New Delhi: Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE) here today announced that the Smart India Hackathon 2017 Grand Finale is scheduled to be held on April 1 & 2, 2017 simultaneously at 26 different nodal centers across India. Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship is a ‘Premier Partner’ in this initiative which was inaugurated by Minister of Human Resource Development Shri Prakash Javadekar on Nov 9, 2016 in New Delhi.
Smart India Hackathon 2017 harnesses creativity & expertise of students, builds funnel for ‘Startup India, Standup India’ campaign, crowd sources solutions for improving governance and quality of life, and provides opportunity to citizens to provide innovative solutions to India’s daunting problems.
Here is a quick snapshot of details pertaining to Ministry of Skill development and Entrepreneurship:
| Problems Statements proposed | Ideas received | Shortlisted
Teams for Grand Finale |
No. of Youngsters competing in Grand Finale | Nodal Center for Grand Finale | |
| MSDE | 28 | 136 | 29 | 232 | Chandigarh |
| Overall event | 598 | 7531 | 1266 | 10000+ |
(HACKATHON is a platform where students generate new ideas with the problems shared with them. They’re especially good tools to stimulate the creative and problem-solving capabilities of developers which are utilized to provide an on the spot solution to a problem statement. The time limit in a Hackathon forces participants to distil their visionary concepts down to actionable solutions. Outsiders can bring a fresh perspective to organization challenges, as well as give an outside-in view of products and organization.)
Since Hackathon as a concept is new to India, AICTE arranged 26 awareness workshops across India to sensitized students about Smart India Hackathon 2017. These workshops helped connect students with problems of the country. Out of the 7531 idea submissions received for the 598 problems posted by 29 government departments, 1266 ideas have been shortlisted for the ‘Grand Finale’ to be held on April 1 & 2, 2017. For the first time, 10,000+ youngsters (6 students & 2 mentors per team) will work non-stop for 36 hours to develop products for the country. To ensure the success of Smart India Hackathon 2017, multiple online training sessions have been organized in hope of training 30,000+ students. Smart India Hackathon 2017 would be the first massive scale hackathon initiative in India; unprecedented in the nation’s history. Winners stand to get cash prizes and a chance to be part of the NASSCOM’s 10,000 Startups program.
