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So I grew up in Limpopo, on the border of Limpopo

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and Mpumalanga, a little town called Motetema.

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Water and electricity supply are as unpredictable

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as the weather, and growing up in these tough situations,

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at the age of 17, I was relaxing with a couple of friends

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of mine in winter, and we were sunbathing.

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The Limpopo sun gets really hot in winter.

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So as we were sunbathing, my best friend next to me says,

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"Man, why doesn't somebody invent something that you can

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just put on your skin and then you don't have to bathe?"

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And I sat, and I was like, "Man, I would buy that, eh?"

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So I went home, and I did a little research,

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and I found some very shocking statistics.

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Over 2.5 billion people in the world today

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do not have proper access to water and sanitation.

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Four hundred and fifty million of them are in Africa,

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and five million of them are in South Africa.

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Various diseases thrive in this environment,

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the most drastic of which is called trachoma.

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Trachoma is an infection of the eye due to dirt

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getting into your eye. Multiple infections of trachoma

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can leave you permanently blind.

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The disease leaves eight million people permanently blind

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each and every year. The shocking part about it

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is that to avoid being infected with trachoma,

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all you have to do is wash your face:

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no medicine, no pills, no injections.

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So after seeing these shocking statistics, I thought to myself,

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"Okay, even if I'm not just doing it for myself

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and the fact that I don't want to bathe, I at least need

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to do it to try to save the world." (Laughter)

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So with my trusty little steed, my Nokia 6234 cell phone --

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I didn't have a laptop, I didn't have Internet much,

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except for the 20-rand-an-hour Internet cafe —

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I did research on Wikipedia, on Google, about lotions,

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creams, the compositions, the melting points, the toxicities --

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I did high school science --

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and I wrote down a little formula on a piece of paper,

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and it looked like the KFC special spice, you know?

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So I was like, okay, so we've got the formula ready.

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Now we need to get this thing into practice.

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Fast forward four years later, after having written

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a 40-page business plan on the cell phone,

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having written my patent on the cell phone,

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I'm the youngest patent-holder in the country,

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and — ("No more bathing!") —

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I can't say any more than that. (Laughter)

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I had invented DryBath, the world's first

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bath-substituting lotion.

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You literally put it on your skin, and you don't have to bathe.

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(Laughter)

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So after having tried to make it work in high school

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with the limited resources I had, I went to university,

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met a few people, got it into practice,

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and we have a fully functioning product that's ready

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to go to the market. It's actually available on the market.

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So we learned a few lessons in commercializing

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and making DryBath available.

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One of the things we learned was that poor communities

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don't buy products in bulk.

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They buy products on demand. A person in Alex

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doesn't buy a box of cigarettes. They buy one cigarette

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each day, even though it's more expensive.

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So we packaged DryBath in these innovative little sachets.

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You just snap them in half, and you squeeze it out.

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And the cool part is, one sachet substitutes one bath

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for five rand.

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After creating that model, we also learned a lot

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in terms of implementing the product.

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We realized that even rich kids from the suburbs

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really want DryBath. (Laughter)

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At least once a week.

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Anyway, we realized that we could save 80 million liters

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of water on average each time they skipped a bath,

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and also we would save two hours a day for kids

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who are in rural areas, two hours more for school,

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two hours more for homework,

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two hours more to just be a kid.

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After seeing that global impact, we narrowed it down

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to our key value proposition,

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which was cleanliness and convenience.

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DryBath is a rich man's convenience

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and a poor man's lifesaver.

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Having put the product into practice, we are actually now

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on the verge of selling the product

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onto a multinational to take it to the retail market,

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and one question I have for the audience today is,

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on the gravel roads of Limpopo,

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with an allowance of 50 rand a week,

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I came up with a way for the world not to bathe.

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What's stopping you? (Applause)

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I'm not done yet. I'm not done yet.

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And another key thing that I learned a lot

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throughout this whole process,

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last year Google named me as one of the brightest young minds in the world.

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I'm also currently the best student entrepreneur

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in the world, the first African to get that accolade,

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and one thing that really puzzles me is, I did all of this

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just because I didn't want to bathe. Thank you.

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(Applause.)