Udaipur's Team Paradox Makes History in Robotics Design

Udaipur. The global non-profit organization FIRST organized a robotics competition in Istanbul from March 17 to 22. Ahaan Singhavi, brother of Udaipur's swimming prodigy Gauravi Singhavi, along with his teammates from Mumbai's sensational Paradox team, made history by becoming the first Indian team to qualify for the Houston World Championship based solely on their engineering prowess in their first year of designing robotics. A team of nine schools from the country participated in this competition.

Mentor Meenal Mazumdar explained that the FIRST organization provides students from classes 8 to 12 with the opportunity to design, build, and program robots from scratch. The sensational Paradox team from Mumbai, consisting of Ahaan Singhavi and his collaborators, emerged as a remarkable achievement by winning the title of the Helic Regional Champions in Turkey, along with the Cyber Unicorn team from China and Turkey and the Archers team. Their group's victory not only demonstrates a significant achievement but also earns them a prestigious place at the World Championship in Houston, where top robotics teams from around the world will compete. Their skills gained further recognition by winning the Excellence in Engineering Award, honed through more than 150 hours of programming and computer-aided design training.

The team from Mumbai known as Paradox includes 20 students from nine different schools, passionate about science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics. Their commitment to inclusivity and diversity is evident, with an impressive 45% representation of women. Ahaan Singhavi, along with his technical team, led this competition. This team included Aakriti Agarwal, Atharv Sunkarset, Niyona Gupta, Sara Kachhwala, Keya Rajgarhia, and 14 other drive team programming team Cady Neve Negandi, Dev Shah, Aryan Kabra, Shayan Vaidya, Ananya Sharma, Ishaan Talati, Adya Sachdeva, Ali Khorakiwala, Maana Shah, Tara Guha Thakurta, Jackson Ballard, Maithili Agarwal, Yuvam Lunawat, and Atharv Sunkarset.

Ahaan Singhavi mentioned that our team lost twice in this competition and reached 40th place, but team members did not accept defeat and returned to the competition, qualifying for Houston by reaching the number one position before the 40th number while keeping their morale high, which is a matter of pride for India.

The impact of Paradox goes beyond robotics. They are involved in external efforts in Sri Lanka, where they have led three FTC teams and guided them. Additionally, they raised more than $20,000 through crowdfunding and corporate partnerships, which went to disadvantaged communities in both Mumbai and Sri Lanka. FIRST Robotics only affects children beyond building robots; it includes learning life skills such as effective communication, fundraising, collaboration, and creativity, and therefore, they strive to provide this opportunity to others.