India February 01, 2017: In line with its commitment and drive towards innovation, Tata Steel announced the 4th season of its Annual Innovation Challenge ‘Mind over Matter’ in search of the nation’s next student innovators. The platform provides young minds from India’s premier tech institutes, such as IITs, NITs and the like, an opportunity to shape their ideas, innovate, work on real life manufacturing challenges and explore its implementation on an industrial scale. Over the last three editions, the contest has grown manifold and promises to be one of the most credible and popular innovation programmes to recognise young engineering talent.
Speaking on the announcement, Dr. Sanjay Chandra, Chief R&D and Scientific Services, Tata Steel said, “Tata Steel has a rich legacy of innovation through R&D and is continuously pushing boundaries on innovations that drive fruitful results. ‘Mind Over Matter’ is a promising platform for fresh and young minds as it provides students an opportunity to work with the research experts at the Company and apply their ideas using state-of-the-art equipment and facilities.”
Mr. Suresh Dutt Tripathi, Vice President, HRM, Tata Steel said, “Over the years, ‘Mind Over Matter’ has gained immense popularity among the students from premium engineering institutes across India. This year, yet again, we expect an overwhelming participation from budding engineering students eager to display their innovative expertise.”
Launched in 2014, ‘Mind Over Matter’ challenges students to conceptualise solutions for real life and exciting manufacturing problems (available on www.valueabled.com). The contest pans out in 3 phases. In the first phase, students from top engineering institutes across the country are invited to register and submit innovative proposals on research cases put forth. Students with the most innovative solutions are shortlisted for a 2-month internship at Tata Steel and further build on their solutions under the mentorship of R&D experts from Tata Steel in the second phase. In the third and final phase, the teams present their solutions to an esteemed Jury and the winners of the contest are chosen based on various parameters such as potential, impact, and implementation aspects. The contest winners stand to win cash prizes of up to Rs1 lakh, trophies, certificates and even a pre-placement offer.
About Tata Steel
Tata Steel Group stands among the top global steel companies with an annual crude steel capacity of 28 million tonnes per annum (MnTPA) and a turnover of US $17.69 billion in FY16. It is the world's second-most geographically-diversified steel producer, with operations in 26 countries and commercial presence in over 50 countries. Established in 1907, the Group’s vision is to be the world steel industry benchmark in “Value Creation” and “Corporate Citizenship” through the excellence of its people, its innovative approach and overall conduct. Underpinning this vision is a performance culture committed to aspiration targets, safety and social responsibility, continuous improvement, openness and transparency. Having bagged the Deming Application Prize and Deming Grand Prize for continuous improvement in 2008 and 2012 respectively, Tata Steel has now been recognised as the global ‘Industry Leader’ in ‘Steel category’ by Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Besides being one of ‘worldsteel’s’ Climate Action members, it has also been awarded the CII ITC Sustainability Prize, the ‘Time India award - 2016’ for ‘Best-in-class Manufacturing’ , the Prime Minister’s Trophy for the best performing integrated steel plant, many times, among several others.