Students win challenge to bring clean water to slums of Mumbai, India

U of Minnesota team to travel to India to implement business plan

A team of University of Minnesota-Twin Cities students from a civil engineering class will head to India later this month to share their ideas and plans for helping bring clean water to thousands of residents living in the slums of Mumbai – the same impoverished area that provided the backdrop for the 2009 Oscar Award-winning movie, "Slumdog Millionaire."

The University of Minnesota students, who collaborated with students from the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, are winners of the first-ever Acara Challenge sponsored by the Minnesota-based Acara Institute, a non-profit institute that tackles global problems through sustainable business solutions.

The winning team, named ReachOut Water Solutions, includes:

• Brian Bell, a civil engineering undergraduate student in the university's Institute of Technology;
• Karthikeyan Bharath Kumar, a landscape architecture graduate student in the university's College of Design;
• Mark Lundgren, a civil engineering graduate student in the university's Institute of Technology; and
• Tony Schrempp, a civil engineering undergraduate student in the university's Institute of Technology.

The University of Minnesota students were joined by four teammates at Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay: Vivek Sharma, Bholu Ram Yadav, Shikha Pandey, and Jayendra Jadhav.

"We are proud to represent the University of Minnesota as the winners of this challenge," said Brian Bell, a member of the ReachOut Water Solutions team. "With help from mentors and professors, we were able to combine engineering and business in developing our plan. We are all very excited to have the opportunity to travel to India to begin the process of putting the plan into action."

Seven teams of university and high school students from Minnesota, Illinois and India participated in the Acara Challenge. The teams were assisted by mentors from Honeywell, 3M, Cargill, Medtronic, Siemens, Goodrich and many others United States and Indian organizations. The teams' plans were presented earlier this week before a panel of judges comprised of leading technology and business leaders from the United States, Mexico and India. Judges evaluated the business plans for sustainability, technology feasibility and societal impact.