Coimbatore : FORGE, an incubation enterprise launched by the Coimbatore Innovation and Business Incubator is hosting the Grand Finale of the Smart India Hackathon Hardware Edition 2019 between July 8-12. Smart India Hackathon is being organized to address the critical problems of the society and industries, by harnessing the creativity and talent of the student community.
Coimbatore : FORGE, an incubation enterprise launched by the Coimbatore Innovation and Business Incubator is hosting the Grand Finale of the Smart India Hackathon Hardware Edition 2019 between July 8-12. Smart India Hackathon is being organized to address the critical problems of the society and industries, by harnessing the creativity and talent of the student community.
Being the largest open innovation hackathon, there has been a spike in the participation with 2,00,000 students participating in 2019 as compared to 50,000 students in 2017. Aided by stronger participation from industries and corporates this year, SIH is a platform for students from smaller towns and remote villages with disruptive ideas to harness the power of technology and innovate futuristic tech solutions to industrial problems.
Students are working in teams on the 198 Problem Statements obtained from the Union Ministry and Industries, covering various sectors including Agriculture and Rural Development, Food Technology, Waste Management, Clean Water, Renewable Energy, Healthcare and Biomedical devices, Smart Vehicles, Smart Communication, Sports and Fitness, Sustainable Environment, Smart Textile and Smart Cities areas.
At FORGE, 12 teams from across the country are working non-stop for five days, from July 8-12 to build deployment-ready technological solutions to different problem statements of their corporate partners, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. and Robert Bosch. Teams of six students are coming up with solutions including an organic zero-wastage RO Purifier, pedestrian detection and collision avoidance system and smart garbage collection vehicles.
Speaking at the event, Dr. Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, AICTE said, “This is the third consecutive year of Smart India Hackathon and we are growing each year in terms of participation and solutions. We started in the year 2017, with abut 50,000 students participating and in the year 2018 we had a participation of around 1 lakh students. This year, the magnitude has grown bigger with 2 lakh students participating. SIH is the largest open innovation program in the world aimed at ushering in a pan India movement to foster a culture of innovation and to empower students. The students are given a platform to convert their product innovations into start-ups and generate more employment for the country,” he added.
Vish Sahasranamam, the CEO and Co-founder, FORGE stated, “SIH presents us an opportunity to scale up much-needed hardware innovation efforts, exploiting the low-cost innovation capacity in higher technical education. In serving as the Open Innovation platform, it connects budding young innovators directly with the industry, which will further boost the growth of the innovation and start-up economy in India. The student innovators shall gain enormous opportunities to learn in a multi-disciplinary context by applying the concepts from diverse disciplines, while co-creating with industry partners during the Hackathon. Advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Additive Manufacturing, Industry 4.0 (Industrial IoT or Intelligent Machines), Advanced Materials, Aerial/Electric/Autonomous/ Space Vehicles, Optoelectronics, Power electronics, Machine vision etc. present immense opportunities today for young innovators to develop new product categories or build highly differentiated products in existing categories, unlocking high growth potential.”
The five-day Hardware edition Grand Finale will include three judging rounds and an additional power judging round where top teams will be judged by industry experts and technology veterans. The top three winning teams at each Centre will win cash prizes – Rs.1,00,000 to the Winning team, Rs. 75,000 to the First Runner-up team and Rs.50,000 to the Second Runner-up team. They will stand a chance to be handheld by industries and technology business incubators to make their products market-ready and become startups.