Schneider Electric India hosted the 3rd edition of Innovation Challenge on 17th December 2007. The theme for this year is ‘Energy Efficiency’. The idea behind this contest is to make students think ‘out of the box’ and come up with innovative solutions towards the different issues related to Energy & Automation sector and hence develop the budding engineering talent across the country.

The foundation of this contest was laid in October 2005.
 
47 engineering colleges, pan India, participated in this contest this year and 12 teams with 4 members each qualified to the finals. This year’s finalists are RVCE Bangalore, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Guwahati, IIT Kanpur, VJTI Mumbai, MIT Manipal, SJCE Mysore, NITK Surathkal, NIT Rourkela and MIT Anna University.

MIT, Manipal, represented by Akhouri Piyush Raj, Saurabh Vats, Shekhar Kumar & Ankur Kumar Agarwal, who presented “Renewable energy based fish processing plant” won the 1st prize of Rs. 50,000/-. IIT, Guwahati, represented by Saurabh Garg, Kiran Prakash & C. Karthik, who presented “Rumble strip dynamometer” won the 2nd prize of Rs. 30,000/-. IIT, Kanpur, represented by Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Varun Jain & Varun Khaitan, who presented “Motion detection equipped street lighting” won the 3rd prize of Rs. 20,000/-.

All participants received certificates of participation and will also stand a fair chance of a job opportunity with Schneider Electric in the future. “We are very happy to have received such an enthusiastic and overwhelming response from the colleges for the past three years in a row. This year’s theme of energy efficiency is driven by two factors, one, we want the youth to ponder over this issue and understand its importance and two, by providing this platform, we want to encourage the budding engineers to think beyond academics, about real life problems and probe solutions. The teams have displayed remarkable ingenuity and originality in the different solutions presented towards efficient utilization of Energy.” said Mr. Alain Comparet, CEO, GTCI, Schneider Electric India Pvt. Ltd.

The contest was open for under-graduates of all engineering streams. Each team could propose one innovative idea. The short listed teams were invited to present their ideas/solutions at the Schneider R&D facility in Bangalore. An elite panel of professors from premier engineering colleges namely NIT Trichy & NIT Durgapur along with distinguished experts from sales and marketing, R&D and the manufacturing plant, from within the company, were present to assess the presentations. Each team was allotted 20 minutes to present and another 5 minutes for Q&A. The ideas were judged on counts of innovation, practical application of the solution, backing the
solution with facts, attention to details while presenting and team work.