The culture of hackathons is of significance in India and the government has now also stood up in support of the same. India is set to host world’s largest hackathon event with participation from more than 10,000 developers belonging to various cities of the country.
The event named ‘Smart India Hackathon’ is a competition to build an innovative digital business model (in the form of a mobile or desktop app) solving a social problem existing in India. The event will commence tomorrow and will run for continuous 36 hours at Ahmedabad.
Teams will start coding at 8.30 am on 1st April and will stop coding at 6.00 pm on 2nd April. Final Judging will start at 6.00 pm on 2nd April and results will be announced at 8.00 pm on 2nd April. The winners for the hackathon will be awarded by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), with a cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh for the winner and Rs. 75,000 and 50,000 for the consecutive runners-up. Moreover, honorable Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address innovators present at the event via live video conferencing.
The problems to work upon have been identified by 29 ministries and departments of the government. They identified 598 problems to which 7,531 teams of approximately 42,000 students responded to. Of them, 1,266 teams of 10,000 participants were shortlisted for the finale.
The teams will be allowed to bring half-baked or raw code for the competition. They can also get wire-frame ready for UI that will help them build product easily during the hackathon. Based on the suggestions during the competition, teams need to further modify their code and make their solution robust.
The primary objective of this Smart India Hackathon-2017 initiative is to create a permanent platform to harvest the creativity and energy of the youth directly for nation building. Solutions developed by these developers will be judged by ministries and industry experts. The winning software will be further refined and channelized in the industry. The solutions should be functional either by a mobile app or a through a desktop.
