Women Tech Coders Win Honours at 'Tech for Good 2015' Hackathon

There were a total of 616 participants comprising of 101 teams that participated in the 'Tech for Good' Hackathon prelims that were conducted in 5 cities (Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Delhi and Madurai) in the month of August organised by the Anita Borg Institute India. Out of total 101 teams 11 teams have made it to the finals which took place at the largest technical conference for women in India – the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing India (GHCI) 2015.

The main objective of this hackathon is to code and work on ideas and projects that will have a social impact.    

The teams worked on 5 projects for 6 NGOs. The projects the teams developed are: 

• Logistics and Inventory Management for the NGO Neev 
• Project Management System for the NGOs Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement and Reaching Hand 
• Smart Bin for the NGO Reap Benefits 
• Cancer Detection Aid for the NGO Indian Cancer Society
• Platform for Connecting Visually Impaired with Volunteers for the NGO Antardrishti.

The finalists did a demo of their projects during the Hackathon finals and the top 3 winning teams were announced by a panel of judges. 

Winner: Team Five Star from Chennai

NGO: Antardrishti

Project: Platform to connect differently abled and volunteers

Antardrishti aims at creating an inclusive society with equal and full participation of the blind or visually impaired people. Their mission is to promote self –reliance among the visually impaired people by empowering them with education, skill building and mastering life skills. The app being developed is a platform to connect the visually impaired with volunteers across the country.

First Runners-up: Team Bin Watch from Bangalore

NGO: Reap Benefits

Project: Bin Watch

Reap benefits research on ideas that are at an intersection of environment, education and civic problems to derive key insights from on-ground data. They develop low cost innovations to address environmental and civic problems. They build the next generation of problem solvers by involving students in implementing solutions for environmental and civic problems. The project being developed is a combination of both hardware and software that has an ability to provide real time information on when the garbage bins need to be emptied that optimizes and drastically cuts the cost of garbage collection.

Second Runners-Up: Team IsecG7 from Bangalore

NGO: Neev

Project - Logistics n Inventory Management

Neev is based out of Shivpuri, MP and they run a project for women – to make bags out of waste newspaper. They sell bags to various shops in Shivpuri & Delhi. Their project serves 2 purposes – to provide livelihood to women and replace plastic bags in Shivpuri. The app that was developed for Neev is a responsive page design app for logistics, inventory management and basic accounting with a dashboard view of visually appealing charts and graphs.

“This year’s Hackathon saw incredible response and was indeed a resounding success right from the regional prelims that were held in five cities”, said Geetha Kannan, Managing Director, The Anita Borg Institute India. “It is a reassurance to the fact that women in technology are here to stay. It is truly overwhelming to see the enthusiasm and the will power.”

"The GHCI 2015 Hackathon with the theme of “Tech for Good” was a great channel to get women who are tech enthusiasts across multiple geographic locations, organizations and colleges to connect and work towards a common cause, which is to benefit the underprivileged, destitute, impaired and the needy in addition to solving environmental, civic and health problems", said Ms. Shaila Srinivas, Chairperson of the Hackathon.