TITA Digithon hosts 2-day hackathon

​Hyderabad: Enthusiastic students, skilled technology professionals, innovators and others were among 1,000 people, who took part in the hackathon organised by Telangana Information Technology Association (TITA) under its Digithon initiative and Pixel. The hackathon is being organised at Nampally Exhibition Grounds for 36-hours. 

NASA, Telangana Government, JNTU, Microsoft, Mozilla, IBM, Google, Fire Fox and other technology giants supported the country’s largest hackathon held in Telangana. Of the 10,000 participants, who took part in the hackathon from the districts of Telangana, some 1,000 had been shortlisted and will be invited to Hyderabad. NASA has unveiled certain challenges to find solutions for the problems that the world is facing. 

Rolled out since 2012, NASA is conducting competitions globally. TITA hackathon is aspiring to attempt to find out solutions for six of the problems that NASA has identified for the latter has sought solutions as part of its challenge. In addition to this, both Telangana government and TITA are inviting participants to take up other challenges. 

Telangana government is rolling out challenges relating to smart cities. Intelligent traffic management, smart parking, smart sewerage management will be the areas of focus. Digithon has designed tasks around aspects such as cyber security. Those who want to participate in the hackathon need to opt for one of the challenges or tasks and develop/deliver solutions by creating a team.

 About 10,000 participants took part in the hackathon from the districts of Telangana during October 5-7. IIT-Basar, Hyderabad IT corridor, JNTU affiliated colleges, several universities and schools in Telangana hosted the event. 

TITA was organising the hackathon on October 20 and 21 in Nampally Exhibition Grounds. Of the 1,000 shortlisted solutions, three projects will be sent for NASA global nominations. The projects of selected teams will be fully funded by NASA. Telangana government will encourage teams to find solutions for the challenge that it poses, and the winners will be given a chance to be part of the pilot projects that will initiate.

Pixel’s head Neha Bhandari has been chosen to oversee the NASA Space Apps challenge. Bhandari who is a serial entrepreneur has been taking part in the NASA programme for the last three years. She tied up with T-Hub to host the challenge in 2016 for which she has received an award from the State government.