"The stakes are high. The environment is intense." | Raftar Formula Racing Team, IIT Madras

[00:01:46] Introductions: Team captain Aryan Varma

[00:02:07] Understanding the Basics: Student formula racing

[00:06:13] Student Racing Team: Why should a student join the team?

[00:10:05] Designing and Manufacturing a Formula Racing Car: How do you start?

[00:11:20] CFI and IIT Madras: Team structure and faculty support

[00:13:40] Judging Criteria at Racing Events: Speed, design, cost-efficiency and BPP

[00:15:44] Sponsorships and Funding: Where does the money come from?

[00:20:54] Raftar Formula Team: Team organization structure

[00:29:47] Raftar Team: Achievements, legacy and healthy competition with other college teams

[00:36:27] Participating in International Competitions: The challenges the team faces

[00:40:18] CFI Teams: Competition teams and clubs

[00:43:13] Balancing Academics: Inter disciplinary work on project teams

[00:45:54] Working on Student Teams: Edge in applying for research internships and jobs

[00:49:33] Building Resilience: How does the team handle failures

[00:52:19] Powertrain Specialist Divyaratna Joshi: How and why did he join the team?

[00:54:56] The Driving Experience: How are the drivers selected?

[00:57:20] Competition Events: What is the racing strategy?

[00:58:20] Time Management: Finding time for academics, CFI and extracurricular interests

[01:00:41] Future of Raftar: Plans for the next few years

[00:11:20] IIT Madras

[00:04:28] The IITs in Bombay, Roorkee, Delhi, Kanpur and Kharagpur are building their student racing teams. 

[00:04:37] IIT Hyderabad just started their student team a year ago.

[00:04:46] COEP Technological University Pune, is one of the colleges that participates in the competitions.

[00:05:51] ETH Zurich holds the record for the fastest accelerating race car in the FSAE competition

[00:11:20] IIT Madras is the only institute that has the structure in place for the competition with a faculty advisor in the form of CFI (Centre for Innovation)

[00:11:26] Professor Satyanarayan Seshadri is supervising the EV development of the Raftar team

[00:11:35] Professor Prabhu Rajagopal is the CFI faculty adviser and also advises the Raftar team.

[00:11:40] Mrs. Nandhini is the office manager of Nirmaan

[00:12:00] The team go to Professor Karthick Athmanathan when they are trying to do something new and need advice

[00:12:04] Professor Shankar Ram is also one of the team’s advisers 

[00:12:22] Seshan Rammohan is the founder of the IIT Madras foundation in the US 

[00:12:26] Vasu Guruswamy is also one of the IITM alumnus who helps the team.

[00:16:59] Swapnil Jain and Arun Vinayak of Ather used to be Raftar team members. 

[00:19:57] Shantanu Jog is the lead designer in Ather who offered to design the outer body of the racing car.

[00:26:04] Professor Satya Chakravarthy spoke about how battery packs also have to deliver acceleration during his chat with Amrut.

[00:16:26] Ather Energy has been sponsoring the Raftar team in the financial and design aspect over the last two years

[00:46:21] Ankith did his internship in a FMCG company and Unilever and ITC are mentioned as examples of FMCG companies.

[01:01:47] The Raftar team has been collaborating with MRF for the past five years for tyres in exchange for data on the performance of the tyres

[01:02:37] Daimler AG was also working with Raftar as they wanted to come into India to set up their electric powertrain.

[00:22:32] The Raftar car design will be familiar to anyone who follows the F1 racing.

[00:02:09] FSAE (Formula SAE) is a type of competition where student teams from different engineering colleges around the world are tasked with building a high-performance race car. The type of car depends on the competition.

[00:03:14] Formula Bharat is the main FSAE competition conducted in India.

[00:05:21] Formula Student Germany is one of the biggest engineering competitions in the world at the student level. 

[00:08:40] FEA stands for Finite Elemental Analysis is a powerful computational technique used to predict how a product or structure will behave under various physical conditions, such as stress, heat, or vibration.

[00:32:55] FS UK was the first competition that the Raftar team attended in 2012. 

[00:40:32] Anveshak, Abhyuday, Team Abhiyaan, Amogh and Avishkar Hyperloop are some of the competition teams in CFI which are building prototypes and models and participating in international competitions.

[00:41:50] The Agnirath team is building a solar car and participating in endurance events.