BENGALURU: A startup that sprouted here amid unfortunate circumstances nine years ago bagged the ‘Best Startup of Pride of India Expo’ award at Indian Science Congress, 2020, on Tuesday.In 2011, lakhs of textile workers in Tamil Nadu lost their jobs following a Supreme Court order shutting down factories for discharging effluents into rivers. The water pollution that pushed lakhs of people into joblessness also inspired scientists — Dr SCG Kiruba Daniel, Suthanthira Daniel and their colleagues — to find something to stop the hazard at the source, at a lower cost and with lesser effort. Thus came into existence Nanosolution, the brainchild of their venture JK Solutions , which was launched in Bengaluru in 2017 and incubated at IISc.Nanosolution is a liquid-based solution consisting of metal nanoclusters which, on being introduced in polluted water, draws foreign particles and sinks to the bottom as organic sludge. The founders claim the method recovers 98% of water. It is at work in BMTC and three dhobi ghats — including at Vyalikaval and Srinagar — where it treats and recycles around 1.5 lakh litres of wastewater everyday.Daniel said one litre of the solution can treat 1,000 to 2,000 litres of wastewater. “The nanotechnology-based product is a simple, one-step, rapid, low-cost solution,” he said, adding that treatment costs up to Rs 1.30 per litre, one-tenth of the regular cost. JK Solutions claims to have treated over 10 million litres of water for reuse since its inception.VP: Inventions can ward off threat to food safetyThe solution to the growing threat to food security lies in novel ideas, inventions and efforts by the scientific community, Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu said in his valedictory speech at ISC on Tuesday.Stressing the need to inculcate morals along with science among schoolkids, he said: “When we were young, we had moral science classes. Today, science continues, while morals have vanished,” Naidu said. He said people should “go online, instead of standing in a line”.“People will stand in a line, shake hands and do much more (grease palms). Direct benefit transfer will avoid it all,” he said.