In pursuit of innovation

Since childhood Mudit Gupta had dreamt of only one thing — to design his own cars. He was 10 years old when he designed his first car.

The Koregaon Park resident’s curiosity for the four-wheeled beauties and passion for sculpting led him straight to the DSK International School of Design at Fursungi. What followed next was a dream come true for Gupta, who became one of the youngest designers to win the annual national-level automotive design challenge, organised by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam) last year.

He was 18 years old when he designed Bloom, a single-seater car that looks like a lotus bud ready to bloom when viewed from the side.

“It is sort of upgrade to a scooter but the person is cocooned safely inside. The vehicle is designed keeping the Indian context in mind like easy mobility in traffic, compact shape that takes less space, passenger comfort like front access to seat. The lotus shape was appreciated by the jury,” says Gupta.

Like him, automobile student Vijayendra Jadhavrao has earned a name for himself even before completing his post graduation. In June 2011, he participated in automobile design contest ‘Audi-India Future of Change’ and won a six-month traineeship with auto major Audi at Ingolstadt, Germany after impressing the jury by designing an Audi for Indian Metro for 2015.

“I spent months researching the need of India market compared to brand Audi and then stayed awake for nights sketching to get the vehicle’s aesthetic form and proportion. The design that I proposed was called the Audi A3 Cross-Coupe, a car for four people,” says Jadhavrao.

A Model Colony resident, Jadhavrao’s passion for cars began with scribbling designs in his books at Loyola School in Pashan. A mechanical engineer, he is pursuing post-graduation in transportation and automobile design at the National Institute of Design (NID). “During the second year at NID, four students including me were chosen for a six-month exchange programme at Germany. Here I am working on a group project with German railways and have been travelling to all automobile museums learning history and vehicles’ designs,” he said in an email to DNA. 

If you think these innovations are only meant for the uber rich, then a few projects by city students meant to harness electricity from renewable sources that cost nothing to the poor will touch your heart. One such project is the latest innovation from the College of Engineering, Pune (CoEP). Eight students from third-year civil engineering have developed a device, Wind Bloom, to harness wind energy from moving vehicles like trains and buses and generate electricity.

“The idea is to generate electricity from a source that costs nothing. Our device will exploit the use of energy from wind in moving trains. We designed a prototype for over two months and tested it at wind panels at our campus. Tasting success, we tried the device in moving trains and were able to generate up to 2.5 watt enough to charge small instruments like cellphones and radio battery,” said Udit Hiray, a member of the team, which included Sagar Suroshi, Shripad Kulkarni, Sachin Wanare, Amol Badsal, Sumit Chavan, Kiran Narad and Mohasin Khan.

While this project is yet to be patented, six ex-students of CoEP developed a portable walk-in charger two years ago and had it patented too.

The team includes Isha Nag, Aditya Nanavaty, Rushikesh Pande, Shachi Pande, Sarvesh Patil and Tejas Narasimhan. The device bagged the first prize at IIT Powai’s Tech Fest as it could produce at least three watts of electric power.

“The device that costs Rs250 for production comprised a small spring coil attached to belts. It had a single casing enclosing all necessary components along with the charging circuit with an output power of around 3.5 watt. A brief walk of 20 min with the device tied to waist could produce enough energy to charge a cellphone completely,” said Tejas.