Jobs, Internships, Rs 20 Lakh cash: This competition will shower prizes for coming up with best 'Smart Cities' solutions

‘KPIT Sparkle 2017’ is a national design and development innovation contest held every year. It is the brainchild of KPIT Technologies, a global technology company specializing in IT consulting and product engineering. This time, the contest received 1,500 ideas from over 10,500 engineering and science students across 300 colleges in India.

Top 35 shortlisted teams will exhibit their solutions on Smart Cities through working prototypes at the grand final on 18th and 19th February, at the Deccan College Ground in Pune. This year’s theme is Smart Cities and revolves around creating solutions for Smart Transportation and Smart Infrastructure. A panel of judges consisting of scientists, industrialists and academicians, will evaluate the projects on the final day. The selected finalists will be invited for job and internship opportunities at KPIT. The winners will also win cash prizes of over Rs 20 lakh.

Union Minister for HRD affairs, Prakash Javadekar is the Guest of Honor and will be presiding the event along with his delegation. Padmashree Dr. Kiran Karnik, who is the former President of NASSCOM will be the chief guest.

On receiving extraordinary response for KPIT Sparkle 2017, Ravi Pandit, KPIT’s Co-founder, Chairman and Group CEO said - “The Government of India’s emphasis on the Smart Cities initiative is pivotal towards development of the nation and will provide many opportunities towards creating ground-breaking solutions that solve real world issues. We are positive that these top 35 finalists selected for Sparkle 2017 will display exceptional technological acumen and scientific thinking, which are key elements for the success of the event.”

On display, at the event, would be some interesting and novel projects in the areas of smart electric vehicles and self-learning bots, clean and efficient fuels enhanced with nanotechnology, solutions to recover and clean oil spills, coherent use of energy from plants, wind, solar and waste water and separation of plastics from waste.

The larger intent of this move is to foster a culture of innovation and critical thinking among engineering and science students across colleges in India.