Binance Launches “Build For Bharat”; First DeFi-Focused Digital Hackathon in Indian Market

Binance, the global blockchain company behind the world’s largest digital asset exchange, today launched ‘Build for Bharat’, a twofold program with a hackathon and acceleration opportunities for blockchain developers and startups in India.

The hackathon is sponsored by Google Cloud, along with leading technology companies Matic Network, Marlin Protocol, Band Protocol and Ankr cloud infrastructure, while the acceleration comes under Polaris, an initiative by the Blockchain for India 50M fund, launched by Binance and WazirX in March 2020.

Spanning over a few months  -- from 24th August to 31st October 2020 -- the Build for Bharat hackathon will be open to creators, innovators, startups, and BUIDLers from all over India working on unique and creative products utilizing digital assets and blockchain technology. The solutions will be centered around decentralized finance (DeFi) such as mini-Tokens, micro-financing products, blockchain datasets, blockchain-AI solutions and more.

“India has been one of the most interesting countries Binance has tapped into!” said Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ). “We’ve seen entrepreneurs create robust blockchain-based solutions from scratch and scale it. With the second-largest blockchain developer base in the world - India has already kickstarted the revolution of decentralization and we’re here to fuel it!”

Selected participants will undergo three stages of filtration with 100 teams shortlisted in the first cohort, 20 teams in the second, and five teams in the final cohort. The finalists will receive rewards from a pool of 30,00,000 INR while the winning teams stand a chance to secure additional investment and mentorship opportunities under the Polaris accelerator, an initiative by the Blockchain for India fund.

To apply for Build for Bharat program, head over to the event registration website. Registrations for the program are open from today till 11th September 2020.

[The event is managed by Lumos Labs (Formerly known as IBC Media) - A Singapore-based innovation management platform.]

About Binance

Binance.com is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. Binance Exchange serves users from 180+ countries and regions. Binance’s dual-chain architecture comprises Binance Chain & Binance Smart Chain that empowers the developer community to build their own decentralized apps and digital assets on one blockchain, while also taking advantage of the fast trading performance offered on the Binance Decentralized Exchange (DEX).

Accenture Announces the Winners of Third Annual Accenture Ventures Challenge for Indian Developers

 Accenture has announced four innovative startups as the winners of the third edition of Accenture Ventures Challenge in India for developing unique, scalable solutions to help businesses accelerate the business transformations prompted by the Covid-19 crisis.

This year more than 550 startups were evaluated across four categories -- ‘supply chain resilience’, ‘digital commerce’ and ‘systems resilience,’ and ‘responsible technology.’ The final category is at identifying solutions that help organizations create positive social and environmental impact in these times.

The judges selected the following winners based on unique, scalable solutions to help businesses accelerate the business transformations prompted by the Covid-19 crisis.

Atlan, in the Systems Resilience category, for its modern data workspace that enables diverse data teams to collaborate harmoniously.

Charmboard, in the Digital Commerce category, for its AI based application that provides interactive experience at scale for users from videos.

Increff, in the Supply Chain Resilience category, for its algorithm driven merchandising platform that increases inventory turns and warehouse management system that exposes 100% inventory simultaneously to all sales channels.

Wysa, in the Responsible Technology category, for its global platform for early-stage mental health support at scale, with a unique (digital + AI + human) model that is anonymous and clinically assured. 

 This year, the Accenture Ventures Challenge was hosted in collaboration with Microsoft’s 100X100X100 program. The winner in each category will be given an opportunity to join the Accenture Ventures Open Innovation partner program and co-create solutions for Accenture clients around the world. Winners will also get access to benefits from the Microsoft ScaleUp program, which supports Seed or Series A B2B startups to scale and co-sell with Microsoft sales teams.

Indian Apps Making a Clear Win Post Ban of Chinese Apps

This is the demonetisation moment for many Indian companies, with Prime Minister addressing to be ‘Atmanirbhar ‘ it has opened several opportunities for many young entrepreneurs, product specialists to enter the blooming ‘Vocal for Local’ market. Ban of 59 Chinese apps has given push and opportunities to many ‘Made in India’ companies. Many users of the Chinese apps have been looking for a good alternatives to start creating content again. If you are also looking for Indian alternatives, here is all you need.

1.      Mitron: Mitron a short video-making app platform Made in India. The app allows users to reimagine digital entertain and engagement which is designed for people to showcase their innovative videos online with the theme of light humour. You can create, edit and share your videos as well as browse through a library of top videos across the globe. Just over a day after the Government of India announced a ban on several Chinese apps, popular short-form social video app Mitron reported that its daily traffic jumped up by more than 11 times. Mitron has crossed 21 million downloads, Mitron app has been one of the most downloaded apps in India during the last two months with 40million video views per hour. Nearly 1 Million new videos created per day on the platform

2.      Trell: Popularly known as Video Pinterest for Bharat, Trell is the go-to platform for users to share their experiences, recommendations, and reviews across various categories including health and fitness, beauty and skincare, travel, movie reviews, cooking, home-décor and much more. The lifestyle vlogging platform allows users to create 3-5-minute videos in their native languages along with a ‘shop’ feature that lets them purchase the products featured in the vlogs. Additionally, the platform also allows users to earn rewards, goodies and vacations through its interface. Trell records a whopping 12+ million new downloads since the Chinese app ban. Trending #1 in Free Lifestyle Apps, the platform has received 500K original content uploads in a single day with 220K New content creators on board. With over 40 million downloads, 20 million monthly active users the lifestyle community commerce app witnesses a 25x surge in last 1 year

3.      Rooter:In Sports, Rooter is a very unique product and has built a strong moat for its business with fans and community-driven content. India’s only and biggest User Generated Content platform for Sports and Gaming. Rooter’s unique product positioning is in Live Content Technology that allows tools like Sports commentary, Live Quizzes, Mobile Game streaming etc. Rooter offers a personalized sports feed consisting of videos, images, polls etc & Scorecards in 10 Indian languages covering Cricket, Football, and multiple other sports. Rooter has witnessed 8x growth in daily users since the Chinese apps ban.

4.      Khabri: Khabri is a podcast application with more than a million downloads, is turning out to be a great platform for creators in Hindi-speaking markets across India. With around 40,000 influencers already on the platform, the company has got over 5,000 new influences onboard in the last two days. "Influencers can join 'Earn With Khabri' programme through Khabri Studio App and make their channel on which they can start creating content and publish it on Khabri App. There is an opportunity to earn from day one through 'Gigs' in addition to regular monthly earning basis content consumption"

5.      Sharechat: A social media startup, Sharechat is an Indian initiative to share daily WhatsApp messages, status across 15 Indian languages. What started out as a sharing only platform developed into enabling users to generate content to share posters, images, audios, GIFs and hashtags.

Win Big Prize Money at Facebook Developer Contest

Facebook would become the first social networking site to showcase apps in Hindi as it calls for entries in English and Hindi to showcase web development skills in two categories of Facebook apps & Facebook Connect Integrations

The day for which the Indian developer community had been waiting has finally arrived. Facebook, whose mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected, announced today the launch of ‘Facebook India Developer Contest’ – a contest for Indian developers to showcase their web development skills by creating Facebook applications and Facebook Connect Integrations. The contest began on July 2 and ends on September 11, 2009 and is located at www.facebook.com/developercontestindia.

This is the first time Facebook is organizing a developer contest in India. Entries will be judged on originality, business potential, social utility, usefulness, expressive features, intuitiveness and potential of the application. There are three cash prizes; $4000 for the first place, $2000 for the second place and $1000 for the third, in each of the two categories.

To enter the contest, participants are required to create a Facebook platform application for use on the Facebook site or Facebook Connect integrations in English or Hindi and register their application in the contest’s homepage. The contest is open to Indian residents over the age of 16 with a facebook.com account

Ruchi Sangvi, engineer and manager of the Facebook platform said, “India ranks second in the number of software developers with 3.9 million software developers; we are very excited to engage with the developer community. Facebook has experienced a tremendous growth in India. Through the contest, we hope to see many rich experiences that leverage the social graph and empower Facebook users to share and connect.”

Facebook Connect enables people to combine their Facebook experiences with any participating Website, desktop application or mobile device. When websites incorporate Facebook Connect, Facebook’s more than 200 million active users around the globe can automatically import profile information and bypass the need to build a friends’ list from scratch. More than 10000 websites have incorporated Facebook Connect since its general availability in December 2008.