Student design competitions like this are open to university teams from around the world. At BAJA SAEINDIA, participants design, plan, build and test one-seater all-terrain vehicles and validate them in a range of disciplines over four days. The aim is to give students practical experience away from their studies and to develop them into valuable potential employees for businesses.

Since global restrictions made it impossible to hold the competitions in their regular format, the teams were asked to compete against each other virtually during the 2020 season. Due to the success of this virtual event and the way in which the automotive industry is moving towards developing vehicles using a combination of simulations and real-life prototypes, the competition was held as a mixed contest in 2021.

As part of our Formula CarMaker program, we gave the teams over 1,000 licenses for our simulation software CarMaker. Our sales partner ATS supported the students to implement the software and also played a leading role in staging the final. The students and ATS worked so well together that feedback from the participants was positive throughout. The use of simulations is seen as particularly important in India and the students were incredibly enthusiastic about being able to sharpen their skills in this area. Even Indian television paid tribute to this development and reported on the event.

We also provide CarMaker licenses to teams taking part in a number of other student design competitions in Germany and beyond, a notable example being Formula Student. The participants can call on our support team for assistance as they develop their vehicles, can contact us at any time if they have any questions or encounter any problems, and also have the chance to attend regular workshops. We were also able to provide this year’s teams with a new Formula CarMaker package just in time for the start of the new season.

We look forward to continuing to support students with their projects for many years to come.