Coimbatore: BTech students of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, a multi-campus and multi-disciplinary research institution, won laurels for the three apps and technology solutions they developed for various ministries. These apps won top awards at Smart India Hackathon 2018 organised by the Central Government. While two of these solutions were related to the Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the third was for the AYUSH Ministry and got a special award in the Students’ Innovation category.

This event is held annually and is known as the largest hackathon in the world with a duration of 36 hours during which various departments of Central and State Governments engage with over 1 lakh students from universities across the country. They would have to surmount the challenge building digital solutions to improve their efficiency and plug revenue leakages. Six students in three teams from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham won awards at the event; three others came in the top 10 teams for various ministries.

Vidyapeetham engineering Dean Dr Sasangan Ramanathan said, “I am really proud of our students’ achievements at the national stage. This is a true reflection of the character of Amrita, where we believe in our students and nurture and encourage them to pursue their passion. The winners’ list this year spans from first to third year students, sending a strong message to everyone – believe in us (the youth) and we will take India to greater heights.”

The Android application developed by Niryatak, involved second-year B.Tech students for Indian exporters and manufacturers. The app helps calculate the correct post-production cost of any product being exported and suggests what the selling price should be for optimum profit with features like live in-built map to show optimum routes for transport of goods to nearest port and latest currency exchange rates.

Team member Sakthisree V says, “We intend to integrate data analytics into the app to provide a precise and reliable analysis of the world export market and offer a social platform for exporters to network with each other. The app will be made available free on Google Play Store for the first two years.”

Cyber Sena, a team of six third-year students won the top award at SIH by developing a secure system for the Ministry of Defence. The solution enables easy transfer of data from one network to another through white-listing of pen drives.

Team member Varshini G said, “Our solution was aimed at securing external USB devices and preventing unauthorised access to data copied on them. It is independent of the operating system and equipped with latest, highly secured encryption algorithms. In case of any tampering or damage to the device, a backup of the data remains in the local authorised systems for retrieval”.

The event was held at 28 centres across the country with over 100,000 students divided into 12,000 teams. About 340 problem statements were provided by 28 Union Ministries and 18 State Governments and the top 5 per cent teams were selected for the grand finale. It is expected that over 100 innovations and apps from the SIH 2018 edition will be put into use by the Government.