SIES GST students win first virtual Packathon

The two-day event was part of Impression 2021, the PPT department’s technical fest held under the college’s annual festival Tatva Moksh Lakshya.

The event saw students participate from s a range of cities such as Kozhikode, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Haryana, and Nagpur. Kuldip Goel, MD, Any Graphics and president, Label Manufacturers’ Association of India, was the chief guest for the event. Meanwhile, the team of mentors and judges for the competition included packaging expert Anupama Nayak, Pidilite Industries’ Nikhil Sahu, Velvin paper products’ Vartan Mathias, General Mills’ Ravindran Muralidharan, Godrej Consumer Products’ Nishita Sathe and Nua’s (Lagom Labs) Shreya Shetty.

Prasad Balan Iyer, HOD, SIES GST PPT, said, “Amid the circumstances caused by the pandemic, the core student committee and our faculty members came up with this idea of organising the first-ever virtual packaging development event in India – Packathon. It was a marathon event of 12 hours at a stretch, revolving around the concept of efficient package development in real-time.”

According to Iyer, the event provided a platform for students to showcase their technical, non-technical specialities, creative skills and the capacity to analyse a product and provide an efficient packaging solution for it, addressing the required supply chain or reverse logistical issue, all within half a day’s time.

The competition had a total of eight stages of development encapsulating the entire gamut of a package – the concept, material selection, structural package design, artwork design, processes and machines to be employed, quality assurance, sustainability, economics, and unique selling proposition.

Explaining about the competition, Iyer said, “The student’s task was to design a rigid plastic bottle for 500 ml orange juice. The participants had to come up with a unique ideology and strategy to sell the product with packaging as a marketing tool. “The participants had to convince the judges on how their package is the best silent salesman,” said Iyer.

He added, “Each team was assigned a packaging expert as a mentor to guide the teams throughout the competition and also to judge the progress. The teams had in total three interactions with their respective mentors in the mentioned time frame.” 

 “The success of the event lies in the fact that participants from each packaging or printing institute across India could leverage their in-house capabilities and showcase the best possible packaging development capacity. That in itself is the biggest winner for the industry’s future in India,” he said.