Facebook for skilling students in new technology

Facebook is introducing Indian students to Virtual Reality (VR) technology through a series of programmes, offering them a platform to let their imaginations run riot.

On Saturday, 21 college students mentored by Facebook School of Innovation demoed some of the most engaging experiential products they have been working on.

Three of the teams at the event, who called themselves Titan, We Prodigy and Marana Mass, are from Bengaluru colleges. The products on display ranged from backyard garden, secrets of Indus Valley Civilization, adventures inside Jaipur’s Amer Fort, a flight simulator and a Sci-Fi game on the Holi festival.

Facebook School of Innovation is a 20-week programme that wants to select ten student teams from over 1000 applicants from across India and help them conceive and build the next-gen VR based products.

Speaking to DH, Kriti Goel and Jivesh Piplani from Meerut’s Institute of Engineering and Technology said they were motivated to make ‘Holi Molly’ (on the festival) by the lack of India centric apps in Oculus app stores.

“We thought: ‘why not show something connect to India?’” Piplani said. “But then we added aliens to make it more interesting.”

BITS Pilani’s Mayank Bhutani and Koustubh Gupta made a cricketing simulation that emerged the winner of the competition.

Facebook’s head of Platform Partnerships for India and Southeast Asia Satyajeet Singh believes India can be the leader in VR technology, which has the potential to boost the country’s economy.

“VR is not just for rendering games,” said V Sridharan, CEO of Foundation for Innovation Research at Sastra, a Tamil Nadu-based educational institute that adopted Facebook’s virtual reality curriculum as part of a course elective.

“India’s heritage buildings and temples can be rendered with 3D effect to boost tourism. Doctors can perform challenging surgeries on 3D apps before doing them for real,” Sridharan added.

The School of Innovation ran two programmes last year to introduce VR to both school goers and engineering students.