TeluguabroadAdding another potential to his Digital India initiative, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to address what is being dubbed as the world’s largest hackathon today via video conferencing. 10,000 programmers will compete in the 36-hour event finale which is being held at 26 places in the country. The program focuses on solving issues of social importance. 29 ministries and government departments have recognized 598 problems, the first response for which came from over 7,500 teams of about 42,000 students.
The Grand Finale of Smart India Hackathon will start at 8 am today and will go in until 8 pm on April 2. 1,266 teams of 10,000 members from 28 states have been shortlisted for the finale. For 36 hrs, the chosen groups will sit locked in and get digital solutions for the problem statements by creating software or mobile apps.
The end products will then be decided by judges from the respective ministry and industry experts, and the top three teams with the best solutions will be awarded Rs. 1 lakh, Rs. 75,000 and Rs. 50,000. The champions will also form the Community of Innovative Minds.
The awarded software will then be applied to the relevant ministry or department to improve their governance systems, with proper upgrades if necessary.
In the run-up to the finale, online training was given to students by over 2,000 mentors.
“Digital India, Start-up India and Make in India campaigns which need skilled and innovative workforce are the starting point of the Smart India Hackathon,” a senior official of the IT Ministry said.
The IT industry mainly M/S i4C, Persistent Systems along with NASSCOM have led the effort.
As per statistics of World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), India registers 40 patents per million population. This shows that a lot more can be done in the area of innovation.
Government sources say Smart India Hackathon is an effort to improve innovation by encouraging students to use knowledge to real-life situations and found innovative solutions.
