Indian IT company CSM Tech has teamed up with IIT Madras to help build the world’s fastest, autonomously driven electric racecar by 2025.
CSM Tech is backing Raftar, a motorsports team run by the students of IIT Madras. The team has more than 40 students from different disciplines in IIT Madras with a shared passion for automotive engineering and motorsports.
“Every year, the team takes up the challenge of building a swift Formula Student racecar. It works to become the nation’s most competent and cohesive team of engineers,” said the statement issued by CSM Tech.
CSM Tech has signed a memorandum of understanding with IIT Madras to power the ambitious dream of developing a disruptive racecar underpinned by indigenous capabilities. The MoU was inked between Priyadarshi Nanu Pany, founder and CEO of CSM Tech, Lagna Panda, the company’s chief human resources officer, and Manu Santhanam, dean of industry contribution and sponsored research at IIT-Madras.
Pany said the efforts by Raftar have the potential to be a game-changer in the passenger vehicle as well as heavy vehicles, telemetry, vehicle tracking, and much more. “This team is a force to reckon with, and I urge them to keep working towards taking the nation forward and upward. The next big innovation of the automobile industry should originate in India”, he added.
Santhanam accredited the students for the temperament and determination to lead such a complex project, executing it excellently and refusing to give in or give up even when faced with insurmountable challenges.
Started in 2012 as a student’s club in 2008 for building a blazing-fast combustion-driven sports car, the team has won the Formula Bharat thrice, the topmost motorsports event in the country for educational institutions, more than any other peer. It has shown its calibre in international events.
CSM has started supporting IIT-Madras under the CSM Foundation, the company’s non-profit arm that conceptualizes and backs unique corporate social responsibility interventions. Last year, it instituted a scholarship at IIT Delhi for the undergrad program, pledging to continue it for a decade, said the official statement.
