Aaruush ’26 Records 1.01 Lakh Footfall as the Fest Marks 20 Years

Twenty years ago the late Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam started a student festival at SRM Institute of Science and Technology in Kattankulathur. This year from 24 to 27 September 2026 the festival, Aaruush celebrates its edition. Over four days the campus will be crowded with students, teachers, industry workers and tech lovers all coming for competitions, workshops, exhibitions, summits and cultural events.

Over time Aaruush has hosted many notable guests such as Dr. Anil Kakodkar, Dr. A. S. Kiran Kumar, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal, General Dr. V. K. Singh, Dr. V. Natarajan, Shri P. K. Malhotra, Mr. Suresh Raina and Dr. Sridhar Vembu. These visits show that Aaruush has always attracted leaders from science, technology, public service and industry. The cultural side of Aaruush has also had moments with performers like Zakir Khan and the show When Chai Met Toast in earlier years.

 

Prof. C. Muthamizhchelvan, Vice-Chancellor of SRMIST said: "Aaruush ’26 celebrates twenty years of ideas, innovation and student‑led exploration. The 20th edition brings together voices from academia, industry and students creating an environment where ideas are challenged improved and turned into new possibilities for the future.”

This year the Chief Guest of Aaruush is Mr. Dominic David, President of KLA India. Mr. Dominic David leads operations at KLA India. Works to develop it into a Centre of Excellence for software, algorithms and AI. Ms. Guncha Malik, a Senior Technical Staff Member at IBM will attend as the Guest of Honour. Ms. Guncha Malik is a CISSP and CCSP certified security expert. She works at the intersection of cloud security ethical AI and quantum computing and as an IBM Quantum Ambassador she connects with the community.

The journey to this milestone has been busy. T‑Summit 10.0 brought together representatives from thirty institutions, such as Shizuoka University and Hochschule Furtwangen University to discuss innovation, student development, governance and responsible digital transformation. They also examined how these discussions could become practices within institutions.

 

Hack Summit 7.0 attracted over one thousand participants to a thirty‑six hour hackathon where they built technology solutions for problems. Ideas turned quickly into working projects in areas such as AI data analytics, distributed computing, healthcare and predictive aquaculture. Many of these projects showed promise for scaling industry use and further growth.

Aaruush ’26 expands on all of this with over one hundred events such as E‑Summit, Nx‑Gen Forum, Lanstorm, Turbo Drift, Quadcopter, Roboleague, Main Quiz and Cognixion. These events cover computing, entrepreneurship, engineering and strategic problem solving. They give students a chance to test ideas test their skills and explore technologies.

After twenty years Aaruush remains focused, on the goal: putting student ideas, curiosity and innovation at the heart of the festival.

The views expressed in this article are of SRM Institute of Science and Technology and do not reflect/represent those of Shiksha.