Team 360 Degree, representing Buet, was announced as the winner of the 14th edition of British American Tobacco’s talent search platform “Battle of Minds,” at the grand finale held at the Radisson Blu Water Garden Hotel on Wednesday evening.
Under the tagline “What are you made of?”, the program encouraged participants to come up with innovative solutions for tackling the increasing traffic congestion in Dhaka city.
The event was headlined by 24 of the most talented young minds of Dhaka, divided into six teams of four.
The focus point of the winning team was illegal and haphazard parking, and they proposed the unique idea of using an app to tackle traffic congestion caused by such parking. They illustrated the fact that more than Tk300 billion, as well as 320,000 working hours, are lost every year because of traffic problems. Team 360 Degree’s campaign was called “ParkDhaka,” an app based parking space sharing system, which would allow drivers to locate vacant parking spaces nearby.
Team Vanguard finished as first runners up, for their proposal that traffic problems can largely be brought under control by reducing parking congestion near schools. They put forward the idea of “School Connect,” an app based platform for an integrated school bus system.
Team Order of the Red Fort was announced as the second runners up, for their project “Bhai Thamen – Over Bridge Diche Ken?”, which encouraged people to use foot over bridges to cross the road. They stressed that a single jaywalker causes traffic to wait an extra 11.8 minutes on average.
Other participating teams were Team C4, Team Chemical X, and Team Renovatio. All of them were congratulated by the judges for their unique and innovative views on how to tackle the traffic problems of Dhaka.
Awami League Joint General Secretary Mahbubul Alam Hanif and State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid were present at the event as special guests.
In addition, Nasrul gave his own presentation on how to tackle traffic congestion in Dhaka, suggesting the use of electric vehicles to reduce long queues outside filling stations.
Friday, March 28, 2025
