HACKATHON 2020
Rotary Club of Bangalore with NSRCEL held the 3rd Startup Hackathon on Dec. 6. Due to Covid19 it was entirely online. We had 50 registrations from over 25 colleges. As in earlier hackathons, prior to the final event we had a session on Lean Canvas, an effective tool for business planning, followed by mentoring of participant teams. The mentors, consisting of industry stalwarts among Rotarians and from NSRCEL, provided guidance to the teams for their final “pitch”. The presentations which were on the theme: Innovation for resilience – post pandemic, were on varied subjects from analytics on online meetings to mixed farming.
The finals was between 10 teams and the winners were –
1st prize : SSMRV COLLEGE
2nd prize : RV COLLEGE
3rd prize : PES UNIVERSITY
The scores were so close that the judges suggested we give consolation prizes to two teams. Over the last three years we have tried to improve the program with the aim of increasing readiness of the top teams to be incubated by NSRCEL. This is an ambitious goal but progress has been made by improved quality of the presentations as noticed by the judges. Also, this year one of the teams showed a prototype indicating they had gone beyond the idea stage. One eminent Rotarian who was a mentor said it enabled him to understand better the startup plan of his son who is in the US and he is now enjoying their discussions on the subject !
An important highlight of this year’s program was the flawless execution of the online format and complete engagement of the participants.
It is our hope that someday one of the teams in the Hackathon program will produce a “Unicorn”.
Rtn. Narendra Sarvottam Telang