National Hackathon-A Student Program Effort Shines

Giving a thumps up to the efforts of the newly launched Startup Village in Kerala to promote innovations among the students, a group of engineering students from Kerala bagged the top honours at a recent hackathon' held in Bangalore by developing novel applications which may prove highly useful for the masses.

By developing an innovative mobile application that will help the students to know exactly how many classes they bunked and how many they should attend to be eligible for exam, Anirudhan Adukkathayar from College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram, won the first prize at the hackathon, a 36-hour-long competition for budding programmers.

He bagged the cash prize worth Rs 35,000 for his novel product from among nearly 200 applications, developed by 120 hackers drawn from across the country. The event was held by Innoz Technologies for its mobile platform, on July 14 and 15. With strict minimum requirement attendance rules in most colleges, this app titled Bunklog'' can work wonders for the students, according to the judges of the event.

A 23-member student development team from Kerala represented Startup Village in Kochi, the first telecom incubator of country established to incubate startup ventures and also promote innovation among the students especially in Kerala through different programmes.

The second prize, carrying a cash prize of Rs 15000, also was bagged by another Kerala team member John Sebastian Perayil from Government Model Engineering College, Cochin for his innovative application that dealt with text message encryption. The application named Cipher allows users to encrypt their messages for complete privacy and it can be very useful when confidential information needs to be exchanged via SMS.

The most popular app prize went to Jayadeep S of MG University College of Engineering, Thodupuzha and Nitin of RIT, Kottayam for their application that helped people get a database of blood donors from their respective areas along with their contact numbers.

"I have always believed in the potential of the young students in Kerala. Exposure was the only key ingredient missing in our students from realizing their true potential. We sent the team to the event to give them the right exposure. The amazing feat by the Startup Village mavericks at the Hackathon stands testimony to the innovative skills of our students. They left almost everyone dazzled", said CEO of Startup Village, Mr. Sijo Kuruvilla George.

"Apart from our motive of nurturing 1000 startups in 10 years, a key goal of Startup Village is to track the innovative spirit of the students and talents in the colleges and bring them to the notice of the world. We are chalking out several initiatives to find the shining talents and groom them into entrepreneurs,'' he added.

The hackers were drawn from different cities, in a first of the kind experiment to show how innovators can use SMS platform to develop applications for the masses. Technology experts led sessions to guide the budding programmers on different aspects.

About Startup Village

Startup Village is India's first Public Private Partnership model Technology Business Incubator. The promoters of Startup Village are Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, Technopark Trivandrum and MobME Wireless.

Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Infosys and the most successful IT Entrepreneur from Kerala is the Chief Mentor for Startup Village. Dr. Ravi Pillai, the biggest employer of Indians in the Middle East, and major local IT entrepreneurs like Mr. Nandakumar of SunTec are also associated with Startup Village.

Equipped with full 4G network, telecom labs, innovation zones, legal and intellectual property services, fully furnished offices and video conference rooms, Startup Village will give a slew of incentives, such as a three-year service tax holiday and funding opportunities for tech startups.

Startup Village aims to incubate 1,000 product start ups over 10 years and start the search for a billion dollar company from a college campus by turn of this decade. Startup Village will create an ecosystem and provide a platform for start-ups to create breakthrough technologies for the global telecommunications industry. Startup Village will focus primarily on student startups from college campuses.

For more details contact: Prashant Teki (9818449878),MD Niche Media Consultants, Delhi

Indian Telecom Innovation Hub,
KINFRA Hi-Tech Park,
Kalamassery-683109,
Cochin, Kerala.
Te :+91-484-6491646, +91-484-6492646,
E-Mail : [email protected]
Websites : www.itihtbi.org, www.technoparktbi.org, www.technopark.org, www.nstedb.com, www.startupvillage.in