I believe that I am fortunate to be living in a time when humans are at the threshold of building a sustainable world and are exploring the next frontier of space through the next wave of technological advancements. At this point to wield the skills required to ride the wave and make your contribution to one of the most positive transitions in human history is a dream worth dedicating one’s life for.
Where many saw just experiments, theories and equations, I saw with them stories of exploration, pursuit of knowledge, victory of relentless hard work over series of failures. This realisation led me to choose Mechanical Engineering, known as the mother of all Engineering branches, as my subject for graduation in order to have a greater understanding of the forces of nature and to know how the laws of nature manifests itself and works around us and enables us to create the technological marvels of today’s world. This is where I truly came to grow by taking initiatives, motivating and leading people to take up projects and working to help in social causes. During my graduation, I took up challenging projects that involved in depth research and scale in terms of the enormity of the projects and number of fields it allowed me to explore. I started off with projects related to automobiles and interests were sparked in me to learn about sustainable technologies like solar and hybrid powertrains. I kept large ambitions for me and my projects and I let those inspire me to bring out the leader in me. The projects were budget intensive. I was way out of my comfort zone, out in the field, creating and pitching marketing plans to attract sponsors for projects, heading a team to research and design actual cars meant to have Formula 3 standards. Hailing from Kerala, where the culture of corporates funding college events or student projects was not present, it was difficult to manage my way around to find the right connections to get to people at high places of power, whom I could convince to get the funding I needed. Manoeuvring the problems of being stereotyped as being just a student project, I found an advertising firm in Cochin and convinced them of the potential my project and marketing plan held. The problems we faced during the entire project gave me the feel of being out in the real world managing an actual start-up. From designing phase, to procurement of funding, buying of materials and components, both from within and outside the country, to finding the right manufacturers for making the complex components, we faced all the issues at different levels to finally succeed and race at the Buddh International Circuit, the only Formula 1 racing circuit in the country.