New Delhi, Mar 30 (UNI) More than one lakh students of more than 1200 colleges are participating in this second edition of the Smart India Hackathon 2018, which is a record, said Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar at the launch of the grand finale of the world's largest event of its kind and added that 100 more innovations will come out this year.
It is the world’s largest event of its kind and the two day grand finale of Smart India Hackathon 2018 (Software Edition) is being held at 28 nodal centres across the country simultaneously.
Addressing the participating students at New Delhi Institute of Management (NDIM) here, Mr Javadekar said more than 8000 students at 28 different centres will work on their final innovations for the next 36 hours. These students will codify their innovations in a group of six, on which they are working hard since last 4 months.
The HRD minister announced that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the students participating in the Smart India Hackathon 2018 this evening.
Mr Javadekar said that 27 innovations made by students during the last year Smart India Hackathon are in the final stage and ready for deployment. He said that this year, with the participation of more students and more teams, 100 more innovations will come out this year.
He said that this is an open innovation challenge and students will also derive satisfaction for solving the real problems of the people and country by their innovations. Mr Javadekar said that this Smart India Hackathon 2018 is aimed to encourage the spirit of innovations among the student.
He informed that for SIH 2018, we have received participation from 27 Central Ministries/Departments and 17 State Governments who have sent more than 900 problem statements. After scrutinising these problem statements, 408 problems (340 for Software and 68 for Hardware) were finally selected for the Hackathon and were put out on MyGov platform.
The Minister added that for SIH - 2018, we have received 17400+ teams with participation of around one lakh students of Engineering, Management and MCA. These entries were scrutinised and now 1296 entries are selected for the Grand Finale.
Mr Javadekar further said that SIH-2018 comprises of two competitions – Software Hackathon and Hardware Hackathon. The final round of Hardware Hackathon competition will be conducted in the month of June 2018.
The HRD Minister said that the first edition of Smart India Hackathon (2017) initiative, received 598 problem statements from 29 Central ministries. These problem statements were displayed on MyGov website and students across all technical institutions were sensitized to participate by having 25+ workshops across India.
R Subrahmanyam, Secretary (Higher Education) also addressed the participating students. He said that all the students connected with this event, physically or digitally, are the future of this county. He said that the event has generated so much enthusiasm in the students that participation has increased more than double.
MoS Dr Satyapal Singh addressed the students at Banaras Hindu University, AICTE Chairman Dr Anil Sahasrabudhe also addressed the gathering via video conferencing.
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