Smart India Hackathon 2019 - Hardware edition, envisioning the country's technological leadership, got under way on Monday at National Institute of Technology - Tiruchi, one of the 19 nodal centres identified by the Ministry of Human Resource Development to host the event.
HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal inaugurated the event simultaneously at all the nodal centres through video conference.
In his address, the Minister said SIH 2019 – Hardware Edition was one of the many initiatives by the Prime Minister's Office and MHRD to promote India as the leading nation in the world. Comparing the Indian and world ranking systems, he advocated adoption of five to 10 villages by each of the NITs, IITs, and IIITs to engineer need-based solutions so that the technology would reach the grassroots. He expressed happiness over the three-fold increase in the student participation compared to the last year.
Sanjay Shamrao Dhotre, Minister of State, HRD, said the programme provides an opportunity for the students to think ‘out of the box’ and provide novel and workable solutions, which will lead to commercial products in developing start-ups.
Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, AICTE, said solutions to 124 problems prevailing in various sectors in the country was expected through the hardware hackathon.
Anand Deshpande, Chairman and MD, Persistent Systems, and Abhay Jere, Chief Innovation Officer, MHRD’s Innovation Cell also spoke.
At the NIT-T, the hardware hackathon was inaugurated by C. Anandharamakrishnan, Director, Indian Institute of Food Processing Technology,Thanjavur.
Fourteen teams of students drawn from across the country will be presenting prototypes of their project ideas over five days on the themes: Agriculture and Rural Development, Renewable Energy and Smart Vehicles at the event, which is supported by Prime Minister's Office. In all, there are 250 participating teams at the 19 centres.
Observing that the event was the need of the hour for the country, Prof. Anandharamakrishnan, said the initiative to identify hardware technology solutions for the major problems prevailing in
Agriculture and sectors was commendable. Prof. Anandharamakrishnan readily accepted a suggestion made by the Director of NIT-T Mini Shaji Thomas, who addressed the gathering through skype, for carrying out a project.
Presiding over, M. Umapathy, Dean (Research and Consultancy),NIT-T, was hopeful of commercialising products arrived at by start-ups through technology-transfer.
Samson Mathew, Dean (Students Welfare), NIT-T, also addressed the students.
