The Silicon-Valley-based Motwani Jadeja Foundation — a non-profit venture fund designed to transform entrepreneurial individuals into creative change-makers — is bringing together some of the best innovative and entrepreneurial minds in a 72-hour online hackathon called CODE19 to find solutions to India’s challenges against the Coronavirus outbreak.
The contest, which begins on April 10, 2020, is expected to see over 3,000 participants across nationalities, ethnicities and gender. Working online from the comfort of their homes while India is on a 21-day lockdown, they will collaborate with mentors, subject-matter specialists, data sources and a network of collaborators in the quest for solutions against COVID-19. The online hackathon is open to everyone as individuals and teams, without any criteria or age limit. Those wishing to participate can sign up on www.code19.in till 6 pm IST on April 10.
"The urgent aim of CODE19 is to find solutions to immense global challenges against the Coronavirus outbreak. The larger goal is to spark an interest among innovative and entrepreneurial Indians to problem-solve with the help of global friends and partners. The focus of CODE19 is on developing solutions quickly and applying them in everyday life. The participants would be tasked with decoding the Coronavirus outbreak and its impact on India, encoding smart solutions to mitigate the impending Corona-inflicted challenges and winning prizes worth US$10,000 to realise their solutions. The ideas and innovations they create would readily be available for scaling and implementation across the country," said Asha Jadeja Motwani, the founder of Motwani Jadeja Foundation.
For CODE19, participants will be competing to create winning solutions across key areas, including Medical treatment and testing, Travel and Tourism, Mitigation – Isolation, protection/masks, social distancing, social practices, welfare, and awareness, research and development, education and awareness, and Industry. The participants would work on solutions through ideations, wireframes, designs, developments and testing the prototype they are creating. Mentors and guides will help them sharpen their product ideas and convert them to sure-shot successful products that will aid India’s fight against the deadly virus. Under the Open Innovation category, participants would be free to propose their own ideas, technologies and innovative solutions, bioinformatics, datasets, apps for diagnosis, and the likes, which can be leveraged for strengthening the fight against COVID-19.
Speaking on how the solutions coming out of this hackathon will help the current scenario, Asha said, "The focus of CODE19 is on developing solutions rapidly and applying them to everyday situations. The ideas and innovations which are being created can be made readily available for scaling and implementation across the country. Ideas which are really helpful will not only be financially supported by CODE19 but connected to the relevant industries. We have a large network of partners like the IAMAI Start-up Foundation."
She also added that hackathons are an effective tool to innovate new sets of ideas, solutions and strategies to combat a crisis. "CODE19 is bringing the brightest minds together on a single platform to harness the power of collaborative computer programming to meet challenges such as the global pandemic facing us today," she says.
CODE19 will also have a few online sessions including talks with business leaders as well as Yoga and Meditation, to keep the participants inspired. There will be public voting at the end of the event to assess the most exciting projects. The winners would be announced at 9 pm on April 14. Code19 India is being held in collaboration with Bengaluru-based HackerEarth, a start-up that provides enterprise software solutions that help organisations with their technical recruitment needs. The Association of Designers in India (ADI) is also on board and shall assist in providing mentors through its network.
