Flipkart has today announced a one-of-a-kind hackathon to crowdsource innovative, implementable solutions from the tech community and concerned citizens that could help ease Bengaluru’s perennial traffic problem.
The hackathon, which has been termed as Gridlock Hackathon, kick-starts the ‘Month of Innovation’ at Flipkart, which is a part of the company’s 10-year anniversary celebrations.
The contest will run from June 7, 2017 until June 21, 2017 and is open for technology centric solutions, as well as those that partially leverage technology through out-of-the-box thinking.
Commenting on this, Ravi Garikipati, CTO and Head of Engineering, Flipkart, said,
Flipkart was born in Bengaluru as an innovative tech company that has over the years changed the way India shops. We believe in open innovation which means that society at large should benefit from whatever we do as a company.
Gridlock Hackathon is an important part of our 10th anniversary celebrations and we want to engage with tech folks as well as citizens to try to collectively find some innovative solutions to Bengaluru’s traffic woes. The idea is to give back in some way to the city we all love, and ensure it retains the vibrant ecosystem that has been a major catalyst in the growth story of Flipkart and so many other companies.
The hackathon will initially run online and participants can submit tech or partially-tech solutions for macro problems like Bengaluru’s overall traffic, or traffic snares in specific areas like Silk Board, KR Puram etc.
All the entries for the contest will be judged on parameters like impact, feasibility, scalability, and sustainability, along with the completeness. The teams or individuals with the best entries will get a chance to present their solutions to a panel of esteemed jury, who will pick the best 3 ideas from the submitted entries.
As per the reports, in 2005, traffic in Bangalore moved at the speed of 35km an hour; in 2014, it had slowed down to just 9.2km. Last year, Bengaluru’s commissioner for transport and road safety said that there were over 6 million vehicles in the city and their density was growing by 9% per year. While 500,000 new vehicles were registered in 2014-15, around 1,400 new vehicles were being added every day.
