IIT-Hyderabad hosts Smart India Hackathon 2019 Hardware Edition

Hyderabad: Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad hosted the 'Smart India Hackathon 2019' on its campus from July 8-12. It is a nation-wide initiative to provide students a platform to solve some of pressing problems face in daily lives of the people and inculcate a culture of product innovation and a mindset of problem solving.

The SIH is a unique open innovation model for identifying new and disruptive technology innovations to solve the challenges faced in our country. The SIH nodal center at IIT Hyderabad includes nine teams from all over India consisting of six team members, each with two mentors.

Public Sector Undertaking NALCO (National Aluminium Company Limited), IT major Cognizant, Indian stationery company Kokuyo Camlin and ANIK proposed problem statements for the Event. The Participants built a working prototype within these five days for the problem statement. Aarohan (AISSMS College of Engineering, Pune), G-TECH (C.V.Raman College of Engineering, Odisha), The Turings (University Institute Of Engineering and Technology, Chandigarh), TechEEE1 (Sri Sivasubrmaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Chennai) won the event for the problem statements given by for NALCO, Cognizant, Kokuyo Camlin and ANIK respectively.

Speaking about this event, Dr G V V Sharma, faculty coordinator for the event and Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Hyderabad, said, "IIT Hyderabad is one of the nodal centres hosting the Grand Finale of the Hardware Edition of the Smart India Hackathon 2019 organised by the Ministry of Human Resource Development's Innovation Cell. The Hackathon is a non-stop five-day event where participating teams from all over India will build prototypes to give solutions to problems statements provided by various ministries and companies."

Further, Dr Sharma added, "Industry experts mentored a total of 9 teams working round the clock on diverse projects in areas such as drought control and ocean cleaning. Mentors are guiding teams with design, practicality and optimisation of the ideas. A panel of judges evaluated each team daily. Cultural events like Zumba, fun games, dance and yoga were conducted to keep participants fresh and active."

Speaking about their experience in this event, Paarth Arkadi, Team Techonovators_VESIT, VESIT, Mumbai, said, "It fueled our creativity. We learned a lot. It was a very competitive but productive environment. We were pushed to our limits to obtain the optimum result."

Nisha Akole, Technical Co-ordinator, SIH - 2019, IIT Hyderabad, said, "I got to interact personally with higher officials from various domains. It was a steep learning curve going through these five days. Overall, it was truly an enriching experience."