What does it take to win?

Robotic High
Put your hands together for the Team R Factor—nine young mech, tech and programming whizkids from India, who recently won the First Tech Challenge, Sydney, Australia and are clearly "In it for the love of it", as their booth read

Amay Saxena and Mihir Shah (Dhirubhai Ambani International School), Shrey Turakhia, Bijoy Shah, Anant Kandoi and Raghav Ringshia (Jamnabai Narsee School), Subhankar Panda (R.N. Podar School) and Aaryaman Sen (Bombay Scottish-Mahim) from Mumbai trumped 32 countries to win the Inspire Award at the Asia Pacific Invitational 2015–FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC ) in Sydney.

The nine-member contingent of 16-18 year old's have previously represented India as two or three-member groups at the World Robot Olympiad and other competitions, but this is the first time they worked together. And clearly they did something right. "Our hardwork and working into wee hours of the morning paid off," believes Bijoy, the team's CAD master. He can put any idea the team has onto CAD. If CAD says something is feasible, the team proceeds to the construction stage. He has even designed parts—smaller connections and such, four ramps—that the team has 3D printed for temporary use for poof of concept, until the parts they had ordered from the US could arrive. "is it impossible to manufacture a robot with Indian parts?"we wonder. "It's not impossible, it's just inconvenient, we're told".

All nine are members of the Children's Technology Workshop (CTW) run by Asha Sundarajan. This place has been their connect, their laboratory and their stepping stone to bigger things. "Asha told us we were good enough to compete, guided us through competitions, taught us how to work with metal parts and wiring—in fact, she taught us everything we know," says Mihir, the inadvertant spokesperson of the group.

We're told that Aaryaman the Head Programmer of the team, though new to robotics is a genius when in come sto programming the robot for its first 30 seconds of autonomous movement.

Subhankar, who is also new to robotics and has previously teamed up with Aaryaman for the Indian Robor Olympiad, is the wiring guru and has a magical touch with Samantha, the field set-up programme that links the robot and its controller.

"The competition in Australia was intense, with highly experienced teams from all over the globe. It was definitely a great learning experience for all of us," shares Anant, who is part of the construction team, but also helps with programming. He took charge of their 3-inch engineering journal with it's hundreds of design ideas, sketches, physics and math theories that led up to their final design; details of team meetings; sponsorship ideas; community service initiatives et al.

Mihir, who drove the teams sponsorship efforts, was also the main controller of the robot in the arena during teleoperational phase of matches. "This means that everyone's 9-10 montsh of hard work rested on my thumbs," notes the young lad, who also helps with the design, but not the hands-on construction. "I"m calm under pressure, which helps, but losing five matchs in a row can be overwhelming."

Shrey, aka Driver 2, the mind behind the scissor lift (the heart of this robot), is the person the team turns to make thier constructions robust.

At the regional Driver 1 and Driver 2 had overlaps for functions such as ball collection and dropping, which caused some confusion. They have sinec rewired to eliminate overlaps and consequently possibilities of failure.

Arvind, is the "really really calm" team captain, who "tells the drivers what to do". In addition to being the lead constructor, he strategises, theorises and translates all the physics and the math the team used in their robot into cohesive concepts for their journal for the international competition.

"We developed tremendous confidence through the presentations and dealing with the volley of questions from by the judges", feels Raghav, who managed the wiring and specialised Mecannum wheels, which allowed free movement of the robot along any axis eliminating the need for the robot to turn.

Amay is regular all-rounder, we're told. The "thinker of the group", brainstorms with Mihir, programmes with Aryaman, builds with Raghav and Shrey...

The varsity-level open-ended challenge, meant that they could use whatever material they wanted. This was the first time they worked with metal. The challenge was to restrict their robot's size to 18 inches in each direction whilst equipping it to reaching heights of upto 120 cms. The robot needed to navigate an obstacle course, locate a container on the field and breaking it to release hundreds of balls, collect upto two hundred balls of varying sizes from the floor and deposit them into goals 1, 2, 3 and 4 feet in height; hence, they needed to build a scissor lift mechanism which would expand to required heights.

Their robot has been about a year into the making, with a few reiterations along the way. "A year ago, we didn't even know some of these parts existed," revels Mihir. They were part of the winning alliance at the nationals and took third place over all, but discoverd a few flaws in their design. So after the nationals, they disassembled their robot and put it together in 38 hours flat; sleeping in turns and building round-the-clock. Thus it came to be called 38- factorial.

A scissor lift they added to their design meant that their robot could reach a height of 4 feet in less than 1.5 seconds, giving then a velocity advantage as well as a mechanical advantage. Mechanum wheel meant their robot could move in pracically any direction without haveing to take a u-turn. And a dual-collector mechanism meant they could lcollect balls faster than the others on the field. The ramps they finally in their robot used are 3D-printed at CTW because they needed a specfic curvature and metal could not be bent to that angle. They have a laser-printed chassis courtesy the generosity of Makers Asylum. Of course their creation stood out when it came to engineering and matches against other robots, but the competition isn't just about engineeering of about how impressive and innovative your designs are.

They had to find sponsors, which was challenging, because they had never done anything liek this before. They tried crowd-funding and kick- start-ups and approaching tech companies. But after a few rejections they figured that they were doing something wrong, wengt back to the drawing board, created a "professional pitch" and started making calls. Things startred to go their way. CCD and Samsonite sponsored everything but their travel at the regional and national level. VIP Sky Bags stepped into sponsor their international venture.

To create community awareness ran stalls at IIT Tech Fest 2015 and Equal Streets, Bandra; they even organised a robotics competition STIR at Ecole Mondial for 27 schools and around 138 kids with no prior robotics knowledge, who they taught basic building and prpogramming principles, before getting them to run thier robots and compete for a scholarship to CTW. Bhavya surname?, a visually impaired child won this first scholarship (of seven).

All this, by the way, is far more difficult than it sounds. But at the end of it, "We know, we aren't just robot geeks. We can walk into a company and get sponsorship. We all know for sure whether or not we want to go in for engineering. We weren't confident of winning; you don't know much about the other teams except what you see on the field. We didn't know anything about their community outreach or sponsorship," they tell us. The winning team is one that meets the FTC challengs of 'role model global citizens', inspiring other teams and acting with 'gracious professionalism' both on and off the field. And these guys, almost all of whom will be apply to engineering collegs abroad come October, are undoubtedly an inspiration.

Engineering Business Plans
Say hello to Ritika Nevatia, Aditi Hirlekar, Keshav Pasari, Shrenika Chopda, who won the India round of the CIMA 2015 Global Business Challenge and are currently in Poland competing against 24 other countries

"It was the way we presented, our sound financial plans and our strategy (consistent, with diverse alternatives and recommendations), that helped us win," say Maverick Minds, the team from Sardar Patel Institute of Technology, that won the Indian round of the CIMA 2015 Global Business Challenge . They triumped over Sri Ram College of Commerce, IIT Delhi, IIT Kharagpur and BITS Pilani, that they believed would be their toughest competiton and are now representing CIMA India at the international level in Poland.

The case study before them at the national level featured hypothetical oild nad gas compant YJ. They were dealing with five issues: one corporate social awareness issue, one health and safety related problem, one deal negotiation (farmout offer), one future plan recommendation and one finance and basic strategy issue, given that the company was not stable enough to splurge cash. The farmout offer was about subleting its oil-field to another mining company for a fraction of the profits.

The team tells us that they were inspired by real life scenarios, case studies and best practices, and ran with their instincts when offering a timeline based strategy for business expansion, taking into consideration green energy development and other alternatives. Of course they will be fine-tuning their plan before heading to Poland, where they will be presenting on 5 August. Should they clear this first round, they will be given a fresh scenario to develop plans for and present by 7 August. While they admit that, "you never relaly know where competiton can come from", they are quite confident of putting up a good show at Poland.

Winning required that they step out of their comfort zones and learn a lot about things beyond their scope of knowledge. "The competition sharpened the way we approach a business case and forced us to reserach and use finances amd technology to strengthen our business case to develop a really convincing case for our recommendations," says 21-year old Computer Engineer, Ritika Nevatia, the presentation expert in this team, who is currently interning with CERN, Geneva. She was a member in the audience at the global business challenge last year, and was determined to be a part of it this year. Going ahead, she intends to work in a product managerial capacity that lets maximise her technological bent of mind. With regard to her team mates she says, "Keshav and Aditi were the ones with the dedication and focues to stay up all night at times an dkeep us focused on the competition, in the midst of all our final-year engineering choas. Shrenika dug out research material that was way outside the scope of the case study but bore tremendous relevance to it".

Electronics Engineer, Aditi Hirlekar, 21, who plans to enter the management arena and will soon be working for Mu Sigma tells us that, "CIMA offers great exposure. Whilst we were stepping out of our domain and had to do a lot of ground work and research, we also made good us of our knowledge of technology".

"CIMA is best competition at the undergraduate level," says 22-year-old, Keshav Pasari, who is currently studying at IIM, Trichy and is participating the CIMA Global challenges for the second time. He didn't make it past the regional level last year, but returned with the knowledge that winning required providing concrete solutions after our research and not the research itself. He tells us. "We made sure that to make a strong case, we included elements of market positioning, considered the factors that affect the company, developed strategies for the future and presented financial forecasts to support it". The financial and strategic whiz of the group, he also tends to take the lead when brainstorming. Of course, Aditi then plays the role of devil's advocate and ensure that his ideas are foolproof. "We learned how support, motivate and keep each other going through a very hectic phase of our lives," notes Keshav. "I've improved as a person through that all."

22-year-old, Shrenika Chopda, who is currently an analyst with KPMG and prides herself on her analytical skills, plans on pursuing higher studies in the management domain. She believes that it was their "Way Forward that offered technology-based recommendations for the long-run" that helped them win.

Are they good enough to win in Poland? We'll know in a few days.

Maternity Matters
Meet Kartik Verma, who won the Global James McGuire Business Plan Competition 2015, held in Miami, Florida

22-year-old Kartik Verma, a Fashion Business Management graduate from the Pearl Academy won the Global James McGuire Business Plan Competition 2015, for his concept Assuage Mom—a line of clothing that will allow women to breast-feed comfortably.

The former Science student switched to fashion to expand his dad's clothing manufacturing business. Why did he study Science in the first place? "Oh! My elder sister did it, so I thought I should too. But then I realised that my heart wasn't in it, so I ventured into fashion," is his straight-forward response.

Kartik began working on the concept of breast-feeding-friendly fashionable maternity clothing, as part of the Product Development Module at the Pearl Academy, about three years ago. He was looking for a gap in society that needed filling, when he realised that there were many women like his sister, who were having trouble finding clothes conducive to breast feeding. Conducting market research to determine Indian mothers' viewpoints on the matter was difficult, as you can imagine. "Indian women are not very open," concludes Kartik.

The Pearl Academy is part of the international group of Laureate institutes, and Kartik's professors encouraged him to sign his project up for the Global James McGuire Business Plan Competition 2015. Kartik tell us that his toughtest competiton—Mexico Unitech, has won the competition five years in the row. "They had a really good concept of recycling plastic into paper; but feasibility was an issue," says Kartik, who believes that his concept won because it combined a social cause with feasibility and scalability.

Kartik "learned a lot through the exposure that the competition gave me and my interaction with people from different backgrounds. I am more confident when it comes to dealing with people as well as presenting my ideas". He still hasn't received the $50,000, he won as a low-interest five-year loan, to start up his business, as the Indian system is taking its time to process the award. He plans to invest his winnings in raw material and marketing costs, and repay the loan in two years. But as he points out, "excel sheets sometimes differ from life".

Kartik, tells us that has offers from MBA colleges like SP Jain and several IIMs, but has decided to forego further education in favour of entrepreneurship, for the time being. He is currently in the process of figuring out Indian sizes. He plans to manufacture both Indian and Western designs in organic fabric, wovens or knits, through his dad's company New Fashions, with some help from Pearl academy. Assuage Mom is likely to hit shelves "in six months or max-to-max a year".