New Delhi: Shri R. Subrahmanyam, Secretary, Department of Higher Education, MHRD held a press conference in New Delhi on the third edition (Software) of the biggest ever Smart India Hackthon – 2019going to be held at 48 nodal centres across the country simultaneously. 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 for innovative solutions. Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, AICTE, Dr Abhay Jere, Chief Innovation Officer,Innovation Cell, MHRD were also present on the ocassion.
Union Human Resource Development Minister through a video message informed that the Grand Finale of third edition (Software) of Smart India Hackathon- 2019 will be held on 2nd – 3rd March, 2019. He also informed that Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi will address the Grand Finale of Smart India Hackathon(Software) -2019.
He further said that in SIH 2019, the students would also have the opportunity to work on challenges faced within the private sector organisations and create world class solutions for some of the top companies in the world, thus helping the Private sector hire the best minds from across the nation. The SIH is the largest ever Hackathon in the world and the only one to be held at the national level.
So far, two editions of SIH have been conducted successfully.The first two editions SIH-2017 and SIH-2018 proved to be extremely successful in promoting innovation, out-of-the-box thinking in young minds, especially engineering students from across India.
‘Smart India Hackathon 2017’ was conducted as a pan India 36 hour non-stop digital programming competition where participating teams have simultaneously competed from across 26 locations in India to offer digital yet sustainable innovative solutions to solve real time challenges faced by the nation.
SIH- 2018 was the second massive scale Hackathon initiative in India following Smart India Hackathon, 2017. With 27 Union Ministries and Departments and 17 State Governments having joined in this grand initiative, SIH-2018 was much bigger than its previous edition. It included 2 sub-editions:
- Software edition, which was a non-stop 36 hour software product development competition, held on Mar 30 & 31, 2018.
- The Hardware edition, involving building of hardware solutions was inaugurated on 18.06.2018.
During the software edition grand finale, teams of thousands of technology students built innovative digital solutions for problems posed by different Central Govt. Ministries/ Departments. A total of 340 software problem statements were taken up for SIH-2018 and a total of 108 winners were awarded cash prizes. In the hardware edition, 68 problem statements were taken up and a total of 31 winners were awarded cash prizes. Currently, 20 software projects and 12 hardware projects are being taken forward from SIH- 2018 winners.
Last two editions of Smart India Hackathon were launched by Minister of HRD, while the Grand finale of both SIH- 2017 and SIH -2018 were addressed by the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi through video conferencing.
Briefing media persons, Secretary (HE), Mr R Subrahmanyam said that SIH 2019 is even bigger and better than SIH 2018. As compared to about 17,400 entries during SIH-2018 from over 1 lakh students, this year 52,000+ entries from 34,000+ teams from over 2.0 lakh students have been received, the Secretary disclosed. More than 500 problem statements have been received including from several prestigious private sector organisations and the Grand Finale of the Software edition is planned on 2nd – 3rd March, 2019 during which more than 1300 teams (8 participants per team, about 10,000 participants) will compete non-stop for 36 hours across 48 different centres in india.
