The 22nd edition of Abhiyantriki, the annual technical festival of the K. J. Somaiya College of Engineering was held on the 23rd and 24th of October 2020. Due to the covid crisis, Abhiyantriki was conducted virtually for the first time. Despite being a virtual festivity, Abhiyantriki 2020 was invigorating with participation from students and faculty members alike. The festival received a footfall of over 10,000 students from schools and colleges across Maharashtra. Abhiyantriki 2020 has raised its standards by setting a new benchmark with the huge success of its first virtual version.

Pre-events are the reason for stupendous rise in participation for any festival. The pre-event lineup of Abhiyantriki 2020 consisted of a lecture by Dr. Binish Desai, the Recycle Man of India as a part of Parvaah’s motive of a ‘Zero Waste Community’, on 17th October. KJSCE CodeCell, just like every year conducted CodeSpree as the pre-event to its coding tournament, Crackathon at Abhiyantriki 2020. It received tremendous participation from enthusiastic coders from all over India. It was conducted on the 18th of October along with another pre-event, which was an interactive session with climate activist and travelpreneur, Mr. Aakash Ranison. All the pre-events garnered a big audience.

The inauguration started on the livestream of our YouTube channel at 10:00am on the 23rd of October with an encouraging speech by the Principal Dr. Shubha Pandit followed by welcoming all the dignitaries. After hosting the Indian Army in 2018, Indian Navy in 2019, Indian Air Force bestowed the honour on Abhiyantriki 2020 with GP Captain H J Page Sir and Lt. Commander Sneha Singh Ma'am gracing the viewers with an inspirational presentation. Next, Abhiyantriki 2020 saw an enlightening virtual session of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Exhibition by Space Application Centre, ISRO. Along with this, Tech Expo saw exhibits of much importance to deal with the covid crisis like Sayabot and many more.

An Internship Expo was organized, where many students striving to get a chance to improve their CVs were provided with internships in technical as well as non-technical fields. The students had an option to choose from multiple companies.

Day 1 was lit up by a captivating interview session of the renowned astrophysicist and emeritus professor at IUCAA, Padma Vibhushan Dr. Jayant Narlikar. The interview did not just apprise the viewers about his numerous technical theories and accomplishments but also amused the audience with anecdotes of his riveting life adventures. This was followed by a session by Council of Scientific & Industrial Research on developments by CSIR that helped India in the battle against covid-19.

 

Day 2 was a successor to the amazing day 1. This day started with a speaker session by the first International Speaker to every grace, Padma Bhushan Arogyaswami Paulraj, an emeritus professor at Stanford, father of MIMO, who had also served the Indian Navy in his young days. Mr. Paulraj gave an informative talk on the topic “Information, communication & Machine learning- Nexers".

Tech Shield, the technical interdepartmental competition was held with competitions like Tech Quiz, Green Building, Technovate and Tech Hunt. (Announcements were made during these sessions). Fun and informal gaming events like Valorant and Call of Duty allured the students to indulge in non-technical rejuvenating activities. All gaming events were conducted virtually and were a great success.

ADCOM India was the technology partner for Abhiyantriki 2020. In kind products were distributed amongst the winners of fun and informal gaming event. The event was a big success and we, the students, are very grateful to Adcom India for all their support.

 Some winners: