Chennai: Vikatan Hackathon is a hands-on CSR event organized by the Ananda Vikatan Group, one of India’s oldest and Tamil’s foremost media houses with interests in Magazines, Books, TV and Digital publishing, as part of its initiatives to reinvent its connect and engagement with the communities that it serves.
In its 90th Year, Ananda Vikatan through this Hackathon aims to come up with innovative solutions that intersect Content, Community and Connections (leveraging technology) to improve lives.
Speaking about the hackathon, Mr.Srinivasan, Managing Director, Vikatan Group said “Communities of like-minded people always experience everyday problems that hold them back from being productive and make them do repetitive tasks. After all, how can one expect to follow the same routine and expect different results every time? Communities bear citizens who are learning every day and amassing wealth of knowledge, from mistakes made, to solutions with ingenuity, sometimes even without knowing it. In fact, one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure. Content is being generated more than ever before. From the government to welfare organisations to media to corporate, more and more content is being generated every minute and much of this is available in public domain, seeking users (after all, why collect data unless it can be of use to someone?) How can technology connect the dots of community need and content which contextually seek one another, in fulfilling the stated and unstated needs of the common man? Vikatan Hackathon is all about lifting these communities with the collective knowledge that it holds individually using technology”.
Vikatan Hackathon is a structured prototyping event spread over a weekend, approximately 50 hours – starting from Friday evening and ends on Sunday evening during which selected individuals/ teams ideate and build a prototype for a solution that solves one of the challenges in education, agriculture, environment, empowerment & employability and civic life & community power.
This hackathon acts not just as a platform for young budding entrepreneurs to exhibit their product,connect with the community and build it to potential business but also gives them a life time opportunity to meet,interact and get mentored by some of the biggies of the tech and business world as well as leverage the combined strength of the various partners like Nasscom, Startupcentre, Thoughtworks who are on board. The top three teams to build elegant solutions win cash prizes worth Rs 1.5 Lakhs too.
The Jury of Vikatan Hackathon have eminent personalities like Ms Padma Chandrasekaran an Angel Investor, Mr M M Murugappan,Vice Chairman-Murugappa Group and Mr. A D Padmasingh Isaac, Chairman & MD-Aachi Group. We also have leading business professionals like Mr C K Ranganathan – Founder & Chairman – Cavincare, Mr Suresh Sambandam, Founder & CEO – Orangescape, Mr S Abhaya Kumar ED – Strides Shasun Pharmaceuticals, Mr Murugavel Janakiraman Founder & CEO – Matrimony.com, Mr Sameer Mehta, Director – Mehta Hospital to a few as Mentors who will be fuelling the young minds with quality inputs nurturing and supporting them to become successful entrepreneurs.
Vikatan Hackathon is scheduled Sep 23rd to Sep 25th at Thoughtworks, Ascendas, Taramani, Chennai.
For registration and more details logon to http://hackathon.vikatan.com. Registration ends on September 5th,2016.
