PIB News Update: Smart India Hackathon (SIH), the world’s biggest open platform for innovators and entrepreneurs of tomorrow, is getting off to a colourful – and fully digital – start tomorrow, August 1, 2020. Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi will interact with the students on August 1, 2020 on the inaugural day of the Smart India Hackathon 2020, after the first round of evaluation concludes tomorrow. The national level inauguration of the program from New Delhi at 9 a.m. will be attended by the Union Human Resources Development Minister Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ and Minister of State, HRD Ministry Shri Sanjay Dhotre. The grand finale of SIH 2020 will Go Live from 10 a.m. Here is the link to the schedule of SIH 2020 with details of all sessions.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the SIH Software Edition is being conducted in fully ONLINE mode. Student participants, coordinators and industry evaluators are coming together on a digital platform designed to facilitate the implementation of the event which is being managed centrally by MHRD’s Innovation Cell & All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).
Prin. L.N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research is the nodal centre for the hackathon in Mumbai. The institute will facilitate the 5-day operations of the SIH software edition and provide support to participants. The local inauguration will take place at the Mumbai nodal centre on August 1, 2020 morning. A total of 35 teams comprising 210 participants are competing on seven problem statements from three organizations – CDK Global, MathWorks and MixORG. Each problem statement has a prize amount of One Lakh Rupees. Here is the link to the Day-wise Schedule of events in the nodal centre at Mumbai.
This year SIH team and experts from participating ministries/ companies/ organizations will centrally monitor the performance of each student innovator during hackathon and will decide on funding their Innovation and on offering them an opportunity of internship or job at their organization.
Secretary, HRD Ministry Shri Amit Khare; Chairman, AICTE, Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe; Chief Innovation Officer, MHRD’s Innovation Cell Dr. Abhay Jere; DG, Bureau of Police Research and Development, Shri V.K.Kaumadi; CMD Persistent Systems, Shri Anand Deshpande and President, Amazon Internet Services Pvt. Ltd., India and South Asia Public Sector, Shri Rahul Sharma will also take part in the inaugural session.
SIH is a nationwide initiative that is being is conducted every year since 2017, to provide students a platform to solve some of the pressing problems we face in our daily lives, and thus inculcate a culture of product innovation and a mindset of problem solving. There are two formats for the Hackathon – SIH Software and SIH Hardware Editions. During the previous three editions of the Smart India Hackathon, the event had been conducted at the various nodal centers, where student participants, industry representatives and mentors used to congregate physically at the assigned nodal centers to provide a solution on the selected problems.
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