The government's medical researh body ICMR is all set to host the finale of the Smart India Hackathon in Kolkata next week, the first such initiative in the country.
Launched in November last year, the exercise aims to harnesses creativity of students, build funnel for 'Start-up India, Stand-up India' campaign, crowd-source solutions for improving governance and give opportunity to citizens to provide innovative solutions to India's daunting problems.
A Health Ministy statement said that the Indian Medical Research Institute (ICMR) is a premier partner in the event which is being conducted under the aegis of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) under the HRD Ministry in collaboration with i4c, MyGov, Persistent Systems, NASSCOM and RambhauMhalgiPabodini.
"This is a wonderful experiment to tap young minds to solve the country's problem," said ICMR DG Soumya Swaminathan.
The Smart India Hackathon 2017 is expected to become the world's biggest open innovation model that other countries can replicate, the statement said.
Since Hackathon is a new concept to India, the AICTE organised 26 awareness workshops across India to sensitise students about it which helped connect students to the problems of the country.
Out of the 7,531 idea submissions received for the 598 problems posted by 29 government departments, 1,266 ideas have been shortlisted for the 'grand finale' scheduled to take place on April 1-2.
During the finals these teams will work non-stop for 36 hours to build products based on their ideas, across 26 locations in India. For the first time, 10,000 plus youngsters (six students and two mentors per team) will work non-stop for 36 hours to develop products for our nation.
To ensure the success of Smart India Hackathon 2017, multiple online training sessions have been organised for training 30,000 plus students, it said.
For the first time ever, 29 different government ministries and departments came together and posed 598 problem statements to 30 lakh technical students from India.
