Pune print media technology students shine at IndiaSkills

IndiaSkills is a competition of skills, which includes more than 50 skills, such as carpentry, bakery, water technology, cooking, print media technology, beauty therapy, etc. The winner of IndiaSkills will get a chance to represent India at WorldSkills.

WorldSkills is a competition where more than 80 countries compete with each other in various skills. It takes place every two year. Last time, it took place in Kazan, Russia in 2019 and now it's going to happen in Shanghai, China in 2022.

There are many levels and stages to represent India at WorldSkill.

For the students competing in the Print Media Technology category, the first step was to register for IndiaSkills on its official site under the skill Print Media Technology.

The first level was a MCQ-based exam, in which more than 300 students appeared. Among them, five candidates were shortlisted for state level competition — IndiaSkills, Maharashtra.

The shortlisted candidates were given 10 days practical training on digital printing, ink mixing and shade matching, pre-flighting, and fault finding in printed sheets.

The state level competition took place on 3-5 September 2021. In the competition, Omkar Kokatay, a student of Pune Vidyarthi Griha’s College of Engineering and Technology, and Aditya Hugay, a student of GK Pate Wani Institute of Management secured the top two places.

The second step was IndiaSkills Regional West. At the regional competition, the students were given tasks like printing a front-back brochure, printing booklet, mixing and matching 50 grams of ink and fault finding etc.

The IndiaSkills Regionals took place on 29-1 November 2021. Here too, Omkar Kokatay and Aditya Hugay bagged gold and silver medals respectively.

The Regionals included four zones — North, South, East & West. From each zone, one or two candidates got the chance to go to the nationals. There were six candidates at the Nationals — two from South zone, two from West zone, one from North zone and one from east zone.

IndiaSkills national tournament took place at Pragati Maidan in Delhi. It included more than 56+ skills and some demo skills like garment making, shoe making, etc.

At the National level of IndiaSkills, there were more difficult modules and tasks like Sinapse (simulation model), mixing matching and making 30 grams of ink in just 45 minutes while getting minimum delta E value, digital printing and pre-flighting PDF files.

The competition took place for three days and the results were declared on 11 January. Again, Omkar Kokatay won gold medal and Aditya Hugay won the silver in the skill category Print Media Technology.