With No Big College Tags, These Students Showed Their Exceptional Skills At HeroCoLabs Xdrags Game Development and eXPerience Challenges 2021

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HeroCoLabs is an initiative of the Hero MotoCorp Limited, formerly known as Hero Honda. It is an exciting crowd-sourcing platform, allowing individuals to showcase their skills. This stimulating platform encourages creative minds to translate their vision into reality.

Last year, two of the successful challenges organized by Hero MotoCorps were HeroCoLabs Xdrags Game Development Challenge and HeroCoLabs eXPerience Challenge that saw participation of students from across the country! 

Welcome Team Penny Farthing and Team Acube!

Named after the first ever bicycle, Team Penny Farthing was a one member team of Rakhul K R from Velammal Engineering College (VEC), Chennai. He bagged the top position in HeroCoLabs Xdrags Game Development Challenge. It was an exciting game development challenge where the participants had to make a Motorbike Drag Racing Game. 

On the other hand, Team Acube with Aman Bansal, Ayushraj Mohanty and Amaan Mirza from Piloo Mody College Of Architecture, Odisha participated in the HeroCoLabs eXPerience Challenge. Their task was to design a Next-Gen Hero MotoCorp Premium Showroom. The team stood second in the challenge. 

Both the teams exihibited their best performances in their respective challenges and made their way to the top of the tally. We spoke to these top performers and here is how they strategized their win. 

Placing skills to the test

For Rakhul KR from team Penny Farthing, HeroCoLabs Xdrags Game Development Challenge was a platform to prove himself. When asked about what drove him to participate in the challenge, Rakhul said, “I knew I had what it takes to convert my learnings in CGI and Game Development into a tangible result and I decided to put it to the test.”

Speaking of Aman Bansal from Team Acube, he found HeroCoLabs eXPerience Challenge an exciting and new experience and wanted to give it a shot. He said, “The competition brief was extremely new for us, which  excited us to participate and learn through the process.”  

"Challenge was more of a mental game"

HeroCoLabs Xdrags Game Development and eXPerience challenges pushed participants to think out of the box using their skills and creativity. When we asked Rakhul about his winning strategy he said

"There wasn't much preparation needed. I just drew up a mental list of things to do, in order to turn the concept into an actual product and worked through them.”

For Aman Bansal from PMCA Cuttack's Team ACUBE, the competition demanded a different strategy altogether. They had to use their imagination and creativity to design a Next-Gen Premium showroom for Hero Motocorp and this required some good research. Explaining his team's winning strategy, Aman said,

“We conducted physical case studies to learn about the intricacies of a showroom design. We worked and brainstormed on the problem for approximately 2 weeks." 

Aman believed that the trickiest phase in the challenge was to include different activities in the showroom while striving to increase footfall. His Team's well-structured approach managed to achieve the same. 

What set them apart

The competition was a ‘one man’s Army’ play for Rakhul KR from VEC Chennai. It was challenging for him as he needed to do everything in the game all by himself. Remembering how he managed everything, Rakhul said

“As an individual, I naturally had to be a bit of an all rounder while making the game. My experience in graphics design, asset development and programming enabled me to convert the concept into an actual game.The ability of an individual to yield results exponentially goes down with respect to the scale of the project. So it must be noted that if the project can't be scaled down, going at it without a team isn't quite advisable.”

When we asked Aman Bansal about Team Acube's forte, he had the most positive answer. Aman said,

"We gave our best and hoped for the best! "

The strategy indeed worked for them!

Any interesting memory?

Both the teams had their own enriching experiences in their respective competitions. And they had some interesting moments too.

Rakhul from Team Penny Farthing had an experience to share with us. He stated,

“A interesting instance was when there was some issue with the announcement of result for the first round. The results were to be announced on the 5th of January, but were postponed to 7th of January without any notification. So, for the entire two days, I thought that I didn't even clear the first round! One can imagine the befuddlement I was in for on the 7th when I checked my mail and discovered that I had actually cleared the first round! ”  

For Team Acube, it was a little different. Aman recalled one such instance and said “One of the memories we have from this competition is when the three of us landed on different ideas but somehow managed to work it out! ”  Their team coordination brought them amongst the top three teams in the HeroCoLabs eXPerience Challenge!

“Final announcement was like a dream”

Securing second position amongst so many brilliant ideas was something unbelievable for Team Acube. Their team’s journey was  full of learnings and new experiences. Recounting the experience Aman Bansal said,

“It still seems like a dream.We were completely unaware of the competition at first. The design process was a roller coaster ride to say the least. We tried to put our best of ideas into it and subsequently things fell into place. We thank Hero wholeheartedly and are looking forward to more such competitions in the future.”

Rakhul KR on the other hand, was grateful that his months of continuous work had indeed come to fruition. He further added,

“It was a few hours of  re-reloading the competition page that led me to inadvertently stumble upon the results of the competition. As one would imagine, there was an immense sense of relief when I noticed my name listed at the top of the winners list. It was quite gratifying.”  

Hearty congratulations to these winners. Cheers to new ideas!