TECHgium – a Collaborative Initiative by L&T Technology Services

Industry-academia collaboration is crucial as it helps nurture innovation and provide the necessary skillsets to make students industry ready. But, L&T Technology Services took this collaborative effort to the next level through its pan-India engineering talent hunt, TECHgium. What the company did was present customer challenges to engineering students to come up with innovative solutions that L&T TS would implement. This effort produced three “winners”: students who get hands-on training; the end user who gets the best possible solution; and L&T TS who spot and train talent for possible recruitment.

G. Ganapathiraman, Country Manager, ARC Advisory Group, India was part of the elite jury, announcing the winners. Other jury members were: Pareekh Jain, Senior Vice President and Managing Director India, HfS Research; and Ms. Rashmi Urdhwareshe, Director, Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI).

The TECHgium initiative is a nationwide outreach and open innovation model in India that offers a ready platform to students to help solve real-world challenges global industrial organizations face today. Over 7,000 engineering students with 193 faculty members from 164 reputed engineering institutes in India participated in the competition to solve the 22 challenges defined by L&T TS clients. The multi-stage competition required students to create concepts, submit abstracts, present technical papers, and showcase Proof of Concepts (PoCs) to address the challenges.

This unique initiative will lead to the creation of a new breed of associates with niche engineering skills and capabilities. L&T TS will guide young engineers to channelize their talents and empower them to discover untapped technical skills and innovative approaches to challenges that need engineering-based solutions. This challenge gave the participants an invaluable opportunity to work on futuristic technologies and augment the solution development team of L&T TS, while getting recognized as a “TECHgium innovator.” According to Dr. Keshab Panda, CEO & Managing Director, L&T Technology Services, the TECHgium initiative is a pivotal step towards creating a new ecosystem that brings together customers and students to be part of the nation’s capacity building objectives and also trigger new-age innovations conceptualized by fresh minds.

Winning teams won cash prizes:

• First prize: Team from Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College, Coimbatore: Designed a single seated powered winch mechanism

• Second prize: Team from Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing College, Jabalpur: Developed a PoC on use of phased array ultrasonic technology for leakage detection

• Third Prize: Student from the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering, Bangalore: Developed a solution for incorporating variable compression ratio in a turbocharged engine to increase low power efficiency