Winner of the 'Nano Student of the Year' contest was declared on 30th October and Deepit Purkayastha of IIT Kharagpur emerged the winner. The contest, which was started on September 14, 2012, was open for college students across India. This was also to promote 'Student of the Year', a Bollywood film on college students directed by Karan Johar.
Apart from Deepit, Vruta Bhavsar, a student of NIT Surat, and Abhijay Negi, who studies at National Law University, Jodhpur, were recognised as the first and second runners-up respectively. The result was jointly decided by Tata Nano fans along with viewers of Channel V and actors Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt. A cash prize of Rs. 3 lacs, a Tata Nano and a Macbook Pro were presented to the three winners.
As many as 10,000 entries were received from students all over the country. There were four parameters to judge students in the first round. The academic track record, arts, sports participation and social responsibility were the basic criteria for students in this round. This done, eight students were chosen to compete for the 'Nano Student of the Year' title in a round which comprised six different tasks over a span of 2 weeks. Tata Nano fans had a huge role to decide the frontrunners in this round.
The grand finale was telecast on Channel V and Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt judged the contestants on the basis of their wit, grit and talent. With a majority of 20,060 votes, Deepit Purkayastha was declared the 'Nano Student of the Year'.
The 'Nano Student of the Year' has been another of Tata's attempts to woo the young crowd. Nano has one of the most popular automobile pages on Facebook and boasts of 2.5 million fans. Tata also launched Nano merchandise on Ebay, the online store and also came up with the innovative idea of Social Road Trip with MTV. All this indicates that Tata Nano has shifted its target audience from 'the middle-class Indian family' to 'youngsters of India', to trigger sales of its small car.
