Javadekar
Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar today announced the launch of the third edition of 'Smart Hackathon', a national competition for students to develop digital solutions for real-life problems.
In the first two editions, the HRD ministry invited problem statements from ministries and state governments and the students were free to choose from them and work on solutions.
"We have been doing it for two years. This is the third edition of Smart India Hackathon and in September we will seek problem statements from ministries and state governments. For the first time, we will ask industry people if they have any unsolved problems which they are seeking solutions for," Javadekar told reporters here.
"From October the students will be able to register. In the first edition of the Hackathon, 40,000 students had participated. Last year, over 1 lakh students took part. We are expecting participation of around 1.5 lakh students this year," he added.
In order to engage the youth in coming up with digital solutions for common problems, the All India Council for Technical Education under the aegis of HRD ministry had launched the hackathon in April 2017.
Twenty-nine departments under various ministries presented 598 problem statements for which they did not have digital solutions.
"Smart India Hackathon is a non-stop digital product development competition, where problems are posed to technology students for innovative solutions.
"It harnesses creativity and expertise of students, sparks institute-level hackathons, builds a funnel for start-up India campaign, crowdsources solutions for improving governance and quality of life and provides an opportunity to citizens to provide innovative solutions to India's daunting problems," a senior HRD official said.
Some more benefits to joining SIH are as follows:
- Opportunity to brand your organisation nationally
- Recognition and visibility for your organization across all technical institutions in India
- Young techies from all over the country offer out-of-the-box solutions to your problems
- Be part of World’s biggest Open Innovation Movement
- Opportunity to work with some of the best talents in the country
- Technology Students across India compete to creatively solve problems and offer technical solutions
- Harness expertise of lakhs of students from IISc, IITs, NITs and AICTE/UGC approved institutions
