PM to address 10,000 students aspiring to be innovators at 'Smart India Hackathon'

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address through video conferencing over 10,000 students at 'Smart India Hackathon' aspiring to be young innovators.

The hackathon, a first-of-its kind initiative by the HRD Ministry at such a large scale is intended at promote innovation, out-of-the-box thinking among young minds especially the engineering students.

According to HRD Ministry officials, the PM will address the innovators tomorrow at 10 PM through video conferencing.

"The grand finale of Smart India Hackathon will start at 8 AM tomorrow and would end at 8 PM on April 2 at 26 different locations in the country with each location handheld by one department or Ministry," an official statement said.

"For the preparations of the finale, online trainings were given to students by approximately 2110 mentors appointed for the purpose. During the finale, the selected groups will be locked-in for 36 hours continuously and complete digital solutions for the problem statements through programming to create computer software or a mobile app," it added.

The software created will be evaluated by judges drawn from the respective ministry and industry experts and the best solutions will be awarded with cash prizes of Rs 1 lakh, Rs 75,000 and Rs 50,000 for the top three teams respectively.

The awarded software will also be used by the concerned ministry or department for improving their governance systems, if necessary, with suitable upgrade.

"All the prize winners would be connected to form a Community of Innovative Minds," the statement said.

In order to engage the youth in coming up with digital solutions to common problems, the All India Council for Technical Education under the aegis of HRD ministry launched this hackathon.

Twenty-nine departments under various ministries presented 598 problem statements for which they don't have digital solutions and due to which there has been inefficiency, revenue loss and corruption.

7,531 teams of approximately 42,000 students responded with solutions to the problems from which 1,266 teams of 10,000 participants from 28 states were shortlisted for the finale.

Maximum interest was shown in solving road and transport problems with 84 teams out of the 674 in this sector making it to the finals.