Panasonic India announces winners of Mobivation 2016

Panasonic India recently announced the winners of Panasonic Open-Innovation contest, Mobivation 2016,  initiated in the month of August 2016 by the company. The contest is a testimony to Panasonic’s commitment to encourage the concept of 'Making' in India while acknowledging the youth of today to showcase the innovative streak in them and utilize the theoretical knowledge in a more practical way. Panasonic Open-Innovation contest invited innovative ideas from students enrolled full-time in IIT Delhi & Roorkee, DTU Delhi and NSIT Delhi in areas of Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Innovation in (Hardware/Software) in terms of Smartphones (Android Platform). Students of IIT Roorkee emerged as overall winners of the five month long contest and received cash prize worth 1 lakh and Panasonic smartphones.

The winners for the Panasonic Open-Innovation contest in the Software category were Shubham Goyal, Chirag Maheshwari and Rahul Babbar, team CodeSquad from IIT Roorkee. Students of Delhi Technological University, Prempal Singh and Pranav Gulati team Genesis were winners of the Hardware category.

The category winning teams also received a Cash reward along with Panasonic smartphones and commendation certificates. The Panasonic Mobivation prizes were given away by Manish Sharma, President & CEO – Panasonic India & South Asia.

The Panasonic Open-Innovation allowed the participants to register online on www.mobivation.in for free and submit their Synopsis. Participants could register as individuals or teams and choose to participate in one or multiple categories such as: (1) Artificial Intelligence (AI); (2) Internet of Things (IoT); (3)Software – UI/UX Customization;(4)Software: Android Innovative features/App concept to enhance consumer experience; (5)Hardware – Hardware Innovation in terms of Design or any usable hardware centric feature for smart phones.

The judging was anonymous, when entering the challenge the participant was assigned a number, and the Judges identified their submission by title and number only. Judges scored each team on a scale of 1 (Poor) to 10 (excellent).  All the submissions were adjudged on the criteria of their innovativeness, feasibility, usability, relevance and overall impact on masses. The innovation projects were reviewed by a jury comprising of Product Experts, Technical Masters & Marketing Connoisseurs having vast experience in their respective fields.

“The winners were selected from over 218 nominations. We are grateful to IIT Delhi & Roorkee, DTU Delhi and NSIT Delhi students for these exceptional ideas. Panasonic believes in the power of innovation and we allowed teams to think creatively and outside-the-box, be innovative and inventive in their approach. Our Panasonic Open-Innovation contest aimed to help these students relate concepts they learn in the classroom to real world, which can further motivate them to look deeper into specific concepts instead of merely studying what is required. Such initiatives help students to understand the industry’s requirements as well as push their own boundaries to come up with innovative solutions.” said  Pankaj Rana, Business Head – Mobility Division, Panasonic India.

He added, “Some of the ideas shared during the contest were so innovative that we have decided to implement them in the next series of Panasonic Smart Phones.”

For many years Panasonic India has maintained a constant commitment to education reform. IIT’s and engineering institutes in India are highly respected in Japan. Panasonic’s Ratti Chhatr Scholarship Program an initiative from Panasonic India as part of its corporate social responsibility which aims at providing financial aid to talented undergraduate students across different branches of the venerated Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).