Track You – an innovative way to fight against corruption

Sourabh Pateriya, an Interaction Design graduate from IIT-Mumbai, has taken it upon himself to fight ignite political awareness amongst India’s disaffected youth. According to him if one has to fight corruption, one first has to take on political ignorance amongst the young voters. He says, “Even if I work all alone on this project, it still has a chance of making a difference. Otherwise, it’ll just go down the drain.” His innovation Track You is a social networking platform that allows people to make their profiles and indulge in discussions solely related to Indian politics. Sourabh’s innovation that falls in the “Digital Government” category was amongst the thirteen shortlisted innovations out of 1300 entries submitted in Innovation Jockeys Season 3.

So what is Track You all about and how is it different from other social networking sites?

According to Sourabh, the difference lies in the fact that it only focuses on “politics”. It is a platform on which people can create profiles, they can post their opinions on the page and can initiate conversations related to real life issues such as pothole problems in a specific area. The application has keyword analysis algorithm which sieves through the keywords. Sourabh explains, “For example, if it’s a pothole problem, the system automatically knows that this problem goes to a particular government body so it intelligently redirects it to the concerned government body. If the leaders do not respond to the problem or solve it soon after, there is a “webutation score” – means ‘web reputation’. This increases accountability and transparency.”

What compelled the 24-year-old to come up with this concept?

“Once I was sitting with my family watching news and every news channel was talking about corruption. I was quite frustrated because I felt even in the twenty first century when we have enough technological advances and technologically designed methodologies how is this still happening. I was moved enough to take it up as an academic project,” says the young innovator.

Track You isn’t his first innovation. Sourabh’s ambition in life is to become a prolific innovator. He feels Innovation Jockeys provided him great impetus in that direction by giving him an opportunity to interact with experts and cutting edge innovators.

So what’s happening with Track You now?

“It is a challenging idea and I am giving it a thought to find multiple ways it can go forward. A product can be amazing but it needs to reach people. To evaluate the whole concept I did prototyping with Unmesh, Ambar and tested it for 3 months and got amazing insights,” he says. “Right now I am fine-tuning the Interactions and trying to make it marketable. The next would be looking for investors,” adds the excited young innovator.