Mantra Academy Candidates Secure Top-10 in All India Design Competition

The SIAM [Society of Indian Automotive Manufacturers] Styling & Design Group on 31 October 2019, announced the 12th edition of Automotive Design Challenge 2019 (ADC). It is an annual Design Competition organized by SIAM Styling & Design Group for Design Students currently studying in Indian Design Institutes.

The competition brief was to Design a Green and Efficient Mobility solution for the Indian Megacities of 2040.

SIAM invited Mantra Academy to participate in the competition. Candidates pursuing the 6-month ‘Automotive Design & Research’ course started working for the competition.

The candidates applying for the competition were just three months into the program, and they had only five weeks to submit their works. [Most applicants for the competition are from reputed design institutes like NID or IIT with two or more years of design education].

It was fun and challenging for the faculties to mentor the participants; as the candidates were just introduced to the Research and Form Generation methods.

Working on a tight deadline to detail and develop the design was fun and tedious. It’s fun to work on a competition with a short deadline and to get shortlisted. Tedious, because there’s so much to do in a short time.

Importantly, the participating candidates are just three months into training at Mantra Academy and never worked on a full-fledged design project previously [sketch to mockup].

Automotive Design, Mantra Academy, Bangalore, Design, Presentation
Project Review Presentation for SIAM ADC Challenge 2019 at Mantra Academy, Bangalore

Jury-1 results were announced on 31 December 2019. Two candidates from Mantra Academy, Ronit Singh and Aswin Ravindran, were shortlisted.

Automotive Design Competition
SIAM-ADC-2019 Competition Shortlisted Candidates

Ronit proposed to design an elevated transportation system that provides the infrastructure to commute in the sky across high rise buildings. His inspiration is to design mobility solutions for increasing urban population and crowded streets due to rapid urbanization.

Ronit Singh, Design Competition, SIAM, Automotive Design Challenge
Snapshot from Ronit Singh’s Design Proposal for SIAM ADC 2019

Ashwin’s vision of the future is to design a workplace ecosystem that enables organizations to enable employees to work on the wheels.

Aswin Ravindran, Automotive Design, Competition, SIAM, Mantra Academy, Bangalore
Snapshot from Aswin Ravindran’s Design Proposal for SIAM ADC 2019

Preparing the design for development means attention to detail and bringing all the pieces together. They had only four weeks to work on the design specifications, mockup strategy, creating surface models, and preparing files for 3D printing.

The mockups were made using in-house 3d printing techniques.

3D printing of the mockups at the Mantra Academy Design Studio
Aswin and Ronit working on their mockups at Mantra Academy Design Studio, Bangalore.

Both Ronit and Aswin will present their works at the 14th SIAM Styling & Design Conclave scheduled on 6 February 2020, Greater Noida, Delhi.

Eminent designers and top automotive executives from reputed automotive OEMs will be attending the event. A jury from the core SIAM-ADC will be announcing the winners. We wish all the shortlisted candidates across all design institutes the very best.

The exposure to work on competition and present in an Auto-Show within three months of foundation training is commendable.

PS: Ronit and Aswin are fresh engineering graduates with no previous experience in automotive design. They enrolled at Mantra Academy’s Design & Research program in mid-August 2019 to build a foundation to advance their careers in Automotive Design.