PM Modi to address world's largest online hackathon on Aug 1: HRD Minister

New Delhi [India], July 27 (ANI): Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the grand finale of the world's largest online hackathon on August 1 through a video conference, Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal announced on Monday.

The minister added that the Grand Finale of Smart India Hackathon 2020 (Software) will be held from August 1-3. This hackathon is being organised jointly by the Ministry of Human Resources Development, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Persistent Systems and i4c.

Earlier in the day, the minister chaired a high-level meeting and discussed the achievements of the already conducted hackathons.

“Smart India Hackathon is a unique initiative to identify new and disruptive digital technology innovations for solving the challenges faced by our country. It is a non-stop digital product development competition, where problems are posed to technology students to suggest an innovative solution,” He said while chairing the meeting.

Observing that it would offer great opportunities for students, he added, “Students would have the opportunity to work on challenges faced by government departments and private sector organizations for which they can offer out-of-the-box and world-class solutions.”

“This year, we will have more than 10,000 students competing to solve 243 problem statements from 37 central government departments, 17 state governments and 20 industries. Each Problem Statement “will carry prize money of Rs. 1,00, 000 except the student innovation theme which will have three winners, first, second and third with prize money of Rs. 1,00,000, Rs. 75,000 and 50,000 respectively,” he added.

Pointing out that the Smart India Hackathon has grown in the past few years, the minister said, “The first edition of SIH-2017 saw the participation of 42 thousand students, which substantially increased to 1 lakh in SIH 2018 and later to 2.0 lakh in SIH-2019. SIH 2020 is even more massive as compared to SIH 2019 and the first round saw the participation of more than 4.5 lakh students.”

“In order to develop an Atma Nirbhar Bharat, we need to ensure that the teams are carefully mentored from the ideation stage to the prototype stage. Once the idea has come from the student, it should be the responsibility of the mentor to ensure that the idea gets implemented either through the start-up or the department,” he said. (ANI)