Annual Innovation Challenge for Engineering Students – 11 Years of Celebration

TechTop has been celebrating the innovations of our student community since 2006. No less than 16,000 participants have locked horns with their peers from all over India with a view to brushing up their thinking and making skills for better results through India’s pioneer Innovation Challenge. The confidence in their imagination and innovation skills has triggered the fire for products and services that can be commercialised. Inspired winners and participants have started their own enterprises.

Of as many as 30 student start-ups in an era with very little government support across India, there were some interesting world-class innovations that arose from our challenges. A neonatal shoe for sleep apnoea in new-born babies, low cost burn-o-care units, SmartCane, low-cost Braille display, etc. are just some of them. Now, these 30 start-ups established by our student winners in India and abroad are our credentials to prove the success of the cause that launched the TechTop contests. This year, TechTop is partnering with IIT Delhi for wider coverage to attract more students from more institutions, and to get nation-wide media coverage for their innovations. We have received over 300 new innovation concepts from engineering students; 120 entries have been shortlisted for Phase 2, where the contestants will have to submit a detailed project plan including fabrication, testing and commercialization. From these entries 30-40 of the best proposals will be selected for Phase 3, where the shortlisted candidates will fabricate working models of their innovation to display at the 12th TechTop innovation Challenge to be held on July 14-15 at IIT Delhi to secure coveted prizes and accolades.

Following in our footsteps, many organisations are now conducting local, larger Innovation Challenges in the country. The Government of India’s student start-up initiative policy – Niti Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is very keen to give these students the support for their start-up dreams through the new ‘Students Start-up Initiative Policy’. All this is sure to encourage a surge in student innovations and start-ups.

However, TechTop was the first, and we have the added advantage of being able to conduct innovation workshops by world-class innovators and entrepreneurs. This makes TechTop the top Innovation Challenge in India, much sought after by our student community from India and abroad.

Year after year, TechTop’s National Workshop on Innovation, Fabrication and Entrepreneurship is becoming a benchmark for inspiring participants to realise their inner strength and translate their dreams into reality. They cannot learn these essential skills in any college within our current curriculum. Here, student participants– whatever their skill set be: engineering, management, design or marketing – go back with a will to conquer obstacles in their life.

The first lesson they learn in these workshops is the ‘art of failure’. Every failure in the path to innovation makes them stronger, and more capable of coming up with another solution that is ideal and pragmatic. A world-class faculty, a dream-come-true FAB lab facility, and hands-on experience at TechTop workshops help change the mind-set and raise the confidence of all students who attend.

This year, 50 of the best participants will be selected from the pool of 300 applicants to experience and learn at this live’n learn workshop. The workshop expenditure, food and boarding are complimentary to the selected participants and require no fees or other expenses.

TechTop years of experience have helped us rewrite the popular saying “Innovators are Born” to “Innovators are Made”.

It is 2017 and the MIT Make in India bootcamp has been re-named MIT-IIT Make in India Bootcamp for Innovation, Fabrication and Entrepreneurship for social problems. This summer, around 16 students from MIT, Asia School of Business (ASB) Malaysia, will join hands with 32 students from India to find technological solutions for our nation’s felt needs and growing societal problems.

This year, besides MIT India office, MIT SDM, MIT’s System Design and Management master’s programme, is also supporting the 2017 MIT-IIT Make in India programme.

All Indian participants are provided with a free 1-month stay, including food, and innovation and fabrication expenditure. Foreign participants are sponsored by their mother institutions for their expenses.