Vijayawada: Students from Vijayawada brought laurels to the city by excelling at three-day Techfest 2025, Asia’s largest science and technology festival, held at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay from December 22.

Siblings Manish Bayana, 10th Class student, and Ketana Sri, 6th Class student, trained at The STEM Makers, Vijayawada, delivered an impressive performance in the RoboSprint – Senior Category of the Blixathon competition. Competing against over 130 teams from premier institutions across the country, the duo secured a place among the top 32 teams and won an award for their innovative robot mechanism.

Techfest, the flagship annual event of IIT Bombay, is internationally recognised for promoting technological innovation, scientific thinking and engineering excellence.

The Blixathon RoboSprint competition challenged participants to design and build robots capable of obstructing balls pushed by the opponent team while simultaneously pushing maximum balls into the opponent’s court within a three-minute timeframe. The team that successfully transferred the highest number of balls was declared the winner.

The Vijayawada team trained for more than four months at The STEM Makers, under the guidance of Asha Kranthin.

Speaking on the achievement, Asha Kranthi, founder of STEM Makers and mentor to students, said that participation in national-level competitions like Techfest offers invaluable exposure to hands-on engineering, teamwork and innovation-driven learning beyond traditional classroom education. She added that The STEM Makers provides long-term training to students aspiring to compete in national and international robotics competitions.