Grand Finale of SIH 2018 Hardware Edition from June 18 to 22

Speed Post News Network

New Delhi : 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 (SIH) 2018 – Hardware edition from June 18-22, 2018.

This was disclosed by the Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar at a media briefing in New Delhi on June 11, 2018. He said that the Smart India Hackathon 2018 is in line with the ‘Make in India’ initiative of PM Narendra Modi and is proving to be an important vehicle for scouting new ideas and help them convert them into products and businesses.

Javadekar said that the SIH2018 – 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 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, according to a PIB release. The Hardware edition is the sub-edition of SIH2018.

The HRD Minister informed that 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.

Javadekar explained that the Grand Finale of the Hardware Hackathon will be a 5 day event and will take place simultaneously at 10 prestigious institutions (Nodal centers) across India – IIT Kanpur (Drones theme), IIT Kharagpur (Agriculture theme), IIT Guwahati (Rural Technology theme), CEERI Pilani (Smart Communication theme), CSIO Chandigarh (Healthcare theme), IISc Bengaluru (Smart Vehicles theme), IIT Roorkee (Clean water theme), NIT Trichy (Waste Management theme), COEP Pune (Security theme), and Forge Coimbatore (Import Substitution theme).

The judging during Grand Finale will be done by industry experts and angel investors. The top 3 winning teams under each theme will stand to win cash prizes – Rs 1,00,000 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 Department 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. Attempts are also being made to explore new avenues of additional funding post Grand Finale for some of the most promising innovations.

As per Secretary, Department of Higher Education, MHRD, R Subrahmanyam, the Smart India Hackathon 2018 – Hardware edition is nationwide hardware product development competition happening in India. Through this, we hope to give the technical students from our nation a chance to convert their innovative ideas into products with help of industry mentors, exhibit them to investors and get a chance to be one of the upcoming Start up initiatives, he said.

The Grand Finale for Software edition was successfully completed on Mar 30 & 31, 2018, at 28 nodal centers and now winning teams have started working on further enhancing their projects.