia.org, based in Germany, that is planting trees for every search that happens on its website. It is nine-years-old and has gained over eight million users and has planted 65 million trees across the globe.

Agrata wants to replicate this immense success in India as well. A student of Green Acres School, Mumbai, she presented the model and app to the principal, students, and teachers, who have encouraged her to take it forward.

Towards one million trees

Due to the lockdown following the spread of the coronavirus, Bikrant has not been able to help Agrata much with publicity. They hope things will improve in the coming months and the app will gain traction. So far, Trilovera has 1,600 downloads, and with revenue from Google ads, has planted 11 trees.

Bikrant has invested around Rs 2 lakh for developing the app and enrolling Agrata in the coding classes.

The very young entrepreneur says, coming up with the idea was easy but putting it into practice came with a lot of challenges.

“I did not know coding in the beginning, so it was difficult. Coding classes are helping me get better at it. Now I know Javascript coding and have built two more game apps. Also, I was not able to communicate in front of strangers, but my parents and teachers taught me how to speak about the app. I have given a talk on live radio, in the school assembly, and also for a documentary video,” she says.

Once the downloads increase, after keeping a 20-25 percent profit, the funds will be used to plant trees across India. The revenue model will be through Google Ads and brand/companies’ affiliation fee/commission.

In the next 18 months, the father-daughter duo wants to achieve one million downloads, and aim to plant one million trees.

“Every person who uses a mobile phone and shops online should know they are also a reason for global warming and pollution. If each one endeavours to plant a tree, the earth will become a greener place to be in,” Agrata says.