Narrator: From Santa Clara, California, it's The Cube, covering Technovation World Pitch Summit 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. Now here's Sonia Tagare. Hi, and welcome to The Cube. I'm your host, Sonia Tagare, and we're here at Oracle's Agnews Campus in Santa Clara, California, covering Technovation's World Pitch Summit 2019, a pitch competition in which girls from around the world develop mobile apps in order to create positive change in the world. With us today, we have Team Coco from Kazakhstan, welcome. The members are Dilnaz Kamalova, and Malika Buribayeva, Dana Yerlanova, and Lyubov Dudchenko. Welcome, and congratulations on being finalists. Thank you. Your app is called Teco, can you tell us more about it? Teco is a 3D mobile application, which has augmented reality, and is connected to the hardware, which is dedicated for the behavioral change of people, so that they can become more eco-conscious and eco-friendly. Can you tell us more about how it works? Yes, of course. There is Lyubov who can explain this. Our application is about an astronaut who needs to save the planet. Firstly, there is a game, in which a person needs to save his or her virtual Earth by solving some ecological problems in it, so that he or she will be educated about real-life scenario. Also we have a step counter which tracks your carbon footprint, and encourages people to choose more eco-friendly transportation options. And as a way to make real impact is that we connect our application with a special eco-trash boxes in our city, all their locations are shown on the map, and coming to this places, user will see a trash box, and then throw the garbage, and then, because he has thrown the garbage, he or she will get some points, and their impact will be recognized in augmented reality. What impact in society do you hope that this app will help change? Our app is 3D mobile application, and it's a game, that is why gamification and the augmented reality, which is AR, which is inside this game, is more visually and psychologically attractive to people. Those challenges that we provide in game are incentified, so that most of the people, when they accomplish their goals, they might have a certain profit out of it, so that they can become more eco-friendly and gain benefits. This is how we want to make sure that people might change their behavior for the sake of ecology. That's awesome, so you're using essentially a game, >> Yes. To incentivize people to make better choices in their everyday lives? >> Yeah. That's great. How did you come up with this idea? Malika will explain this. Actually there were before some eco-trash boxes in our school because the thing of ecological problems and recycling is one of the most talked about topics in Kazakhstan nowadays. In our school, the students try to make this eco-trash boxes, but they were always empty, because students wasn't incentified to recycle the garbage. We tested our app in our school, and we already launched it in our school, and this app incentifies our students. Now this eco-trash box with our hardware always full. That's awesome, so you already found some success with your app. >> Thank you. Do you think that this is a problem in the bigger community? Maybe Dana can tell. We started locally, but we got it to go globally. We think that eco-pollution, pollution are global problem, and we trying to solve all over the world, so in our game, we have the whole world that you become an astronaut, so you should be aware for whole the problem that was happening in the Earth, so we are trying to engage and educate people to be more global and to be more responsible for our planet and for our home. It sounds like everyone in the world should download that app. >> Yes. Do you hope to expand if you get the funding? Yes. We plan to expand, not only in our country, Kazakhstan, not only locally, but also globally. We would like to create the eco-friendly community across Central Asia, since we want to make sure that eco-consciousness is global in our area. What struggles have you faced trying to create this app? Probably, there were some struggles, of course, in the realization of technical part of this project, and creating a business model, since we are not very experienced in this thing, but since we have participated in Technovation, and we were immersed in this process, and we were motivated to learn all this things, and acquire those skills. This is why we became more experienced in this stuff, so right now, those struggles that we faced before are no longer a problem for us, so yeah, this is what we faced. Technovation has definitely helped you improve your app? Yes, right. How else has Technovation helped you? Probably someone else wants to answer this question? How has Technovation helped you, or what skills have you learned from this journey? For example, one of the most important skills, I guess, is teamwork. After we started to work on the one project, we started to listen to each other. Technovation actually helped us to understand the opinions of other people and to understand the problems in our society. We start to dream bigger, to think bigger, wider, kind of that. >> That's amazing. Also Technovation helped as to exploring new companies, to be more open in person, to come visit companies, ask about the help, see the problems and are trying to solve, trying to find a solution, and to be the people of the world, and be responsible for our planet, for what's happening in our local community, and be aware of everything. I heard you guys had an amazing week. You went to Uber, you went to some other places. Could you tell us more about your week? You want to tell? We went to amazing places in Silicon Valley, in San Francisco, San Jose, and we so liked it, for example, Golden Gate Bridge, and also the Alcatraz. We are so impressed by their architecture, by the people, by the nature, and we expected a lot, and we got this, all the expectations are come to the reality. We hope that that kind of a dream will come true in our future, and we're going to work in one of the big companies that were located here, and all the universities. How is it like going to the different tech companies and seeing it in real life? We visited Uber company, and Google Ventures, and both, we have seen people who work there, and we're really impressed, and we really liked it, yeah. Before, in my childhood, I dreamed to be in Silicon Valley, to go there and meet people who are already working in, and now my dream came true. >> That's awesome, and you get to see California, and you might be able to win today. Maybe. (all chuckling) Thank you so much for being on. I wish you all the best, and I hope you have an amazing pitch tonight. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. This has been Team Coco from Kazakhstan. I'm your host, Sonia Tagare, this is The Cube, stay tuned for more. (electronic music)