180 students solve Motorsport challenges at TrackShift Innovation Challenge, an annual flagship event by Plaksha University and Mphasis

• ●  Student innovators develop scalable proofs of concept addressing real-world challenges in AI, mobility and intelligent systems
• ●  Top three teams to earn a fully sponsored visit to the TGR Haas F1 Team facility in the United Kingdom

NEW DELHI:  Plaksha University, in collaboration with the Mphasis as part of its commitment to promoting inclusive education and innovation in STEM hosted the second edition of the ‘TrackShift Innovation Challenge’ on September 12–13, 2026, at the Plaksha University campus. The 24-hour applied innovation challenge brought together more than 180 undergraduate and postgraduate student innovators from across India to develop scalable proofs of concept at the intersection of artificial intelligence, mobility and intelligent systems.

Developed as part of Mphasis' multi-year association with the TGR Haas F1 Team, TrackShift 2026 challenged students to apply emerging technologies including computer vision, data science and predictive modelling to engineering problems drawn directly from the realities of elite motorsport. This year's edition placed a sharper focus on applied engineering rigour, with problem statements inspired by the technical constraints and decision-making scenarios of the 2026 racing season.

The challenge drew more than 3600 applications from students across India, including those from IITs, NITs, IIIT-Hyderabad, BITS Pilani, and a significant number of regional and tier 2-3 institutions. Approximately one-third of applicants were female students, a reflection of the initiative's commitment to women in STEM education and broadening participation in high-complexity technology challenges.

This year's challenge featured three problem statements:

• Energy & Overtake Intelligence: Build a real-time decision engine that recommends optimal energy deployment modes and evaluates the risk-reward ratio of overtake windows.

• Track Limits Detection: Develop an AI-powered video analysis system to detect track-limit violations using computer vision and car telemetry.

• Tyre Degradation Intelligence: Create a predictive model that strips external noise from practice sessions to generate clean tyre performance degradation curves.

Solutions developed during the challenge will be made available through an open repository on the TrackShift website, accessible to industry partners, academia, startups and research labs ensuring that promising ideas can continue to evolve beyond the challenge itself.

"Engineers are shaped by the problems they are given. TrackShift puts that belief to the test every year, and this edition, with its focus on overtake intelligence, track limit detection and tyre degradation intelligence, pushed students into the kind of complexity our industry partners deal with daily. That is the standard we want our graduates to be ready for,” said Prof. M. Balakrishnan, Distinguished Visiting Professor, Plaksha University.

“The TGR Haas F1 Team partnership gives TrackShift something rare: engineering problems with real stakes and real complexity. What excites me is that students from IITs and from tier 2 colleges across India are sitting in the same room, working on the same hard problems that professionals at the frontier of motorsport technology deal with every day. That is exactly the kind of talent pipeline India's technology industry needs and the kind Mphasis is committed to building,” said Veda Iyer, Global Chief Marketing Officer, Head of Hyperscalers & Strategic Partnerships, and Head Sales- APAC, Mphasis.

“Motorsport brings together some of the most complex challenges in engineering, data and technology, and TrackShift allows students to engage with these challenges from a practical perspective. By working on problems inspired by the realities of motorsport, participants were able to apply their technical knowledge, explore new approaches and develop solutions that have relevance beyond the track. It was particularly interesting to observe how the students approached this year’s challenges and the fresh perspectives they brought to these complex engineering problems,” said Jason Kew, Head of Information, TGR Haas F1 Team.

The top three winning teams received cash prizes of ₹1,00,000, ₹50,000, and ₹25,000, respectively, along with mentorship-based internships at Mphasis. The winning teams are:

• 1st prize: Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore

• 2nd Prize: Yeshwantrao Chavan College of Engineering (YCCE), Nagpur

• 3rd prize: Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology, Delhi

The top three teams will receive a share of the cash  prize along with a fully sponsored visit to the TGR Haas F1 Team facility in the United Kingdom. Selected participants will receive mentoring during their internship (up to two months) at Mphasis., working on live AI and innovation projects. Participants will receive innovation kits and certificates, meet industry experts, academic leaders and the TGR Haas F1 Team, along with networking opportunities with global technology leaders.

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About Plaksha University:

Founded by a global community of more than 100 technology and business leaders, Plaksha envisions reimagining technology education and research for India and the world. With strong partnerships with UC Berkeley, Purdue, UC San Diego, Cornell University, Penn Engineering, IIT Kanpur and IISc Bengaluru, Plaksha aims to nurture and empower a generation of catalytic leaders and create an ecosystem of research and innovation. The university collapses the traditional boundaries of engineering and promotes interdisciplinary learning by combining technology, design and entrepreneurship.

Plaksha is guided by an eminent academic board including Vijay Kumar, Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering, University of Pennsylvania; Prof. S Shankar Sastry, Thomas Siebel Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Venkatesh Narayanamurthi, former Dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Sriram Rajamani, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Research India; Julia Ross, Dean of Engineering, Virginia Tech; Krishna Palepu, Ross Graham Walker Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; Sanjay Sarma, Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering, MIT; and business leaders such as Neeraj Aggarwal, Vice-Chair, Asia-Pacific at Boston Consulting Group; Rakesh Bharti Mittal, Vice Chairman, Bharti Enterprises; Hitesh Oberoi, Co-promoter &; CEO, Info Edge (Naukri.com); Alok Mittal, Cofounder and Executive Chairman, Indifi Technologies Pvt Ltd; Manas Human, Co- Founder, Nagarro; Prashanth Prakash, Partner, Accel; Subrata Mitra, Partner, Accel; Ritesh Malik, Founder and CEO, Innov8; Dalip Pathak, Special Limited Partner, Warburg Pincus LLC; Srikanth Velamakanni, Cofounder and Group CEO, Fractal; Pramod Bhasin, Chairman, Clix Capital among others. Corporate donors include companies like Bharti Airtel Foundation, Axis Bank, Indorama Ventures, Havells, Harish and Bina Shah Foundation, Binny Bansal, Co-founder Flipkart and founder Xto10x, HT Parekh Foundation, Mphasis, Info Edge, and Motilal Oswal. The global community of business leaders who founded Plaksha can be seen here.

About Mphasis:

At Mphasis, engineering has been in our DNA since inception.

Mphasis is an AI-led, platform-driven company with human-in-the-loop intelligence, helping global enterprises modernize, infuse AI, and scale with agility. The Mphasis.ai unit and Mphasis AI-powered ‘Tribes’ are focused on client outcomes and embed artificial intelligence and autonomy into every layer of the enterprise technology and process stack. 

Mphasis built NeoIP™, a breakthrough AI platform which orchestrates a powerful pack of AI platforms and solutions to deliver impactful outcomes across the entire enterprise IT value chain, because we believe ‘AI Without Intelligence Is Artificial.^TM’ Mphasis NeoIP is powered by the Ontosphere, a dynamic and ever-evolving knowledge base, delivering continuous and constant innovation through perpetual intelligent engineering - driving end-to-end enterprise transformation.

At the heart of our approach is customer-centricity—reflected in our proprietary Front2Back™ transformation framework, which uses the exponential power of cloud and cognitive to deliver hyper-personalized digital experiences (C=X2C2™ = 1) and build strong relationships with marquee clients. Our Service Transformation solutions enable enterprises to pivot from legacy systems and operations to secure, adaptive, cloud-first operating models with minimal disruption. Continuous investments in platforms, such as the Neo series, enable enterprises to stay efficient, relevant, and ahead in a dynamic AI-first world. Mphasis is a Hi-Tech, Hi-Touch, Hi-Trust company, rooted in a learning and growth culture.