- From Ballia to the national stage, UP student, Abhinav Jaiswal is building a tech solution to help people decode complex documents before they sign
- Now among Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2026’s Top 20 teams, he is turning a small-town idea into a potential scalable venture through mentorship and prototyping
UTTAR PRADESH, India – Sep. 21, 2026 – What if someone who struggles to read a legal, financial or official document could understand what it says before putting their signature on it?
That question led young innovator Abhinav Jaiswal to begin developing a technology-led solution aimed at making important documents easier to understand for people with limited literacy.
For Abhinav, who grew up in the small town of Ballia and is now based in Varanasi, what began as an idea inspired by an everyday problem is gradually becoming something bigger.
His idea has taken him to the Top 20 of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2026, Samsung’s flagship innovation programme for young people, where mentorship and exposure to experts are helping him think about how an early-stage idea can be developed into a real-world solution — and potentially, over time, a scalable venture.
Solving an Everyday Indian Problem
Abhinav has been fascinated by Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and STEM from an early age. But as his understanding of technology grew, so did his interest in using it to solve problems he could see around him.
One such problem was document literacy.
Legal agreements, financial documents and official paperwork can be difficult to understand, particularly for people who are illiterate or semi-literate. Complex language can leave people dependent on others to explain information before they sign or consent to something.
Abhinav began asking whether technology could help bridge this gap by making important information easier to understand.
That question became the starting point for Team ItzFOD.
Taking an Idea Beyond Technology
Being selected among the Top 20 teams at Samsung Solve for Tomorrow gave Abhinav an opportunity to take the idea beyond its initial technological concept.
At the SFT Bootcamp, conversations with mentors and experts pushed him to ask a different set of questions: Who exactly was he solving the problem for? How would people use the solution? What would make it relevant in the real world? And how could a prototype clearly demonstrate the connection between the problem and its potential impact?
“My idea needed guidance and mentorship on the prototype,” Abhinav said.
One of his biggest learnings was that a prototype should not simply demonstrate what technology can do. It should also tell the story of the problem it is trying to solve.
“I learnt that you should try to relate a story to the prototype,” he said.
For someone whose early interest was driven by a fascination with AI and Machine Learning, it marked an important shift — from thinking primarily about technology to thinking about the people who might eventually use it.
From Prototype to Potential Venture
The mentoring also encouraged Abhinav to reconsider the scale of the opportunity.
“My idea is too big. I realised I would be solving many issues,” he said.
He began to see that document literacy is not simply about translating or simplifying difficult words. It is also about access to information and helping people better understand what they are being asked to agree to.
His prototype continues to evolve, but Abhinav says the way he thinks about and communicates the idea has already changed significantly.
“The prototype may not have changed much, but my pitching has improved. I learnt a lot from the suggestions given by the mentors,” he said.
That evolution is also helping him understand something fundamental to entrepreneurship: an idea rarely begins as a finished product.
It has to be questioned, tested, explained, refined and sometimes reimagined before it can become a solution capable of operating at scale.
Small Towns, Big Ideas
Abhinav’s journey also reflects a larger story emerging from Samsung Solve for Tomorrow 2026.
More than half of the Top 20 teams this year come from Tier 2 and Tier 3 India, with finalists representing 18 cities across 12 states. Many of their ideas are rooted in problems they have encountered in their own communities.
Through Samsung Solve for Tomorrow, these young innovators are gaining access to mentorship, technology expertise and a national platform to develop those ideas further.
The Top 20 finalists are being mentored by experts from Samsung and the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) at IIT Delhi as they refine their prototypes and prepare for the next stage of the programme.
For young innovators from smaller cities and towns, that exposure can help bridge an important distance — between identifying a problem and understanding how an idea might eventually become a viable solution or venture.
For Abhinav, the experience has already changed the way he looks at innovation.
“I realised something — trying is the most important thing. No idea is smaller,” he said.
From growing up in Ballia to developing his idea in Varanasi and taking it to a national innovation platform, Abhinav’s journey is still at an early stage.
But that is also the point.
Potential startups do not always begin in established innovation hubs or with fully formed business plans. Sometimes they begin with a young person in a smaller town noticing a problem that others have learned to live with — and deciding to try to solve it.
For Abhinav and Team ItzFOD, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow is helping turn that first attempt into something more: a sharper problem statement, an evolving prototype and an idea with the potential to grow much further.
Link to the Newsroom: From a Small-Town Idea to a Potential Startup: Varanasi student takes on India’s Document Literacy Challenge