PEORIA MAGAZINE June 2023

C O V E R

DRIP AND DRIZZL

Teen entrepreneur Khushi Shah of Peoria is turning heads with her high-tech irrigation system, among other accomplishments

BY KATIE FALEY PHOTOS BY RON JOHNSON

S ome kids make volcanoes out of baking soda and vinegar for their school science project. Some kids do the ol’ egg drop. But if you’re Khushi Shah, you create a smart and efficient irrigation system that is drawing raves from fans many years her senior. Shah, the daughter of parents who emigrated from India in pursuit of the American dream, is a changemaker, entrepreneur, mentor and founder of Drizzl, an irrigation solution and future business now in the testing phase of its development. And she’s only 18. SEEING A PROBLEM, FIXING IT Her parents, Vaibhav and Hetal Shah, are engineers whose careers meant moving around a lot. By the time

HOW DOES DRIZZL WORK? E-Code/Drizzl consists of two parts. The first is the thermometer-sized underground humidity sensor that is placed in the soil. The second is an accompanying app which connects to the sensor. When the user inputs two simple bits of information – the location, which allows the app to pull up a constantly updating precipitation forecast, and the type of plant – the app will notify the user when the plant needs watering. It was created to be user-friendly, so anyone with a garden, farm or even just a houseplant can use it. “It’s similar to Google Nest technol ogy. Everything is connected,” said Shah, who’d seen plenty of automatic sprinklers operating during a rainfall, effectively wasting water.

Khushi graduated high school, she had attended 13 schools across three different countries. Her international childhood gave her a global mindset and many unique experiences. She saw cross-continental problems affecting different populations around the globe. When Shah was in seventh grade, she traveled to visit family in India. There she saw a glaring problem. Many people were suffering from limited access to the basic human right of clean drinking water. When she returned stateside and was assigned an eighth-grade science project at Dunlap Valley Middle School, it dawned on Shah that she could create a solution to lessen unnecessary water use. E-Code was born. E-Code was the original name for the concept that Shah would go on to develop into Drizzl.

38 JUNE 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE