The Magic of Djembe Drums

Pune-based MIT World Peace University’s Innovation Hub celebrated its annual five-day innovation conclave, RIDE2022, a student-driven activity held on September 20-24, 2022, to host minds who believed in expanding horizons beyond the purview of prosaic opportunities and opening the pathway for students towards entrepreneurship. RIDE-2022 had its themes spread across the four pillars namely, research, innovation, design, and entrepreneurship (RIDE) followed by Start-up Accelerator and Innovation Hub at MIT-WPU. The conclave attracted several thousand visitors across five days with various start-ups and speakers along with more than 50 experts from the venture capital industry.

Each day encompassed subject matter experts who addressed students around the aforesaid themes to obtain a unique outlook and encourage out-of-the-box thinking by simulating a real-world environment. The event focused on start-ups across sectors like technology, design, healthcare, agritech, sustainable energy, and retail. The event also made headlines for setting a record for the maximum number of students playing Djembe Drums together and thus getting into the prestigious pages of the India Book of Records and Asia Book of Records simultaneously.

A total of 1253 students of the university gathered together and played the Djembe Drums under the guidance of drumming expert Amrutt Bhatt from 6 pm to 8 pm on September 21, 2022, at the MIT World Peace University Campus in Pune. The old record was for 1197 people playing Djembe together, but through this event, the university broke it when 1253 students played the instrument together at the university arena.

Rahul Karad, Executive President, MIT World Peace University (MIT-WPU) said, “RIDE-2022 was an immense opportunity for students to understand and explore the new approaches to research, innovation, design and entrepreneurship. It offered a unique window into the future trends in technologies, management, science and social sciences, fine arts, sustainable studies and public health. I believe that RIDE-2022 remained a source of inspiration for the students of MIT World Peace University, who are passionate to build on their big ideas. The conclave was designed to be immersive and thoughtprovoking with valuable industry insights, and deep dives into trends and unique networking opportunities. Setting the world record under the Asia Book of Records was another big milestone for the university.”

According to Pravin V Patil, Senior Director, Centre for Industry-Academia Partnerships, “We believe that every student is imbibed with the knowledge that may lead to unlimited possibilities and with RIDE in action, they are provided with means to explore, ignite and re-ignite the thoughts that hold solutions for minuscule hurdles we come across today. The objective of RIDE-2022 was to create a strong ecosystem of start-ups within MIT-WPU to facilitate all-around understanding of running a business from mind to market with the students.”

RIDE-2022 kick-started by introducing various start-ups in its Start-Up Expo followed by experts talking about their experiences in expert talks, numerous recreational activities such as zorbing, F1 simulation, and concluded with a Comedy and Pro Night. The record-setting activity of playing the Djembe Drums turned out to be the most interesting and rewarding experience for the students and the faculty as well. Djembe is a drum played with bare hands. Amrutt Bhatt, who guided the students, is a drum facilitator, a TEDx speaker, an experiential trainer, a game show host, and a mentalist. He filled the campus with energy, fun and enthusiasm.