A bad stretch of road pushed a teenager in New Delhi to build his own fix.
Parth, 15, created an AI-powered app called Project Sadak that lets people report potholes, rate how serious they are and send the complaint straight to authorities.
He designed the app after his parents crashed their motorcycle on a pothole in New Delhi at night while returning from a family celebration in Agra.
“The platform was built by me from scratch,” he told The Better India. “Initially, yes, I started writing code, but as the complexity began to rise, I had to make use of AI.”
The app lets users take a photo of a pothole, tag its location with GPS and upload both to the Project Sadak server.
AI checks that the image is actually of a pothole. A human review then checks that the grading, severe, medium or benign, matches the image.
That system is meant to stop the worst potholes from getting lost among other complaints.
Once a report is complete, the user can digitally sign an email and send it to local authorities in their part of New Delhi.
“Initially, we were emailing the parties manually,” Parth admits, “but now the platform automatically writes an email and submits the report.”
So far, 360 potholes have been reported and 11 have been repaired. The article said almost all of those were repaired by Parth himself, using contractors through his father’s construction business.
It said Parth blamed government corruption and diffusion of responsibility for why he had to handle most of the repairs himself.
The article also said one pothole reported in Bengaluru was fixed, even though the AI could not find contact details for the authorities.
Parth’s planned updates include full AI automation from photo to email and a WhatsApp chatbot so people can use Project Sadak without downloading the app.
The app also does not yet have a system to track if reported potholes are eventually repaired.
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