What the invention does
The Prime Minister's Office described the work in a single sentence when it listed the 2019 Rashtriya Bal Puraskar winners: A U Nachiketh Kumar prepared standard rubber sheets from a fruit named bilimbi, Averrhoa bilimbi, as a sustainable and environment-friendly substitute for the rubber latex process farmers carry out using formic acid.
The step in question is coagulation. Latex tapped from a rubber tree is a liquid suspension; to make a sheet, the rubber particles have to be made to clump together and separate from the water. Formic acid is the standard agent for that on smallholdings, and it is bought in, handled and disposed of by farmers who often have no protective equipment. Bilimbi is naturally sharply acidic and grows in the same regions. The substitution is the whole idea, and its appeal is that it turns a purchased industrial input into something that can be picked.
The national award, January 2019
The Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar is India's national award for children, split into the Bal Shakti Puraskar for individual children and the Bal Kalyan Puraskar for institutions and adults working with them. In 2019 the Ministry of Women and Child Development selected 26 Bal Shakti Puraskar recipients from 783 applications, across six categories: innovation, scholastic achievement, sports, art and culture, social service and bravery. Two individuals and three institutions received the Bal Kalyan Puraskar.
The President of India conferred the awards in New Delhi on 22 January 2019, and the Prime Minister met the winners two days later. Nachiketh Kumar's citation sits in the innovation category, and the rubber-sheet work is what it names.
The Google Science Fair, July 2019
In July 2019 Google announced the winners of that year's Science Fair. Its post identified two young scientists from India who had found an eco-friendly way to coagulate rubber, and gave them the National Geographic Explorer Award. The pair are Nachiketh Kumar and Aman K A.
The competition had narrowed thousands of entrants to 24 finalists from 14 countries. The grand prize went to Fionn Ferreira of Ireland for extracting microplastics from wastewater. Celestine Wenardy of Indonesia took the Virgin Galactic Pioneer Award for low-cost glucose monitoring, Tuan Dolmen of Turkey the Scientific American Innovator Award for harvesting energy from tree vibrations, and Daniel Kazantsev of Russia the Lego Education Builder Award for communication technology for deaf and hard-of-hearing people.
What is documented, and what is not
Firm: the bilimbi-based rubber sheet as a substitute for formic-acid coagulation, described in the Prime Minister's Office listing; the 2019 Bal Shakti Puraskar; and the National Geographic Explorer Award at the 2019 Google Science Fair, shared with Aman K A.
Not documented in these sources: his date of birth or age, his school, his home district, and his family. Google's announcement names the fruit only as “fruit”; the bilimbi identification comes from the Indian government listing. Nothing here records whether the method has been tested at scale, taken up by farmers, patented or published, or what he has done since 2019.
Why a substitution like this matters
Most school science projects propose something new. This one proposes a removal: take an industrial chemical out of a process that millions of smallholders carry out by hand, and put in its place something that grows nearby. Innovations of that shape rarely photograph well and rarely make headlines, but they are the kind that can actually be adopted, because they lower a cost rather than adding a device.
Two separate juries reached the same conclusion about it within six months, one a national selection committee working through 783 applications, the other an international panel that had cut thousands of entries to 24. That agreement, between a government award for Indian children and a global competition judged in California, is the strongest evidence in the record that the idea was more than a classroom exercise.
| Person | Country | Milestone | Age / Stat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rajveer Meena | India | Reciting 70,000 decimal places of pi blindfolded | Age 0 |
| Rishi Shiv Prasanna | India | Winning the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar in 2023 at eight, for… | Age 0 |
| Ishita Katyal | India | Becoming the youngest Indian speaker at TEDYouth in New York at 10 (2015) | Age 10 |
| Nandini Agrawal | India | All India Rank 1 in the 2021 CA Final at 19 years and 330 days | Age 19 |
| A U Nachiketh Kumar | India | Rubber sheets coagulated with bilimbi fruit | — |
What is documented — and what is not
✓ Documented
- Rubber sheets prepared from bilimbi (Averrhoa bilimbi) as a substitute for formic acid, per the Prime Minister's Office listing
- Bal Shakti Puraskar 2019, conferred by the President of India on 22 January 2019
- National Geographic Explorer Award at the 2019 Google Science Fair, announced 29 July 2019
- The award was shared with Aman K A; the fair had 24 finalists from 14 countries
? Unverified, disputed or wrong
- Age, date of birth, school and home district are not stated in any source used
- Google's own announcement names only “fruit”, not bilimbi
- Whether the method has been tested at scale, patented or adopted is not documented
- Nothing records his activity after 2019
Questions people ask about A U Nachiketh Kumar
How old is A U Nachiketh Kumar?
No source used here gives his age or date of birth. The Bal Shakti Puraskar is awarded to children, which is the only age indication in this material.
What did Nachiketh Kumar invent?
A way to make standard rubber sheets using bilimbi fruit (Averrhoa bilimbi) as a sustainable substitute for the formic acid farmers use to coagulate latex, according to the Prime Minister's Office listing.
What is bilimbi?
Averrhoa bilimbi, a sharply sour tropical fruit. Its acidity is what allows it to stand in for formic acid in the coagulation step.
What award did he win at the Google Science Fair?
The National Geographic Explorer Award at the 2019 fair, shared with Aman K A, for an eco-friendly way to coagulate rubber.
Who won the 2019 Google Science Fair overall?
Fionn Ferreira of Ireland took the grand prize for a method of extracting microplastics from wastewater.
Is Nachiketh Kumar on Wikipedia?
No Wikipedia article on him was found among the sources used for this page.
Where is Nachiketh Kumar now?
Not documented. None of these sources follows him beyond 2019, and none says whether the method has been adopted by farmers.
Quick quiz: how well do you know Nachiketh’s story?
What did Nachiketh Kumar use in place of formic acid?
Which award did he receive at the 2019 Google Science Fair?
How many children received the Bal Shakti Puraskar in 2019?
Sources
- Students changing the world—this year's Science Fair winners — Google (The Keyword), 2019-07-29
- PM interacts with winners of Rashtriya Bal Puraskar 2019 — Prime Minister's Office of India, 2019-01-24
- President of India confers 'Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar' today in New Delhi — Press Information Bureau, Government of India, 2019-01-22
Checked by the Geniuses.club editorial team. Ages are given as of September 2026.
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