Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Encouraging Young Innovators

Today I read a news item on Google News that a group of engineers at RV College of Engineering in Bangalore have developed a car with ultra high fuel efficiency of 180 Km/liter of petrol or ~410 Miles/Gallon!

I guess that this would be some sort of a record. I congratulate this team of young innovators.








See: RVCE launches Garuda supermileage car

Wait! Don’t get all too excited to buy this car. This is just a prototype – technically it’s a car, but it is not really a people transport worthy yet. But that issue is not what I am concerned about. Instead I am very happy to see how many local companies jumped in to help these engineering students develop such a prototype: Tantra Infosolutions, CA Adapco, Chameleon Motors, Innoversant Solutions and Bimal Auto Agency.

What amazed me is that all these companies are local to Bangalore & have nothing to gain from the success of the project (except for PR & brief publicity).

The raise of Indian engineering and Innovation can be seen with this small success. For a long time, Indian educational institutes and industry complained about lack of Industry-education cooperation. But this is now changing – albeit slowly but surely changing for good.

Indian industries & business should join hands with colleges and universities to build innovation in India that meets the needs of its people. Garuda experiment shows how one can succeed with cooperation. Most importantly, Garuda project shows how one can encourage young innovators who are studying in universities.

1 comment:

Ed Mahony said...

Interesting post. Hope the project works out (reducing cost of running car plus reduce polution).

Eamon www.spotlightideas.co.uk