Maker Bhavan Foundation Crowns Winners of Vishwakarma Awards 2025
New Delhi, January 27, 2026 – The Maker Bhavan Foundation successfully concluded the Vishwakarma Awards 2025 at IIT Indore. This prestigious event marked the culmination of a cross-border innovation journey that brought together some of the most promising student innovators from India and SAARC countries.
Event Overview
The Vishwakarma Awards are structured as a hardware-focused challenge aimed at pushing student innovation ideas into real-world applications. The 2025 edition engaged 3,600 undergraduate and postgraduate STEM students from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. The competition began with an initial pool of 1,000 teams, which underwent a rigorous nine-month cycle of prototyping, technical evaluation, and expert mentoring, ultimately narrowing down to 12 finalist teams.
Final Showcase
During the final showcase, shortlisted teams presented working hardware prototypes across three main categories:
- HealTech
- Smart Mobility
- Artificial Intelligence
Notably, the focus was on embedding AI directly into physical systems rather than treating it as a standalone software layer.
Winners of the Vishwakarma Awards 2025
Smart Mobility Category
The first place in the Smart Mobility category was awarded to:
- Team VAYU-SETU from Vivekanand Education Society’s Institute of Technology (VESIT), consisting of Harsh Tejwani and Mohammed Ujjainwala.
Second place went to:
- Team VIHANG from Adamas University, comprising Kamruzzaman Mondal, Shambhavi Shekhar Singh, Pritam Debnath, and Srishti Paul.
Intelligent Machines Category
The first prize in the Intelligent Machines category was awarded to:
- Team Adaptive Modular Arms from IIT Bombay, consisting of Aarav Gupta, Palash Pangavhane, and Jaideep Lokhande.
Second place was secured by:
- Team Aqualoop from IIT Indore, comprising Atharva Sunil Chavan, Diksha Jaurker, Kaushal Gangwar, K. Reddy Mohamed Sadiq, and Vansh Ruhela.
HealTech Category
In the HealTech category, the first prize was awarded to:
- Team Sarathi from the C.R. Rao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, comprising Bolisetty Subbarayudu, Chiguru Varun, Gollapally Shivaraj, and Shaik Taufeeq.
Second place was claimed by:
- Team FlexoGear from IIT Mandi, consisting of Garv Jain, Dhairya Sharma, Manit Arora, Utkarsh Ranjan, and Akshadeep Anand Suryawanshi.
Insights from the Event
Dr. Hemant Kanakia, the Chief Guest, praised the quality of hardware prototypes on display, stating, “The quality of hardware prototypes on display reflects the students’ strong foundation in applied engineering and a mindset geared toward deployable solutions. They are solving problems that demand engineering judgment, trade-off decisions, and system-level thinking.”
Mr. Gautam Khanna, President and CEO of Maker Bhavan Foundation, highlighted the challenges faced by students, saying, “Working with hardware-first systems meant students had to navigate real technical constraints, from sensor calibration and signal noise in HealTech applications, to power management and control systems in Smart Mobility, and tight compute and latency limits while embedding AI into physical devices. Watching teams resolve these challenges through iterative design and testing highlighted the depth of engineering skill and problem-solving capability emerging from young minds.”
Prof. Suhas Joshi, Director of IIT Indore, emphasized the importance of such initiatives: “This hardware-focused challenge exemplifies the kind of deep-tech innovation we seek to nurture where ideas are translated into robust, real-world systems. The journey from over a thousand teams to a select group of finalists underscores the rigor of the process and the commitment of young innovators across the region.”
Support and Training for Finalists
In addition to the open category, participants engaged with industry-curated problem statements, ensuring that solutions demonstrated relevance, scalability, and real-world applicability. The finalist teams received dedicated prototyping support and had the opportunity to participate in intensive technical and entrepreneurship training at the Indian Institute of Technology Indore, focusing on prototype refinement, pitch development, and presentation readiness.
Conclusion
The Vishwakarma Awards 2025 reaffirmed Maker Bhavan Foundation’s commitment to building platforms that support practice-ready engineers and entrepreneurs, while expanding access to structured innovation opportunities for students across India and SAARC nations.
Note: This article is based on information provided by various sources and aims to present a comprehensive overview of the Vishwakarma Awards 2025 event.
