TEAM ASBESTOS WON INDIA’S BIGGEST EDUCATION HACKFEST, IBM-MICROSOFT GRANT OF $ 36,000

Team Asbestos, consisting Mr. Pratheek Hegde and Mr. Shricharan Bhat of VII Semester Computer Science & Engineering; Ms. Amrusha and Ms. Sankusha of V Semester Computer Science & Engineering and Mr. Nikhil Acharya of VII Semester Electronics and Communication Engineering Departments of SMVITM Bantakal in Udupi district won the first prize at the Mega State Level Education Hack Fest-Oct 2015 held at Visvesvaraya Technological University, (VTU) Belagavi on 16 and 17 October 2015. The winning team received an IBM- Microsoft grant of 36,000 dollars and certificates as prizes

The consecutive 24 hour event – in which around 500 students from colleges across the state affiliated to VTU participated – where the participants had to work on a problem related to the future of Indian education and Digital India initiative. The event was jointly organised by VTU and Talentspear in association with the Deshpande Foundation.

The website of the event described it as one where participants were invited to “come together for 24 hours with the brightest minds to enhance the software development skills, team work and entrepreneurial aspirations, to evolve themselves into a better programmer, a better engineer at VTU to make something amazing.” According to the website, the focus of the 24-hour Hackathon was to build new applications and products, a highly scalable and agile app or a portal. The participants were offered help and advice from engineers and software developers from start-ups to MNCs with on the ground experience.

Team Asbestos won the first prize for presenting a solution which they called Vidhya Aadhar, an online profiling system, where the curriculum mark cards are stored digitally based on Aadhar number. The project was mentioned to be one of its kind and profusely praised by the judges for its potential to tap digital technology to enhance educational services in the country.

The Management, Director, Principal and the faculty of the Institute congratulated the team on their outstanding achievement.