The India Design Challenge, conducted by Autodesk in collaboration with National Institute of Design (NID) and Maruti Suzuki India over six months, concluded in Karnataka's technology capital, Bangalore on December 14, with the felicitation of the winning teams.

The nationwide design competition was aimed at getting young students from engineering and design colleges from across the country to participate, brainstorm and come up with innovative design ideas for critical scenarios related to future mobility. They had to pick one of two themes – ‘Personal Mobility Solution for Urban Youth in 2025’ encompassing a compact, multi-use vehicle, and ‘Green Vehicle for Year 2025’ for 25- to 30-year-old motorists.

The participants, who co-managed allocating their time between academics and the competition, were also a part of multiple design workshops conducted by the faculty and design engineers from Maruti Suzuki Design Studio for hands-on experience of Autodesk's design tool – Fusion 360 software. 

Akhilesh Manchandani and Aravind S, both post-graduation students of Transportation Design at MIT Institute of Design (MIT), Pune, bagged the first prize with their 3D-modeled concept of a green, rear-wheel-driven compact electric crossover, aimed at the youth of 2025, who is a trendsetter, audacious and also views his/her car as a tool of personal and family recreation (depicted above).

The team drew inspiration from nature to ideate its concept and were particularly enthused by the Himalayan ibex, a fleet-footed mountain goat which is found in the western Himalayas, usually at elevations of 3,800 metres and higher.

"We started designing a crossover, aimed at a young photographer who is game to take his vehicle off the beaten path, in a manner similar to the Ibex. While we took the design cues of the roofrails from the Ibex's horns, we also kept the front windscreen openable, to allow for more functionality by giving the driver an unobstructed field of view to stop and capture a landscape right from the cabin while out on an adventurous journey," say Akhilesh and Aravind, describing the styling of their concept.

"We also took inspiration from the Mahindra TUV300 for the packaging of our vehicle and designed it in a six-seat configuration, focusing more on the functionality than aesthetics," they hasten to add.

Komal Karnik (Lifestyle Design) and Samarjitsinh Waghela (Transportation and Automobile Design) of NID Gandhinagar, were the first runner-up team, while Vishnu CP and Dheeraj K, both students of Transportation Design at IDC, IIT Bombay, together walked away as the second runner-ups. Both teams designed their vehicle concepts in the form of a green-vehicle for the urban youth.

After getting shortlisted in the preliminary rounds, the three winning teams, from a total of 25 finalists, were put on the same platform and made to use Autodesk's Fusion 360 software for part modeling and sculpture modeling. "It is a very good tool for quick ideation of a design and to quickly convert it into an output. It is very user-friendly software as well," said the duo from MIT Pune.

Top six to intern at Maruti Suzuki Design Studio
All the six winners will now be interning at the Maruti Suzuki Design Studio for their industrial internship for a period of six months. "We look forward to learning more and see how the hypothetical concepts in curriculum take practical shape in the industry," said Akhilesh Manchandani.

"Indian design industry is developing rapidly and we are already set to become the largest automobile market in the world after China in the coming years. We have a huge chance to redefine automotive design, try and solve upcoming challenges of congestion, and move towards urban cities by adopting new technologies like electric mobility. Three-box and two-box designs will slowly diminish as we adopt electric technology and highly compact forms are what will mature as vehicle design in the future, redefining what has been done until now," said Samarjitsinh Waghela from NID Gandhinagar.

The students also unanimously feel that new materials will play a huge role in vehicle design in future, with advances such as lightweighting driving into the picture. Moreover, generative design and 3D printing are also going to help stylists quickly realise a design and improvise it after a thorough visual analysis.

Growing industry-academia connect
Speaking to Autocar Professional, Pradyumna Vyas, director, NID, said, “Many things are connected in a very systemic manner in this era of new mobility, where we are on looking the fourth industrial revolution and people also need to know the impact of big data.”

“The India Design Challenge aims at preparing the students towards these new challenges. With all its diversity, India is no smaller than a continent and vehicle design has to focus on the rural markets as well. Hence, we need to inculcate multi-perspective thinking, where students can understand the problem, take up the technology, understand the environment and use all of it together to develop holistic and sustainable solutions for keeping in mind the people, profit as well as our planet. Talking about skills, there is a very grim situation in terms of the employability of students graduating out of engineering colleges. Skills need to come from critical thinking and today, technology also is an enabler, which gives a solution to visualise an idea quickly if there is that fundamental thought process,” Vyas pointed out.

“Autodesk tools have been implemented across NID and students are creating innovative designs and bringing accolades to the institution from competitions around the world. Tata Motors, Honda, Maruti Suzuki, Renault, TVS, Mahindra & Mahindra and Rolls-Royce are some of the key companies in the automotive sector where NID graduates are working on core design concepts. In fact, the interior design lead for the Renault Kwid hatchback on sale in the market is an NID graduate,” added Vyas.

Putting across his thoughts on the initiative, CV Raman, executive director – Engineering, Maruti Suzuki India, said: “We have a continuous process of working with various institutions and we constantly keep looking for talent. We support academia every year for a period of 5-6 months where interning engineers and designers are given a topic which they research and come up with sketches.”

“This time around though, it is the first time that we are conducting an all-India design competition and awarding students with an internship at Maruti Suzuki Design Studio. When they come here, they will get an idea of Maruti’s design philosophy and mentorship from our team members. Even though we have a current R&D strength of over 1,500 people, we are always looking for designers, and transportation designers are not an easily available breed. So, this competition is also a catchment area for us where we can find good talent and new ideas. The two themes are also very relevant to what the industry is currently going through and we chose it so that we're able to understand how the youth thinks or conceptualalises these subjects,” Raman added.

“At our R&D centre in India, Maruti Suzuki’s key engineering objectives have always complemented the overall global vision of Suzuki Motor Corporation. While a lot of reference work and model-related work happens here, we also aid design ideation for the global models, and they are concurrently worked on at the Indian, European and the Japanese design centres. Design is at a very nascent stage as far as India is concerned, but, over a period of time, that has come to mature and it will become even better in the future. Our Vitara Brezza is one key example of a completely locally styled model and we are continuously upgrading our capability and capacity.”

“As regards the visualisation tools, we do use virtual validation and 3D printing technology will certainly aid the designers in enhancing the quality and reliability of products,” said Raman.

According to Pradeep Nair, managing director, Autodesk India and SAARC, “The automobile industry is one of the key drivers of the Indian economy, contributing a significant chunk of the country’s GDP. There is a buzz about moving towards electrification and the industry is gung-ho about the future of EVs. When we speak to major automobile manufacturers like Maruti Suzuki India, they also reiterate the same sentiment of adopting electric technology in the coming future and the need of skilled people to design and develop such products.”

“On the other hand, undergraduate students in engineering colleges have innovative ideas, creative thinking and a vision to solve problems in mobility and transportation. Also, tools that have served the industry well for the last many decades may not be relevant going into the future, where the needs would be different and would call for collaborative and simultaneous engineering in the world of Industry 4.0.”

“This is where with Fusion 360, we have come up with one integrated platform to holistically aid product development, starting right away from ideation and supporting until the manufacturing and mass production,” said Nair.

“The whole platform doesn’t have to be installed on a workstation and works on the cloud, wherein a designer can craft the product design, which would be updated and shared across a team, all via the cloud, without any latency. In a bigger picture, a designer and production engineer, both could be considered to be co-located working on such a digitally integrated platform.

The software offers seamless flow of data across different operations involved in a product development, as well as there is no loss of data, or the need to work on multiple software solutions to carry out the designing, and production. With its foundation built on cloud integration, Fusion 360 is a very unique offering from AutoDesk, and we are the first people in the industry to take the lead in rolling out such a product in the market, beneficial especially for the industrial machining, automotive and consumer packaged goods industries, which are also the Top 3 drivers for our business in India.

We also find a void in the industry-academia relationship, where roughly 20-30 percent of the graduate population is completely away from the skill sets required by the industry. This is where we are trying to bridge this gap by collaborating with NID and Maruti Suzuki and conducted the India Design Challenge 2017 to encourage skilling on these solutions by offering hands-on training, as well as inculcating a design-first thinking among students. The forward viewing themes of green vehicle design and design of personal mobility solutions for youth for 2025 were chosen seeing their relevance and the strong industry buzz around these concepts,” he added.

“Priced approximately at Rs 100,000 (US$ 1,500) for a quarterly subscription, the one-stop-shop Fusion 360 comes out to be significantly cheaper than an array of design, analysis and production software combined, to be licensed by companies. More than the lower cost of acquisition, it is other benefits of a completely integrated experience throughout the product lifecycle, as well as the humongous time saving, which can be up to 50 percent in some cases, and the freedom to make mistakes without causing financial impacts, which is unparalleled.

“AutoDesk’s two research centres, one each in Hyderabad and Pune, have been actively involved in the testing and development of Fusion 360 and the platform is already seeing license contracts coming in from major automotive suppliers, OEs and colleges like the University of Mumbai. Outside of the US and Japan, we see student population in India to rank third in terms of usage and operation of our design solutions.

“With a host of design and simulation tools, including the quintessential AutoCAD, our 2D documentation solution, the Inventor 3D design platform, Moldflow plastic and injection moulding design software and Alias industrial design and product design tool, we see most major automobile manufacturers across segments, including Maruti Suzuki, Ashok Leyland, DC Design among a lot others, to be on Autodesk design and development solutions for their products,” concluded Nair.