Sunil Kumar Sharma, 20, on the medallion of excellence at the recently held WorkSkills competition at Sao Paulo in Brazil. After winning in the regional and national level, Sharma was selected to represent India at the event.

“I am proud to have made a mark. This is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Skill India drive. The award has come at a good time for India,” said Sharma, speaking to Covai Post over phone from his hometown in Rajasthan.

The competition, held once in two years, is biggest such event in the world. “I trained for over a year. I went to Taiwan twice. However, due to the pressure, I could not win the gold medal,” said Sharma, who has completed his four-year diploma in Coimbatore’s Gedee Technical Training Institute. He studied up to 10th standard and had qualified for the diploma.

“This is Olympics of plastic and dye engineering. But Indians do not win gold or even a silver or bronze medal because our infrastructure is poor. This is the first time that Indians have made a mark, but they can win a medal if they train for longer periods of time on better equipment,” said Sharma, adding that he was told by a German student that he trained for five years.

The event is divided into three modules. They are product engineering, mould drawings and manufacturing. “It took me four hours to finish the first module, two-and-a-half hours for the second module and over 10 hours to manufacture a three-dimensional joystick used to play games,” said Sharma.

“I owe a lot to my mentor, Mallinathan. He was the one who trained me,” said Sharma, who plans to do engineering at a Pune college. He spoke to covaipost.com from Kotri in Bhilwara district in Rajasthan. Jishnu Kottayi is from Kerala and took part in the competition. He has a diploma in precision machine technology at Gedee institute. Out of the five students who took part in the competition, four were from Coimbatore. “I made a mistake and lost the medal by three points,” said Jishnu, who is from Kuthuparamada in Kannur district.

Both students did a one-year internship programme as part of the diploma course. “If we start preparing now, we can win in 2017 at the competition going to be held in Abu Dhabi,” said Sharma.