The 11th edition of Mahindra BAJA SAE was held at the NATRAX facility, Pithampur in the thick of much fanfare among engineering students across the country.
BAJA (pronounced as Baahaa) SAE India, an aspirational event for mechanical engineering students was kickstarted over a decade ago (2007 to be precise) with a humble 27 teams. Over the past decade, the team count has more than doubled. Approximately 388 teams registered out of which 221 qualified for the finals. However, the story just doesn’t end there. Of the 221 teams, only 112 (87 for mBAJA and 25 for eBAJA) made it to the Endurance round (the event, in particular, we were invited to witness).
After reaching Indore, we were guided to the hotel room to rest for the day. We finished our lunch and took a nap for a while. A networking dinner was planned for in the evening where we were given a briefing of what exactly is BAJA all about and post that we got a chance to interact with the event’s organising committee members. After dinner, it was time to head back to the hotel room for a night’s rest as we had to leave early morning the next day to witness the Endurance run. Like every year, 2018 too had a theme, called ‘Ground to Glory’.
The four-day adventure starts off with the basic Static Evaluation of vehicle’s design, cost and engineering. Each team’s goal was to create a rugged single seat, off-road biased four-wheel vehicle without any direct involvement from professional fabricators. The event aims at giving engineering students an idea of what goes into making or developing a vehicle. The Dynamic Evaluation round tested the vehicle’s acceleration, suspension, traction and manoeuvrability. The Endurance event was flagged off by Mr. Babul Supriyo, Minister of State for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises and Dr. Pawan Goenka, MD, Mahindra.
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