Amrita Alumnus Shobhit Sharda recently won the Ericsson Application Awards 2014 for developing an Android app, PDF Annotator. Shobhit graduated from Amrita’s Amritapuri campus in 2011, with a BTech degree in Information Technology. He was also a recipient of the prestigious Erasmus Mundus India4EU scholarshipbased on his academic and extra-curricular performances and completed his graduation from RWTH Aachen University, Germany, in 2011.

“It was my organizing skills and the software developed by me for the university, besides my marks in the examinations that brought me the scholarship during the third year of my BTech,” gushed Shobhit.

Shobhit completed his MS (Master of Science) in Software Engineering by working as a student research assistant at the Aachen University, Germany, where he was developing software for the university’s clients. He has joined Cepecon, a German company as a software developer.

The Ericsson Application Awards is a global app competition hosted by Ericsson, a Swedish multinational communication technology company, with two main categories one for students and one for companies. A jury will select the best apps and the theme for this year is Apps for Working Life. The app competition provides an opportunity for developers to gain exposure within the telecom world, a chance to reach out to customers via Ericsson distribution channels.

The PDF Annotator is Shobhit’s Master of Science (MS) thesis work and has won the second prize in the student category of the Ericsson Application Awards 2014. His team Bhangra, representing the RWTH Aachen University, Germany, secured the prize from among the 142 teams that appeared in the student category from 63 countries around the world. He teamed up with Paniya Singh for the winning project. The team received 10,000 Euros as prize money during the final ceremony held in Sweden. The jury, including eminent software developers such as Tommy Palm, the Games Guru, who is the cofounder of the company Kings, that has developed the popular Candycrush game, selected two finalists from the five semifinalists short-listed from the entries. A team from South Africa was the first prize winner in the competition.

With his app, the e-books are just like textbooks or paper for the students, allowing them to mark important points in the PDF document, exempting them from scanning the whole document during a second read. Shobhit has further extended the e-learning facility with his PDF Annotator, which enables one to draw on the document, attach a sticky note, video, audio, image files or hyperlinks to it. One can record the lecture and attach the video to the study material that will facilitate the studying process later. The PDF Annotator will be soon available in Google Play.

“Paniya came to know about the contest through an online portal and suggested to me to send the app for it. She helped me make the presentations and video demonstrations for the contest and enhance the features of the mobile app,” summed up Shobhit.

July 3, 2014
Amrita School of Engineering, Amritapuri Campus