Entrepreneurs encourage engineers

BANGALORE: ‘India Engineered’, a project led by Krishna Raj and his team, emerged winners of the ‘Do Network’ competition organised by Lenovo. They  battled it out against nine participating teams to emerge as India’s promising technology inventors.  His project focused on providing quality education to engineering students in rural areas through ‘videos uploaded online’. The team will receive $25,000 from Lenovo.  The three-month-competition started last December and saw over 1,200 projects battling for the top honours. The competition also accommodated eight high profile mentors like managing director of Google India, Kajan Anandan, and ceo and co-founder of Althea System, Kishore AK to guide the competitors. Speaking at the prize-distribution ceremony, managing director of Lenovo India, Amar Babu said, “Do network re-affirms our commitment to technology and this has been an outstanding experience for all of us.”  He said that the grassroot innovation is alive and kicking. Commenting on the competitors’ involvement during the long campaign, he said, “They knew exactly how to use technology to solve problems.”The attention, however, was focused on Krishna who was overwhelmed by the recognition. He said that he got to know about the ‘Do Network’ on his Youtube channel, where he posted his tutorials on engineering. It was this project that finally won the award. He was also delighted to mention one key person, his cousin Vishnu Raj, who motivated him from the initial stages of the project and also sponsored his education in Bangalore. For him, this recognition “means a lifetime opportunity” to him.  While executing his ideas, Krishna said, “We needed only a few people, who were dedicated to the project. But, to find those few was a problem.” Amongst the other 10 finalists was Amol Chaphekar from Pune, whose idea was about solving electrical problems through Alternate Power System (APS). Amol said he was inspired to do this through the experience of not having ‘power in rural areas’. He also said that the simple gesture of recognition by Lenovo meant a lot to him because he had many inventions in the past which went unnoticed.The passion of inventing something always gripped Ishan Mishra. He combined this passion with the everyday issue of increasing traffic and that inspired him with his invention — a holistic traffic management module. Discouragement from a few people was among his main obstacles but he chose to carry on with his project.  “We will keep working, on more and more projects,” he concluded.