Cash prize worth over ₹7 lakh was given to the winners of the final round of ‘open innovation challenge’ organised by the district administration in association with the Tamil Nadu Startup and Innovation Mission here on Saturday.
District Collector V. Vishnu recently announced the open innovation challenge on four topics – virtual assistant chatbot for government schemes, patient management system for primary health centres, food adulteration identification through artificial intelligence /internet of ihings and traffic flow optimization at Vannarpet – for the students, startups and individuals with ₹2 lakh cash award for each implementable solution.
The Tamil Nadu Startup and Innovation Mission, under its ‘Startup Tamil Nadu’, organised the competitions, christened ‘GovTechThon’. As it was announced, 526 entries were received from the students, startups and individuals and 12 teams – three teams from each category – reached the finals held on Saturday at the District Science Centre here after two rounds of screening.
Mr. Vishnu said the ‘virtual assistant chatbot for government schemes’ would do wonders for the public as they could easily locate on internet the government schemes available for every section of the society including subsidised loans meant for the entrepreneurs. Above all, the administrators can identify the right beneficiaries with the help of technology.
“Thousands of government schemes are available for the citizens on the internet. If we can create an artificial intelligence-based virtual chatbot that can guide the browser to the schemes that he or she is eligible for, it will be great as it will save a lot of time and tell you lucidly about the schemes and help to identify the right beneficiaries. If we can find during this competition the right chatbot, we’ll implement it in Tirunelveli to become the first district in the entire country to introduce such an effective online system for the benefit of the public,” said Mr. Vishnu.
Some of the solutions provided by the competitors would be fine-tuned before being implemented.
While ₹1 lakh each was given to the Government College of Technology, Coimbatore, Quantranics and Testram, ₹70,000 each was given to Sri Jayendra Alumni and Triadcob for the solutions they had provided for two challenges. Teams from Francis Xavier Engineering College, Vannarpet, Bannari Amman Institute of Technology, Sathyamangalam, Sri Jayendra Alumni, Vizdale, Savitha School bagged ₹50,000 each while a team from startup Maziro was given ₹30,000.
“We’ve provided the right platform and opportunity for our youth to present their technological solutions for the problems we face in the administration. Though it is an experiment, it will be expanded in future to find practical solutions to the problems we face,” Mr. Vishnu said adding that Tirunelveli has been allotted an innovation hub for the southern region, which would become operational soon to help student innovators and others.
