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).

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.

Microsoft's Windows 7 free for 13 months

Microsoft Corp released a near-final version of the Windows 7 operating system to a large group of technology-savvy testers that adds a few new features, including a way to run Windows XP applications.

The Windows 7 `release candidate' will be available for anyone to download and try out on May 5. The release candidate is typically the version used by Microsoft's corporate customers to test how the new system will work for them. Software developers, hardware makers and other partners also base their next-generation products on this version because they trust that it's stable and close to finished.

Windows 7 RC, slated for download by MSDN and TechNet subscribers by the general public on May 5, doesn't expire until June 1, 2010, Microsoft confirmed.

The spokeswoman, however, refused to comment why the company is giving users such a long free pass for the software.

The 13-month life span of Windows 7 RC is longer than the time limit Microsoft put on Vista’s release candidates.

The software giant published the Vista release candidate about five months before the final version went on sale. If Windows 7 were to follow the same trajectory, it could be available by the start of October. Officially, Microsoft expects to start selling Windows 7 by the end of January 2010, but has said this week that it is possible it could launch in time for the holiday shopping season.

The software maker is counting on Windows 7 to win over businesses that put off upgrading to Vista, which got off to a rough start because it didn't work well with many existing programs and devices.

And Microsoft drew criticism from consumers when many computers advertised beforehand as ``Vista capable'' were actually too weak to run Vista's highly touted new interface and other features. People who wanted to upgrade Windows XP computers found their graphics cards and other components weren't up to the task.

The new system is already set up for a smoother debut because it shares much of Vista's underlying technology, which means hardware and software makers have had more than two years to catch up to a more demanding set of requirements. And Microsoft has pushed the notion that the high-end version of Windows 7 will run on many more computers than Vista, including tiny, low-powered laptops called netbooks. Today, Microsoft sells Windows XP, a much less profitable version of its operating system, to PC makers like Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard to install on Netbooks.

Microsoft revealed that the basic requirements for running a high-end version of Windows 7 aren't much different from those needed to run the bulkier versions of Vista. However, critics said the Vista requirements for memory and other components should have been set higher, and Microsoft says Windows 7 is better at managing memory and not bogging down less-powerful machines.

Microsoft unveiled a few new features in the release candidate that didn't exist in the January beta, including something called Windows XP Mode. The feature, available for the release candidate as a separate download, will let people run many XP-era programs from a Windows 7 computer.

The release candidate also adds a way for people to access music and other media files stored on their home PC over the Internet from other Windows 7 machines.

Agencies