The Ministry of HRD along with AICTE, Persistent Systems, i4C and IIT Kharagpur is all set to host the Grand Finale of Smart India Hackathon 2018 – Hardware edition from Jun 18-22, 2018.
Talking about the event, Minister of HRD, Prakash Javadekar said, “Smart India Hackathon 2018 is in line with the ‘Make in India’ initiative of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and is proving to be an important vehicle for scouting new ideas and help them convert them into products and businesses.”
Giving more details, the Minister said, “The hardware edition is the first of its kind innovative initiative by Ministry of HRD to provide national platform to young technical minds of India to showcase their disruptive innovations and creative products which can bring out revolutionary changes in crucial sectors like agriculture, health, clean water, waste management, automotive, smart communication and education.”
For Hardware Hackathon, 4,362 team ideas were received with participation from 50,000+ students across 752+ technical institutions. After two internal rounds of evaluations with support from industry experts, 106 teams have been shortlisted to compete under the 10 themes in the SIH2018 Hardware edition Grand Finale.
The Grand Finale of the Hardware Hackathon will be a 5 day event and will take place simultaneously at 10 institutions across India – IIT Kanpur (Drone theme), IIT Kharagpur (agriculture theme), IIT Guwahati (rural technology theme), CEERI Pilani (smart communication theme), CSIO Chandigarh (healthcare theme), IISc Bengaluru (smart vehicle theme), IIT Roorkee (clean water theme), NIT Trichy (waste management theme), COEP Pune (security theme) and Forge Coimbatore (import substitution theme).
In terms of prizes, Rs. 100,000 to Winning team, Rs. 75,000 to First Runner up team and Rs. 50,000 to Second Runner up team. They may also get support from investors who are willing to invest in the products and make them market ready.
Ministry of HRD is working closely with Dept. of Science and Technology to explore the possibility of handholding the winning teams for creating startups with the support from various Technology Business incubators (TBIs) across India.
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