The 5th edition of Amrita Vishwa vidyapeetham’s annual national-level student technical festival, “Anokha 2015” was held at the Coimbatore campus of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham from March 5-7, 2015. Mr. V. Chandrashekar Executive Vice-President, L & T InfoTech, inaugurated the fest, sharing valuable insights. Mr. M. Chandradathan Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) and Mr. Arun Nayar Director, Safran Engineering Services were the Guests of Honor for the day. Prof. C. Parameswaran, Director, Corporate & Industry Relations, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham presided over the function. Anokha, which translates to ‘UNIQUE’, has emerged as one of the most popular and top engineering techfests in India. Anokha Techfest, with the theme Sci-Fi, was a platform for the best minds in India to showcase their talents, innovations and ingenuity.



It aimed at motivating engineering students from different disciplines to come together and share mutual enthusiasm and passion for science and technology. The convention included 75 technical events in all branches and disciplines of engineering: robotics, aerospace, civil, mechanical, electrical, electronics, instrumentation, information technology, computer science & engineering, as well as social media, business ideas, marketing, innovation, entrepreneurship, photography and short-film making. The registration rose to nearly 10,000 students, while the prize money increased to 1.5 million Indian rupees. Over 350 colleges and universities from all over India, as well as from partner universities in USA and Europe, such as the University of New Mexico; Télécom Ecole de Management, Evry, France and Uppsala University participated in the event. There were many enlightening events held during Anokha 2015. Eighteen workshops in cutting-edge areas like Quad Copter, RC Aircraft, Biped Robot, Industrial Robotics, Solar Energy, Ethical Hacking, Applications of Number Theory, Share Markets, Firefox OS App days, 3D Gaming and Augmented Reality were offered. The workshops featured participation from leading industry players like Siemens, Yaskawa Motoman, Mozilla, Autodesk and Arduino. Papers were presented in all research disciplines. Robowarz- Battle between Robots, E- Pictures- Short film competition and Idea fest-to encourage budding talents, were highly popular. An exhibition highlighting milestones of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Lumiere Conference, Anveshan-Youth conference focusing on current issues were also part of the event.



Anokha-’15 also showcased the humanitarian initiatives by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s Amrita Self-Reliant Village (SerVe) and Live-in Labs. Mr. Nagabhairava Jaya Prakash Narayana, reformer and founder & president, LokSatta; Mr. Sudhir Sivaraman, renowned wildlife photographer and recipient of Sanctuary Asia Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012; Lt. Col. Ravindranath CV, Decorated Kargil War hero; Mrs. Prema Rangachary, social worker and director of VidyaVanam, an education initiative for tribal and underprivileged children; Colonel A Sridharan, entrepreneur and Veteran of Indian Army; Mr. Sourabh Kaushal, space scientist and winner of Dr. Kalpana Chawla Young Scientist Award and Mr. V.K Prakash, National Award winning film director were the distinguished speakers for the tech fest. In addition to these “techy” events, many creative and entertaining shows were also offered: zorbing, paintball, archery, trampoline bunge jumping, dance and musical performances by the Student’s Club, as well as a spell binding musical performance by Benny Dayal, renowned playback singer and winner of Stardust and Filmfare awards. Many of the students were really not ready to leave the campus as the fest concluded. Anokha-15 had been an amazing fusion of technical and artistic events which expanded the horizons of the thousands of participants.