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Students from faridabad based Manav Rachna Institute of Research and Studies won the Microsoft Imagine Cup Asia regional semifinals on Tuesday.

They now head to world championship in the US and the prize is of $100000.

The 3 member team developed “Caeli” (which means air in Latin) which is a smart automated anti-pollution and drug delivery mask specifically designed for asthmatic and chronic respiratory patients.

“Caeli” implements breakthrough features to improve the quality of life for the people who have respiratory problems living in polluted areas like in northern parts of India and especially in the National Capital Region (NCR).

Speaking to IANS they told “At a time when air pollution is a big concern in various countries including India, we are collecting the real-time air pollution data that can be used by relevant stakeholders and the Indian government. They can integrate our application programme interfaces (APIs) into their projects and gain more insights,” said Aakash Bhadana from the “Caeli” team.

Along with Vasu Kaushik and Bharat Sundal developed the product under the guidance of Umesh Dutta at Manav Rachna Research Innovation and Incubation Centre (MRIIC).

Aakash Bhadana said, “Our aim is now to collaborate with right stakeholders and take the ‘made in India’ products (which also includes a pocket-sized nebulizer) to the market,”

The team received $15,000 as winner and secured a spot in the world championship, to be able to win the grand prize of $100,000 at Microsoft’s Redmond-based headquarters in May, while the first runners-up received $5,000 and the second runners-up $1,000.

There were 3 Indian teams among the 12 asia finalists.

Other 2 teams were from vellore Institute of Technology,Tamil Nadu, RV college of Engineering, Begaluru.

Team from the VIT designed “Spot” which allows one to recognise packaged foods and check if it contains a certain ingredient or exhibits a certain character.

The Bengaluru college designed “RVSAFE”, a one-stop solution for effectively handling any kind of disaster be it be natural or man-made.

Imagine Cup is considered as ‘ Olympics of technology’ and it is a global annual competition sponsored and hosted by Microsoft.

In this ‘Imagine Cup’ competition in last ten years millions of students participated around 190 countries.

-Sai Kumar