Winners of Accenture’s Innovation Jockeys announced

Accenture in partnership with Yahoo announced the winners' of the Innovation Jockeys contest in a glittering award ceremony held at The Leela Palace Hotel in Bangalore. The theme of the contest was “everyday innovations” and to participate, students were required to submit their innovative ideas to drive significant changes to the environment around them.

The search for India’s brightest, young, home-grown innovators began in January 2012 and over the next three months, the contest received a staggering total of 1044 entries from students across 500 Indian colleges. The entries were rigorously evaluated by the panel of judges that included Nagesh Kukunoor, Filmmaker, R Sukumar, Editor, Mint, Sudhir Dixit, Director, HP Labs, Kishore Swaminathan, Global Director of Research, Accenture Technology Labs  and Shouvick Mukherjee CEO, Yahoo! India R&D.

The winners' were announced for the three categories: home, city and college and each member from the winning teams received an Apple goodie bag. 

In the home category, the team from the Amrita School of Engineering (Coimbatore) of comprising of Ramesh. N. Nair, Sai Manoj and Mithun Mohan won for their Gest-BOT - a gesture-based wheelchair control system, designed for the physically disabled and the elderly. 

In the city category, R. Sukumar, Editor, Mint, awarded the team behind the Visparsh Haptic belt system, an aid based on a series of vibrations that helps the visually impaired avoid obstacles.

The award for college category went to the students from Thapar University (Patiala). They devised a Smart Library Management System to locate misplaced books and detect thefts.

Apart from these categories, Arvind Sanjeev, from Toc-H Institute of Science & Technology (Ernakulam) was awarded the ‘Most Promising Innovator' by Ram Narayanan, Vice President, Global Product Management (Emerging Markets and Small Business), Yahoo! Inc. for his Remote Vehicle Activation using Android OS. Sanjeev said, "This is truly a great surprise. I never expected this coming from a small town." Sanjeev was also awarded an internship with Yahoo!.

The team from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University behind the Smart Traffic Controller was awarded the Accenture Tech Vision award. 

The grand finale award of the Innovation Jockey contest went to the award winning team of Visparsh Haptic Belt, presented by Rekha Menon, Executive Director, Geographic Services, India and ASEAN, Accenture.  As the winners, the team was awarded a visit to the Accenture Technology Labs, Sophia Antipolis (France).