Budding software engineers from ten colleges in the country competed to create technological tools to help foster greater financial inclusion and improved healthcare, in ‘Hack’D 2016: Code For A Cause,’ a 24-hour hackathon held here.
The hackathon was organised on October 16 and 17 by Envestnet India, a provider of financial services, as part of its second annual conference on ‘Architecting Intelligence.’
Jay Lohokare, Reshul Dani, and Ajit Rajurkar from the College of Engineering, Pune, bagged the top prize at the event for developing an innovative personalised credit scoring system. Their system, based on alternative and more inclusive scoring mechanisms such as bill payment scores and social media scores, went beyond the scope of traditional credit scoring models which may constrain financial inclusion. The team received an award of Rs.3 lakh.
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The runners-up were Koushik Satish, Sam Radhakrishnan, Harshavardhan, and Sujith Rengan from the National Institute of Technology (NIT)- Tiruchirappalli, who created a medical recording system that would predict the outbreak of epidemics using diagnostic data from different regions and leveraging machine learning algorithms while ensuring supply of preventive medication in the affected regions. The team was awarded Rs.1 lakh.
Special award
A special award of Rs.40,000 was given to Kiran Mohan, Akhil Ramesh, Mrinal Krishnan, and Niraj Nirmal from Mar Baselios College of Engineering and Technology here for developing a web-based application with in-built screening that would serve as a primary diagnostic tool for children with dyslexia.
Anita Ravi, executive vice-president and senior managing director of Engineering at Envestnet India, said the students displayed conviction and enthusiasm to develop scalable technology solutions for identified social causes.