First ever all-girls team from India participated in SEMA Asia 2011

‘Shell Eco-Marathon Asia 2011’, an initiative by Shell Plc. for young and aspiring engineering and design students from Asia, which challenges the youth to design and build energy efficient vehicles that travel the farthest distance using the least amount of fuel was concluded on July 09, 2011 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

12 countries participated in SEM Asia 2011, including 9 teams from India and 94 teams in all. Amongst the Indian teams, ‘Team Vidyottama’, from Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology, Delhi was the only all-girls team in the entire event. First time participants the team stood out from among their male counterparts. The Vidoyattama team designed super mileage vehicle based on the idea of solar energy and won loads of appreciation for the design.

The Vidyottama team consisted of second year students from Mechanical and Automation Engineering and Electronics and Communication Engineering streams. The team researched for a year before designing the vehicle. 

Shell Eco-marathon has been running in Europe since 1985 and the United States since 2007, and was held for the first time in Asia at Sepang last year. The teams participating from India are RV College of Engineering – Bangalore, Chitkara Institute of Engineering and Technology - Patiala and Jalandhar (3 teams from this college), Dr. B R Ambedkar National Institute of Technology – Jalandhar, Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology - New Delhi, Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology - Delhi, Delhi Technological University – Delhi and NIT – Jamshedpur.

Mr. Deepak Mukarji, Country Head - Corporate Affairs, Shell Companies in India, said, “At Shell we thrive hard to develop the best technology for our products and we understand styling and designing of vehicles, along with fuel- efficiency  is an integral part of whole manufacturing process, and have always recognized and encouraged new and innovative ideas. Through this contest we want to offer young students a platform who aspire to make it big the in the field of automotive designing which eventually will benefit the automotive industry in the long term.”

The process of shortlisting the teams from the colleges was a design report submitted with all technical specifications of the vehicle like engine details, transmission system, chassis along with other minute aspects like materials used, dimensions of each part etc.