Out of more than a hundred programme developers from 11 States, a team of four students of BIT lalpur (extension) emerged victorious in the 24-hour long mobile application developing competition App Hackathon-2015.
In the first of its kind hackathon for Jharkhand, BIT Titans, the winning team, were followed by Freakers, a team from Kolkata, as first runner-ups and Coral, a team of developers from a Pune-based start-up, as second runner-ups.
Apart from these three, two teams, Divergent and Swadhar, became the team with unique idea and the team which won by lottery, respectively. Urban Development Minister CP Singh felicitated the winning teams and expressed his joy over the event achieving its motive.
The programmers were given five fields—healthcare, payments, citizen participation, government benefits and open category — to develop mobile applications on. While using Aadhar as open standards, the contestants also made use of geo-location and database, so as to help Government agencies in pinpointing location of their beneficiaries and better selection of services being provided to them.
The panel of judges, including the IT Secretary, Urban Development Secretary Arun Kumar Singh, JAP-IT CEO KK Sinha and Mission Director of National Rural Health Mission Ashish Singhmar, interacted with the nine finalists, inspecting about the aspects of the mobile applications they developed, ascertaining their functioning, utility, primary target and more. “Officials of State Govt and IT Department were the ones who learned the most from this Hackathon. And the best thing about it is that we were able to begin something new and beneficial in the state,” said IT Secretary Sunil Kumar Barnwal.
Highlighting plans to promote start-ups in state, Barnwal said, “Not only renowned corporate establishments, even start-ups can play a crucial role in supporting Jharkhand’s economy. For this we will be expanding the software development park in Namkum and set up new ones in Adityapur, Sindri, Bokaro and Deoghar, where entrepreneurs with ideas can develop and refine them.” He added, “In addition to this, we will be creating an ecosystem for them where they can come in contact with established corporations and other interested parties. Eastern India is the biggest contributor in manpower to other IT hubs in the nation. Why not provide similar facilities and opportunities to that manpower and utilise their talent here for making Jharkhand an IT hub.”
“The applications developed here somewhat lacked the exposure one needs to understand the needs and problems of the people of J’khand, but we can arrange for that. Those who participated at the Hackathon and want to work in urban development are welcome. We will help them refine their apps according to the requirements,” said the Urban Development Secretary.