Juniors snag third FBLA Shark Tank victory

An idea for a new version of a backpack by Diamond Bar High School juniors Anoushka Bhat and Anna Chen won the fourth annual Shark Tank event, which is inspired by the hit television show “Shark Tank.” This was their third time winning the event.

The Nov. 22 event, hosted by the Future Business Leaders of America club, gave students the opportunity to experience the process of coming up with an invention and pitching their product to potential investors interested in becoming a stakeholder in their company.

The participants pitched their ideas to a panel of FBLA officers. The participants who had the best presentation and could make their product come to life won the competition.

The theme for this year’s inventions was related to ways to help students out, and any student on campus could have joined the competition.

Bhat and Chen created “Aeropack,” their suit up version of a regular backpack, which is often too heavy to carry. 

“Everybody has a problem with carrying a really heavy backpack at school, so it [Aeropack] is a backpack that has propellers on the bottom and it’s solar-powered,” Bhat said.

According to Bhat and Chen, the program behind their idea of the Areopack is efficient and uses technology that benefits the user.

“You would be able to carry a small chip in your pocket, and essentially, it [the Aeropack] connects to the chip, and because it has a processor in there, wherever you go, it will fly behind you,” Bhat said.

After brainstorming different inventions that they could create to help students out, the duo was able to come up with their flying backpack technology.

“So we were just thinking about the theme which was like how to help students out, and we actually did research and looked into one of the main stresses that students have, and then we considered like backpacks that every student needs, and we felt like that was the most universal product that anyone could use,” Bhat said.