IIIT-D Scores Big @ IIGP 2.0 University Challenge 2018 through VTOL-UAV project

NEW DELHI, AUGUST 3: DST, Lockheed Martin and Tata Trusts announced the winners of the India Innovation Growth Programme 2.0 (IIGP) University Challenge Down select competition. The IIT Bombay, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIIT-D) students bagged Rs 10 Lakh funding for their innovative VTOL-UAV project. Mukul Chhabra, Saksham Vohra, Aseem Saini and Devesh Yadav, B.Tech second-year students at IIIT-Delhi represented the institute in IIGP University Challenge as a team of four.

IIGP 2.0 is a unique tripartite initiative taken by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, Lockheed Martin, and Tata Trusts. Following the trails of Start-up India and Make in India campaigns, IIGP 2.0 also aims to improve the Indian innovation ecosystem by supporting the budding innovators and entrepreneurs. Lately, it organized a University Challenge Downselect competition for picking out some of the best technological projects in social and industrial innovation. Around 700 teams from leading universities in Tier 1, Tier-II, and Tier-III cities in India participated in the competition, but only 15, including IIIT-D are selected as winners.

The team has got a support of INR 10 lac rupees for their project which is "A multi purpose VTOL (Vertical Take Off Landing) hybrid UAV for smart cities". The winning teams will be attending regular workshops and boot camp in IIT Bombay and IIM Ahmedabad for the upcoming year. In addition to this MIT Tata centre will host the winners for a week at MIT and expose them to the Cambridge entrepreneurial system. Along with this, successful students have also been awarded with a small training and mentoring trip to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

On the awe-inspiring achievement of IIIT-D students, the team’s mentor Dr. P.B Sujit, Assosciate Professor, IIIT-Delhi, congratulated the students, he said, “It’s a moment of pride and celebration for all of us as our students become motivation for others. Many congratulations to them as their hard work have paid them off really well.”