On Tuesday, September 26, India's Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, commended the ingenuity of students from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras for their groundbreaking work on a prototype of a futuristic Hyperloop travel project.

In a tweet on X (formerly known as Twitter), FM Sitharaman congratulated the IIT Madras team, stating, "Congratulations! Interesting. Wishing you all success in your future endeavors too."

https://twitter.com/nsitharaman/status/1706560480230396327

The student team from IIT Madras, working on the 'Avishkar Hyperloop' project, recently achieved a significant milestone by successfully developing a prototype of this cutting-edge travel technology. The Hyperloop concept envisions a passenger pod that travels within a tube under partial vacuum conditions, enabling rapid transportation between destinations. Remarkably, this pod is designed to cover a distance of approximately 350 km in just 30 minutes.

The high-speed transportation system, based on Hyperloop technology, has been realized through the collaborative efforts of over 50 undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral students from IIT Madras. They envision that this revolutionary mode of transportation could become a reality in India within the next decade.

Medha Kommajosyula, the student team lead of the 'Avishkar Hyperloop' project, expressed their dedication to validating their concept through physical experiments this year. She stated, "If we continue working at the pace we are going at right now, we may be able to build the first working Hyperloop rail on a large scale in the next ten years or so."

The Hyperloop concept was initially proposed by Tesla founder and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. It involves using magnetic propulsion to accelerate pods within a partial vacuum, enabling them to reach incredibly high speeds, up to 1,000 km/h, due to reduced air resistance.

The IIT Madras Avishkar team proudly asserts that they are among the few student-led teams globally to have developed such a pod, tested it within a tube, and successfully demonstrated the feasibility of the Hyperloop concept.