I wonder how important is the academic project of final semester of engineering in India. Do the companies even take a look at that or its just for the sake of academics?
Depends on what kind of companies you want to work for.<p>I don't think that the infosys's of the world care very much.<p>However if you do something cool - most product companies will definitely treat that as a plus - the benefit that you'll get will vary from being preferentially interviewed to being hired outright for your project. However, this requires your project to be something significant and in the general line of business of the company.<p>That said, I would argue that you should do this project for your own benefit and not for the college's or your future employer's. Pick a reasonably difficult project and the amount that you'll learn would be way more than you've learnt in 4 years of engineering school.<p>I highly recommend contributing a module to an open-source project as an option