CII to make iTalent a pan-India event in 3 yrs

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) that is organising its second iTalent "� an event to identify and showcase the talent of IT students "� is planning to make it a pan-India event three years down the line. At present, it is organised only for the southern region.

Addressing the media, Ravi J Shah, chairman iTalent 2005 and vice-president of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Limited, said, "Next year, we might include the eastern region for the event and three years down the line, we would like to make it a national event."

iTalent was launched last year and saw the participation of 415 students from 75 colleges, with 56 being from Tamil Nadu, 12 from Andhra Pradesh, five from Karnataka and two from Kerala. "This year, we expect more participation from the students of Andhra Pradesh," Shah added.

The project-centric competition, designed to test the technical, conceptual, presentation and creative skills of the participants, is open to the final year electrical and computer engineering (ECE), electrical & electronic engineering (EEE), IT and computer science students of engineering, besides students from MSc computer science, IT and electronics and MCA streams.

Each institute can send a maximum of four team entries (minimum of two and maximum of three students per team) with the fee for each team being Rs 1,000.

Three meritorious teams will be awarded cash prizes of Rs 75,000, Rs 50,000 and Rs 25,000 besides a citation for each member. All other finalists would receive a cash prize of Rs 1,500 per team and a citation.

Last year, 103 Letters of Intent (LoI) were given to the contestants for placement opportunities through the event.