Bangalore-based Team Helios Racing — comprising 50 engineering undergrads of the city’s RV College of Engineering (RVCE) — bested 40 teams to be crowned national champions at the Enduro Student India (ESI) competition staged in Talegaon, Pune from February 7-10. The team bagged a humongous trophy and prize money of Rs.2.65 lakh.

Started in 2014 by the Kolkata-based SplitSecond Engineering & Performance Pvt. Ltd, Enduro Student India is a design competition open to engineering students to design, build and test all-terrain vehicles.

Founded by a group of final year mechanical engineering students of the 2007 batch, Team Helios Racing of RvCE — ranked among the country’s Top 10 private engineering colleges in the latest EducationWorld Private Engineering Colleges Rankings 2020-21 — designs and fabricates all-terrain vehicles to compete in national and international competitions.

Steered by captain Chinmay Bukinkere, Team Helios started working on its prototype GT20 last March (2019). “We spent four months brainstorming our designs and ideas, then three months building it and another three months testing it. Team members assigned with technical duties designed GT20 on Catia, a multi-platform software suite for computeraided design and manufacturing, and leveraged Ansys and Matlab software for analysis. This achievement wouldn’t have been possible without our generous sponsors — Meritor Commercial vehicle Systems India Pvt. Ltd, Accuspirals and Metal Power Analytical (I) Pvt. Ltd — college management and senior faculty Dr. Nataraj J.R. Our all-terrain vehicle cost us Rs.5 lakh to put on the road,” acknowledges Chinmay.

Though currently in the thick of his final year (online) exam, Chinmay is enthused by the success of GT 20 and believes the experience will stand all team members in good stead. “My experience as a Helios Racing team member has taught me the critical importance of time and team management. I’m certain these lessons will prove useful in our future careers in industry and will be of value to our employers,” says Chinmay, who is all praise for RvCE’s learning by-doing culture.

Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)