Hackathon hunts for the next big thing in IT

Will the next big idea after WhatsApp and Google, germinate in Hyderabad? To pursue this endavour, a hackathon by XtreamIT was conducted in the city recently. Over seventy students from various engineering colleges participated in the event.“Innovation is the lifeblood of any economy, we want to be the catalyst for the next innovative startups coming out of India,” said Javed Sikander, CEO of XtreamIT.

“We want Hyderabad to be the incubation center of India when it comes to technology and innovation,” said Sujai Karampuri, director, electronics, IT E&C Ministry. The ideas that cropped up at the hackathon were quite compelling.One of the teams led by Aarshad Devani from Muffakham Jah Engineering College created a peer-to-peer sharing from one computer screen to hundred others. Such a technology could become the backbone of a virtual movie watching application.

Similarly, a team from Ace Engineering led by Karthik Pendylla created an image recognition solution that can help identify similarities in pictures. This could be used to find homes that you like across remote towns or diagnose skin diseases. “This hackathon was an eye opener, XtreamIT gave us the environment to come together, get our creative juices flowing and build something that has a huge potential,” said Aarshad, whose team won the competition.

“This was an exciting experience, we loved the competition, the high energy environment and the guidance provided by XtreamIT team,” said Srikanth V, whose team from ACE Engineering College were the runners up. The next hackathon will be held on Sunday at the XtreamIT premises in Banjara Hills.