FAQs

InventX, formerly known as Invention Factory® India, is a six-week summer program where students from across India collaborate in teams of three to Prototype, Pitch, and Patent their own inventions. During the first intensive week, teams conceptualize their ideas and then bring them to life through prototyping and refinement.

Participants compete for substantial prize money awarded to the “Best Inventions”—selected by an esteemed panel of judges based on functionality, societal or consumer impact, and innovation. You and your partner will develop an invention of your choice, subject to faculty approval, as well as safety and budgetary constraints.

InventX, formerly known as Invention Factory, originated in the U.S. and was first introduced in India at IIT Gandhinagar in the summers of 2018 and 2019. It later expanded to IIT Bombay in 2022 and to IIT Jammu in 2023
This summer, InventX will continue at IIT Gandhinagar and IIT Jammu.

At IIT Gandhinagar, Professor Madhu Vadali will guide students throughout the program. At IIT Jammu, Professors Navneet Kumar and Ankit Dubey will lead the program.

Before the start of the program, Cooper Union Professor Eric Lima, one of the founders of Invention Factory in the U.S., will meet participants online to provide guidance on patenting and prior art research.

The program, founded by Professors Alan Wolf and Eric Lima, first ran in summer 2013 at The Cooper Union, NYC. Maker Bhavan Foundation brought it to India in 2018, with the first five editions conducted in collaboration with The Cooper Union. In 2025, Eric Lima will join InventX, formerly Invention Factory, as a Consultant.

Emphatically not! There will be no writing of business plans, considerations of marketing or seeking venture capital. This is a program in inventing and working with your hands to build and test a prototype. It fits in very nicely with Prime Minister Modi’s exhortation – MAKE IN INDIA!

Identifying a need, meeting that need, and meeting the need practically and pitching your invention effectively. While there may be a need for an improved can opener, it probably shouldn’t weigh 50 kgs., cost Rs. 10,000 or emit gamma rays.

The first prize winning team will share a prize of Rs 2 Lakhs. The second prize winning team will share a prize of Rs 1 Lakh and the third prize winning team will share Rs. 50,000. There will be three separate set of prizes at the venues (IIT Gandhinagar and IIT Jammu).

Every student completing the program will receive a participation certificate, plus an exciting all expenses paid summer experience – free room and board, endless cups of coffee, chai and occasionally pizza and samosas and a cool InventX T-shirt. You and your partner will have an invention that you may want to bring to the market through Kickstarter or with the help of a VC. Perhaps, you will enter your invention into a other competition abroad. You will learn enough patent law to help you protect inventions you might develop in the future.
For those of you who may want to study abroad for higher studies, participation in the InventX may strengthen your application.

No. It is open to any undergraduate engineering or design student studying at any of the IITs/ NITs / BITS / Design or private institutes in India.

No.

No. Not even if the work/course/etc. takes place before or after the “official” program hours from 9 am to 6 pm. Not if the job/course/etc. has ANY overlap with the duration of the program.

No.

You do NOT have to choose an invention before the start of the program. In fact, we prohibit any advance work on possible inventions, including projects you may have started in other classes or on your own. At most, you may wish to think about projects that you might be interested in working on. You are free to do internet research on such topics, but no prototyping, CAD work, etc. Most of the teams that won first or second prize in the U.S. program did not conceive of their invention until the first week of the program.

Please look at inventions from the first seven years of Invention Factory at inventionfactory.org (do not type www before the site name.). You will choose your project (and your partner) during the first week of Invention Factory (not during the orientation period). A critical focus of the invention selection process is determining that your invention addresses a real need – a consumer need, a societal need, or both. We don’t want you to invent a particular widget for the reason that you CAN invent that widget – the world may not need it, and therefore may not be willing to pay for it. You will have to convince us that there is a need for your invention before we approve your project.

Another important criterion is feasibility. We want you to have or quickly develop the expertise and skills necessary to complete a working prototype of the invention within the 6-week program period. This precludes overly ambitious proposals such as tissue engineering and nanostructures. Other constraints on project selection are – no chemical inventions and nothing that would require Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval (i.e., involving human subject experimentation).

To use a little patent terminology, we are looking for inventions that can yield “utility patents” (inventions that perform a useful function, not purely ornamental creations that can receive a “design patent”). Your invention must be both “novel” and “non-obvious” – which mean, respectively, that you must be first to invent this thing, and your invention must be, in some sense, non-trivial. Your invention may be an improvement of someone else’s existing invention. Your invention may have commercial potential (“need”). Your invention must be tangible – something you can build. You will spend much of your time making, testing and refining a prototype of your invention, and demonstrating it to others. Your invention may involve software, such as an embedded software that allows your working model to operate, but it cannot consist entirely of software, such as a mobile phone app.

Believe in yourself. We believe in you.

Admission is competitive. Applications are invited for 2025. Here is link to the Form : https://forms.gle/qMUaRgUoYaWh5eaDA

We require all applicants to submit a video of up to 2 minutes (Describing any project or team activity and your contribution in it) and a brief (500 word maximum!) description of why you would be a good fit for the programme which would be highlighting your past experience and skills & your motivation for applying Please familiarize yourself with the type of inventions crafted in the program by watching videos at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_hF1hnBNP0&list=PLLdWYJiGarnTDITIlxiNPhSpf1AFl_1Md.

Your online application will be reviewed by faculty members of the Indian Team. We may also contact you by Skype or WhatsApp. Your grades and previous prototyping experience are not of great importance to us, as long as you are an innovator. We have observed that students with low academic grades are sometimes great inventors.

Yes. While the team will consist of 3 members, if you want to work with a friend or two as part of your team, the two/three of you should apply separately and there is no guarantee that we will accept both of you. Teams will be formed by the end of the first week of the program proper.

Yes, we can expect some of these issues to arise, just as they do in real life. We have experience resolving such problems.

No. The team composition is of only 3 member

Sixty students from IITs, NITs, BITS, private colleges, and design schools will be selected to participate in InventX. These students will be assigned to one of three program locations—IIT Gandhinagar or IIT Jammu—based on factors like geographic diversity and logistics, with 30 students at each site.

If selected, you will spend approximately seven weeks at your assigned institute. Students are expected to arrive a few days before the program begins for orientation.

• IIT Gandhinagar: Student arrival – Friday, May 23, 2025
                                  Program start – Monday, May 26, 2025
• IIT Jammu: Student arrival – Friday, May 30, 2025
                        Program start – Friday, May 30, 2025

You will report a few days early for orientation sessions, where you’ll learn (or refresh) essential prototyping skills like 3D printing, laser cutting, and basic tool usage. These sessions also serve as an opportunity to get to know your peers and form teams. The six-week InventX program officially begins after orientation.

Throughout the program, you will receive lodging in shared hostel rooms and all meals. Each team will have a budget of up to ₹30,000 for materials and full access to laser cutters, 3D printers, machine shops, and machinists to help bring your invention to life.

Attendance is mandatory Monday through Friday from 9:00 AM onward, but this is just the minimum requirement. Many participants are expected to work late into the night, especially as the program progresses. Breakfast and dinner will be provided in the assigned student mess halls, while lunch will be served at the program worksite.
By the end of the program, each of the ten teams will have filed a provisional patent application for their invention with both the Indian and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Professor Eric Lima will conduct online sessions before the program begins, covering patent law basics and prior art searches, and will oversee the drafting and filing of provisional patent applications.
Each team will also create a short demonstration video explaining their invention. These videos will be shared on the InventX website and other platforms, providing valuable exposure for students when applying for internships and jobs.

Participants will compete for cash prizes, with awards for the top three inventions:
🏆 First Prize: ₹2,00,000
🥈 Second Prize: ₹1,00,000
🥉 Third Prize: ₹50,000

Judging criteria will include how well the invention addresses a need, the quality of the prototype, the pitch to the judges, and the provisional patent application.
All students who successfully complete InventX will receive a certificate of participation. To see past inventions from previous editions at Cooper Union, Syracuse University, and IIT Gandhinagar, visit InventionFactory.org.

Teams must prepare a three-to-five-minute video prior to the competition that is concise and engaging.  The video should clearly communicate the technical approach,  highlight innovative or intensified elements of your process. The video should include elements such as competitive advantage, financing required to bring the technology to market, and the value proposition it adds to be the beneficiaries.

You will file a provisional patent application that will be backed up by a prototype developed and tested by you. The donors funding the program will pay the filing fee for your provisional application.

You will present your invention to a jury that will include engineers, patent lawyers, consumers, venture capitalists and others. Your presentation will include a short video that demonstrates your invention. The jury will select the first, second and third prize winning “Best Invention” teams.

Yes. Videos and images of program participants, their inventions, and their presentations help showcase the program and promote it at coordinating institutes.

One week prior to the start of InventX, you will attend online sessions covering patent law, prior art research, and provisional patent filing to ensure you are well-prepared.

By the end of the first week of InventX, you will have selected your partner, identified your problem, studied the prior art (Is your invention new? Is it, in patent law parlance, “obvious”?) and learned how to use a laser cutter and 3D printers, if you aren’t already comfortable with those tools.

By the end of week two, you should have conceptually finished the design of your invention and ordered any required components. You will likely be working on your first prototype.

Weeks two through six will focus on building and refining prototypes, testing your invention, and subjecting your prototype to criticism from other members of the program as well as outsiders. Critiques will focus on the need for your invention, whether your invention meets the identified need, and diverse practical considerations such as safety, size, weight, and cost.

You will likely be taking photographs, producing short video clips, and perhaps making CAD animations for inclusion in your weekly presentations to “guest evaluators” and for the final presentation to the judges at the end of the program.

There will be plenty of unstructured time for you to develop and refine your invention.

You may write to us at vishwakarma_awards@makerbhavanfoundation.org

There will be a few sessions in which we will discuss writing a patent application, teach you how to use a laser cutter and a 3D printer (if you haven’t already done that) and similar skills. These will be informally structured, without tests or grades, and they will mostly take place in the preliminary week and the first week of the program proper. We may offer a few additional classes as needed or as the opportunity arises. But mostly this program is about giving you the support and resources to develop an invention without distractions.

No.

Yes, at a minimum. Winning teams often put in substantially longer hours. And one late night every week, in weeks 2 through 5, when you present to “guest evaluators”. You and your partner will either consistently present on Tuesday evening or on Thursday evening. These sessions may run as late as 7:30 PM.

You and your partners will have a budget of up to Rs. 30,000 for materials. Anything you purchase from that budget that does not appear in your final prototype will remain the property of the coordinating institute. You are free to retain your final prototype, once we have completed all photography and videography required for promoting the program and its students.

Prof. Madhu Vadali is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) in Gandhinagar, India. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses and conducts research in control systems and robotics. You can learn more about his work at https://www.iitgn.ac.in/faculty/me/madhu .
Prof. Ankit Dubey is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at IIT Jammu. His teaching subjects are focused on Digital Communications, Signals & Systems and many more.You can learn more about his work at https://iitjammu.ac.in/faculty/~ankitdubey.

By the end of the program, you will file provisional patent applications with both the Indian and the US patent offices. A provisional application is nothing more than a detailed description of your invention, including drawings. Inventions produced through the program will be the sole property of the student inventors. Your provisional application will give you limited protection of your invention for one year from the filing date of the application. If you and your partner wish to commercially exploit your invention and seek an enforceable patent, you should file a non-provisional application within the one-year window.

Disclaimer : Patent-related decisions will be handled on a case-by-case basis, in consultation with the host institutions. Rules and guidelines will be finalized in accordance with their legal terms. This section will be updated with more information by  May 5, 2025.