A car designing, building, racing ever has infected,engg students

For students, the learnings are huge; for firms, it’s excellent talent

- Ardhra.Nair

KC Vora, former vice president of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) in India, remembers it like yesterday when he and his team decided to start a national-level competition for engineering students to design and build all-terrain vehicles and race them. Vora and his team toured various colleges, and after much coaxing, got 27 teams to participate in the first Baja SAE event in 2007. Vora knew there was a large gap between industry and academia, but still, it came as a shock when none of the teams knew even the basics of automobile building, forcing SAEIndia to conduct workshops for the teams and professors.

Today, 15 years later, there are multiple competitions, and almost every engineering college with a decent mechanical engineering department has a club dedicated to automobile engineering, with many colleges advertising their achievements on the racing track in their brochures. There are even students who join a college based on the legacy of their team’s record in these events.

For most engineering students, building a car is like a childhood dream come true, but the cherry on top is the preferential treatment they get in placement interviews.