For the last few years, a special category for children from financially backward sections has been included in the contest. This has enabled students from PMC-run schools to participate.

“The kind of talent we saw at the competition makes me feel that we should start training these youngsters for IT companies immediately after X standard instead of engineering,” said SEAP secretary Abhijit Atre, who also judged the contests.

“There was one boy who drew a 3D motorbike on 2D animation which was fantastic. The posters, that the kids made, looked as good as those that event management companies make,” Atre added.

Deepak Shikarpur, CEO, Autoline Dimensions, congratulated the school for pursuing the competition for nine years and appealed to them to take it to a global level. “When I first got into the industry, IT meant income tax. Today it means information technology but, you should transform it into innovation technology,” he said.

Harsh Barve, CEO, Sungard Offshore Services and chief guest at the function, while sharing some secrets of success said, “One should choose a career based on inclination and interest. If you do something you like, you will always be successful at it.” Speaking specifically about the IT field he added, “essential skills are logical reasoning, root cause analysis, persistence and the ability to stay on top of new developments.

The competition included paint brush and poster designing to test creativity, programming to test logical skills, presentations and web designing to test communication skills, and quizzing to test awareness and general knowledge in the field of computers.

All the contests took place over the period of two months and were conducted on weekends. The rolling trophies were given to schools with maximum points in each of the four groups. In the mini group, the rolling trophy went to Dr. Kalmadi Shamarao Primary School while the sub junior and junior group trophies went to the host school. The senior category trophy was been bagged by S M Choksey High School.