IIT Delhi July 15, 2017: Amal Jyothi College of Engineering’s innovation Pepper Plucker Cum Separator developed by students Shalom Philip Thomas, Mohammed Anshed, Nahas Rasheed, Sarath Chandran and Akhil Dev won this years 12th TechTop National innovation Challenge and secured Rs.100,000/- cash prize and trophy. They won this coveted position contesting against 300 over entries. Shri. Amithab Kant, IAS, CEO of the Niti Aayog gave away the prizes to the winners and visited their prototypes.
Kerala Startup Mission is the main sponsor of the event staged in IIT New Delhi and encouraged by NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission. IIT Delhi hosted the Indian participants of MIT IIT Innovation and Entrepreneurship Gurukul and the National workshop. Sastrabhavan (KSCSTE), Kerala also supported the event.
Shri. Kant lauded the selfless efforts of TechTop and congratulated winners. He said, India needs millions of innovators to solve its millions of problems. That is why Niti Aayog under their Atal Innovation Mission, setting up Tinkering labs to create an ecosystem that promote innovation and make India the global power in technology. He said India needs to invent its disruptive technologies in every walk of the life and Atal Tinkering Lab is meant to bring disruptive effects in the present day education systems and bring progressive changes. Indian students are feared about failure. We need to teach children to fail and invent. Those failed many times only become world powers.
2017 National Innovation Challenge had a tough competition and many very innovative products were staged by 24 finalists. Most of the innovative solutions were regional perspective but had a high impact on the cause and commercial viability. First and second prize winners were adjudged with a very narrow margin. Winning product Pepper Plucker cum separator has a lots of relevance to Kerala’s pepper farmers and it can definitely improve the quality of black pepper sold from Kerala. The instrument help farmers to pluck and segregate the black pepper as per size at the plucking point itself. It reduce the laborious job and time. The product has a very societal relevance and has a high commercial viability. The second place is won by Saintgits College of Engineering for their product Automated Appam Maker developed by students Nandu, Praise Babu, Sreerag, Sukesh, Toney Varghese and Vaishak has best precision and high potentiality to sell as a commercial products for restaurants. Appam is a popular bread not only in South India but also known as Hoppers in Sri Lanka. Originated in Karakudi in Tamil Nadu and later become Kerala’s State dish. Judges of the 12th National Challenge has a high appreciation to the product and its high commercial viability. But the Pepper plucker machines orginal innovative thinking and design outlay got them the first prize.
Expo
The third prize winning team from Mohammed Sathak AJ College of Engineering represented by Radhika and Sraniya show cased a very innovative research using aggregates in roads & concrete construction to improve the structural stability of the constructions.
This year a good number of teams were all girls teams and it is showing the trend that more and more women are now opting for a specialization in technological development, manufacturing and entrepreneur profession than the usual 9 to 5 desk jobs. TechTop is proud to become the part of this transition by introducing an all Women team award in 2010 to encourage women into innovation. Even though the 2 member women team from Mohammed Sathak AJ college won the third prize, the all women team of Sahridaya College of Engineering represented by Anitta Sunny, Aleena Sebastian, Swathy and Jeena Elezabeth won the Women in Technology Special prize for the very innovative product Chitowrapper. Chitowraper is a recycled product to use a shelf life increasing wrap for food materials. During the processing of seafood, head and shells of shellfish are generated as waste resulting in generation of large amount of shell waste globally .Even though these are biodegradable, dumping of large quantities results in slow degradation and waste accumulation .Their invention made an effective solution to recycle shell wastes and extraction of commercially valuable substances like Chitosan which has various applications due to its high biodegradability, non-toxicity and antimicrobial properties. Chitosan is linear, white, hard, inelastic and nitrogenous polysaccharide and can be used to wrap vegetables and other storing materials. This wrap can avoid using of refrigerator other harmful chemicals used by vendors. One single wash will clear the solution and the product can be used as fresh as it is harvested. Judges had an opinion of further development of this product can be a boon to food material logistic and energy saving. Chitosan is used Korea for various application, but the application to use it and extract it from shells made this all women team bag the special award.
Event Gallery
Another special prize focused on the innovations which has high environmental sensitivity was won by Sahridaya College of Engineering for their innovation in Biosensors for detection and degradation of pesticides. Archana Menon, Shery George, Krishna Keerthi, Gain Vargehse, Greeshma Jose and Ashwin were the team members behind this invention.
Sudhakar Kattiyar, a participant of the week long TechTop National Workshop on Innovation this year is from S R Institute of Engineering and Technology Uttar Pradesh. His innovation automatic solid fertilizers and seeds sprinkler is a product which has high commercial viability. His invention is linked to his father’s farming. He belongs to a small farming family and his father was on the verge of stop farming due to escalating labour expense and shortage of quality labours. Sudhakar’ back packed automated solid fertilizers and seed dispenser is now saving his father from paying all most 50% of his revenue to labour and also helping him high precision farming. He won the special prize for Innovation with Societal Relevance.
This year’s TechTop Innovation Summit at IIT Delhi has many events. Started with a month long MIT-IIT Make in India Innovation and Entrepreneurship Gurukul lead by Rajesh Nair, Chairman of TechTop and a senior lecture at MIT Boston and the Director of innovation at the Asia School of Business, Malaysia. The Gurukul had a ten day immersion programme in its month long schedule in IIT Mandi, India’s one of the prestigious mountain campus to learn the social needs of Himalayan Valleys. Students from MIT, Asia School of Business, Philips Exterior Academy, various IITs and Engineering colleges from India attended the programme. The summit also conducted a week long National Workshop for 48 Indian engineering students on Innovation and entrepreneurship. The major attraction of the summit was its outreach programme for school students. India’s first TinkerFest participated by 600 over school children from Niti Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission’s Atal tinkering Lab is an eye opener for Indian education system and ATLs are going to disrupt Indian’s contemporary theory based education system to action learning system. The event according to all parents and observers claimed to be the country’s big leap to become world super power in technology. The month long summit is end with the most sought after 12th National innovation Challenge which was inaugurated by Prof. Pooniya, vice chairman of All India Council for Technical education (AICTE).
