Grand Finale of Hardware Edition of the third Smart India Hackathon was inaugurated today. IISER Pune along with NCL, Pune are among the nineteen centres all over India where the Finale of this national competition is being simultaneously held. Human Resource Minister Hon. Shri. Ramesh Pokhriyal inaugurated the Finale via Video Conference. Shri. Seetharamakrishna (Director, Intel) was the chief guest at the local inauguration with Dr. Anand Deshpande (CMD, Persistent Systems Ltd.) as guest of honor, and Prof. Jayant Udgaonkar (Director, IISER Pune) & Prof. Ashwini Kumar Nangia (Director, CSIR - NCL) also in attendance.

Grand Finale Inauguration

Participants at the Inauguration

1.2 lakh students from 2235 colleges had sent their entries for the 2019 Hardware Edition of the Hackathon. These entries were the proposed solutions to 198 problem statements submitted by industries and central government departments related to issues they face. From these 1.2 lakh entries, 250 teams comprising two thousand participants from 178 colleges have been selected to participate in the grand finales taking place all over the country.

At IISER Pune, 173 students from twenty-five teams will further work on their suggested solutions over the next five days. Each team consists of about six students and two teacher mentors. Problems from diverse areas such as Healthcare & Biomedical devices, Smart Vehicles, Robotics and Drones, Waste management, Clean water, Renewable Energy, etc. are being addressed by the teams. Over the next five days, teams will interact with company product designers, mentors, judges, etc. There will also be yoga sessions, talks on leadership, cultural programme and more.

The teams will aim to bring out technology-based workable solutions, which can be developed into commercial products for start-ups. After an evaluation round, the winners will be announced at the end of the programme. Depending upon the complexity of the problem, cash prizes ranging from Rs. 50,000/- to Rs. 1 lakh will be awarded to the winners.