Meet The Winners Of Hackathon 5.0 At Rajasthan Digifest in Bikaner

Coding was the flavour of Day 2 at the three-day Rajasthan Digifest being held in Bikaner from July 25-27. Participants — coders, developers, designers, and others — could be seen hacking away intently at their computers during the 36-hour Hackathon 5.0.

A total of 3,000 people participated in the all-paid-for Hackathon, almost 50% of whom were from Rajasthan. The 36-Hour Hackathon 5.0 kicked off at 9:00 am on July 26 and ended the next day.

 “A hackathon of this scale will help the people of Bikaner become aware of the emerging technologies and also boost the business climate and startup ecosystem,” said Dilnawaz Khan, Hackathon mentor and chief evangelist, Codesign Labs, a digital design platform based out of Jaipur.

The Hackathon invited ingenious solutions around from those participating to enhance the digital landscape of the state.

Here are some Hackathon 5.0 facts:

• More than 800 teams from over 20 cities participated in the Hackathon
• There were 15 mentors to help the teams
• The first round judged the teams on the basis of the idea, innovation, and funding, and shortlisted them down to 100
• The second day, which commenced on the night of Day 1, was more in-depth in terms of evaluation. At the end of the day, the teams were down to 14
• The third round assessed the 14 teams on the basis of a three-minute pitch and a Q&A round. At the end of this round, seven teams were chosen for the finale

As Hackathon 5.0 wound up, it was time for the much-awaited moment — the announcement of the winners. Nakul Saxena, director of public policy at iSPIRT (a think tank for the Indian software products industry), and Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global Education and a former director of Infosys, were tasked with selecting the best solutions and the winners.

 Winners of Hackathon 5.0

• The first prize went to Team Venom from New Delhi. The product they developed was a hardware robotic snake with sensors to find people in natural calamities such as earthquakes, etc. The prize was a government projects worth $22K (INR 15 Lakh) for Team Venom, which comprised Arpit Shrotriya, Pranjal Kandhari, and Abhijeet Bhattacharya.
• The Second prize went to Team Scarecrow from Bits Pilani. They built a farmer crop insurance plan using blockchain-enabled smart contracts. The prize was a government project worth $15K (INR 10 Lakh).
• The third prize went to Team Era from New Delhi who built a facial recognition app for missing children. The predefined data in the app helps with image mapping of missing children. This team grabbed a government project worth $11K (INR 7.5 Lakh).

Over the years, hackathons organised by the Rajasthan government’s Department of Information Technology and Communications (DoIT&C) have been one of the most successful successful initiatives of the Digifest. From 400 coders in the first hackathon on Rajasthan IT Day 2017 to 5,000 coders on Rajasthan IT day in March 2018, these events have seen tremendous interest from the coding and developer community.

Hackathon 5.0 too was widely welcomed by the community and gave these teams a great chance to put their innovations to use for a public cause.