AIT, Pune’s team Aqua bags platinum award at KPIT Sparkle 2019
Pune, 4th March, 2019 : Team Aqua from Army Institute of Technology, Pune, won the platinum award of Rs 10,00,000 at the fifth edition of KPIT Sparkle 2019 for developing a vertical axis water turbine (VAWT), which is 24 per cent more efficient than a conventional system. The turbine can be used for both small and large-scale energy production and in all flow conditions.
KPIT, the global leader in automotive engineering and mobility solutions, announced the winners of its annual national design and development innovation contest, KPIT Sparkle 2019. The competition aims at fostering innovation among students by providing them with an opportunity to imagine, ideate and develop innovations with a high social impact on sustainability. In the last five years, KPIT Sparkle has received nearly 6000 ideas from more than 50,000 students nationally.
The theme for the 2019 edition was ‘Energy and Mobility for the Future. ‘ It sought futuristic solutions, based on cutting-edge technologies, to solve problems in areas, such as renewable energy generation, energy storage, energy utilisation and clean, safe, shared, connected, and secure mobility.
Ravi Pandit, co-founder, chairman, and group CEO, KPIT said, “Sparkle is our endeavour to provide young and aspiring minds with an opportunity to explore and apply new technology trends. It is a manifestation of our efforts to achieve sustainability. It will be pivotal in contributing towards our new vision of reimagining mobility with the ecosystem for the creation of a cleaner, smarter and safer world.”
KPIT Sparkle 2019 received more than 2000 ideas from around 22,000 students across more than 1,100 colleges in India. The Top 30 teams presented working prototypes of their solutions at the grand finale held on February 23 and 24, 2019, at the Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering (PCCOE).
The finalists were evaluated by a jury comprising national and international experts from the academic, business, automotive and technology fields, including Padma Vibhushan Dr R A Mashelkar, chairman, Innovation Council, KPIT; Dr Peter F Tropschuh, vice president, Strategy Sustainability, AUDI AG; Dr Ashish Lele, chief scientist and former chair-Polymer Science Engineering Division, CSIR-National Chemical Lab; Dr Milind Rane, professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Bombay; Dr Siddhartha Mukhopadhyay, professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kharagpur; Dr Praveen Kumar, professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Guwahati; MasashigeMizuyama, automotive CTO, Panasonic Corporation; Tapish Bhatt, vice president, Centre for Innovation Incubation & Entrepreneurship (CIIE), IIM Ahmedabad; Praveen Nahar, senior faculty member, Industrial Design, National Institute of Design (Ahmedabad); Dr Carl Perrin, director, Institute for Future Transport & Cities, Coventry University; and Rafi Maor, chairman, RON Investments Ltd.
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