Indian students shine at Microsoft Imagine Cup

NEW DELHI, INDIA: IT giant Microsoft today announced the winners of Imagine Cup 2010 World Finals in Warsaw, Poland.

Two Indian teams; Team Kola and Team Target Locked secured the second and the third position respectively in the Envisioning 2020 category, said a press release.

Envisioning 2020 is an achievement award which challenges students to express their vision for how technology could transform people’s lives by the year 2020.

Team Kola was represented by Koushik Vaidhinathan, Lalitha Ashok and Kiran Kumar.S, students of Prathyusha Institute of Technology and Management, Chennai.

Team Target Locked was represented by Monisha Saggi, Ramya Balasubramaniam and Anwesha Bhattacharjee, students of Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology and University School of Management Studies, GGSIPU, Delhi.

“Now more than ever, young people have the ability to make a positive impact on the world. Their creativity and innovation speaks volumes about the untapped potential to make a difference in peoples’ lives, in the way we think, work, and communicate. The Imagine Cup is one way Microsoft is encouraging the brightest young minds to join together and, using technology, take on the toughest problems facing our world today,” states Pratima Amonkar, director Academia, Microsoft India.

She added that this year, competition saw some promising entries from India and then two of them making it to the top three in a category comes as a form of an acknowledgment for the rich talent pool that exists in India.

This year 400 students from 70 countries and regions represented for more than 325,000 entrants to this year’s competition.

This year’s theme was “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems” and the students were required to create technology solutions that combat diseases, improve education, ensure environmental sustainability, and reduce child mortality.

Microsoft Imagine Cup, now in its eighth year, saw more than 85,000 students participate from colleges across India in the national finals. Out of them four team represented India in the global finals at Warsaw, Poland.