Hurry! ICICI Appathon is back now

ICICI Bank recently announced the launch of the second season of ‘ICICI Appathon’, its virtual mobile app development challenge.

It is India’s largest mobile app development initiative by a bank in the FinTech and InsurTech space which offers access of over 250 diverse APIs to the participants.

The programme aims to create the next generation of banking applications on mobile and web space by attracting developers, technology companies, startups, technopreneurs and students across the globe.

Last year, the ‘ICICI Appathon’ challenge witnessed an overwhelming response from over 2,000 participants including a large number of entries from international developers and startups.

As a testimony towards nurturing young developers, the bank incorporated the winning mobile innovation of enabling payments using digital keyboard into its mobile banking app within 100 days of the completion of ‘ICICI Appathon’. Christened, ‘iMobile Smartkeys’, it is the first payment service in Asia that allows payments and banking from a smartphone keyboard.

Speaking about the initiative, Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO, ICICI Bank said , “At ICICI Bank, technology has been at the core of our strategy. In line with this, we introduced a global mobile app development challenge, 'ICICI Appathon', last year. It allowed us to foster innovation and tap into the minds of the most innovative developers across the world. Post the event, the winning entry that enabled payments using digital keyboards was incorporated into the Bank’s mobile banking application and named ‘iMobile SmartKeys’. As a testimony towards nurturing young developers, ICICI Bank incorporated this innovative solution within a quarter of completion of ‘ICICI Appathon’.

Through 'ICICI Appathon' season II, we intend to collaborate with more such innovative technopreneurs. We believe that programmes like these will encourage young developers to create world class banking applications on mobile and will strengthen the Government's 'Digital India' mission.”

TR Ramachandran, Visa Group Country Manager, India and South Asia , said: “Visa is proud to support the ICICI Appathon, a mobile app development challenge. There’s never been a more important time for the development of innovative payment solutions in India, so we’re excited to see what apps the best and brightest minds can create using Visa’s APIs. Good luck to all the competitors and we’re looking forward to the judging process.”

Chetan Naik, Vice President, Sales, IBM India/South Asia , said , “IBM is committed to be the technology partner for the ICICI Appathon for the second year in a row. Developers and start-ups will tap into the power of IBM's open cloud platform, Bluemix to build next generation mobile apps quickly and easily. In addition to providing technical guidance and mentorship to participants, IBM will also award startup winners with IBM Cloud credits as a part of the IBM Global Entrepreneur program. This collaboration brings together IBM's technology strength with the exceptional talent of developers and start-ups to foster innovation and growth for India.”

Hosted on the IBM Bluemix cloud based platform, 'ICICI Appathon' will offer a diverse set of over 60 APIs (Application Programme Interface) from ICICI Bank and its group companies namely ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, ICICI Lombard General Insurance and ICICI Securities. The participants will also get access to 190 payment APIs from 'VISA', National Payment Council of India (NPCI) and cloud platform from IBM to create working prototypes in a sandbox environment, a secured test environment.

Using these APIs, participants will have to create innovative working prototypes of mobile applications that provide a superior customer experience. To make this challenge an exciting experience, ICICI Bank has partnered with industry leaders like IBM, Google, VISA, NPCI, Infosys Finacle, TCS and 91springboard.

Freelance developers, technology enthusiasts working in companies, startups and students from the technology space can participate in the ‘ICICI Appathon’ in the following way:

· Registration : Participants can register on www.iciciappathon.com till March 20, 2017. The names of the shortlisted candidates will be announced on March 27, 2017. They will be given access to the APIs hosted on the IBM Bluemix platform on March 28, 2017

· Development : Participants will have to create minimum one innovative working prototype using the virtual banking and financial services APIs. These need to be submitted by April 18, 2017

· Evaluation: Finalists will be announced on April 25, 2017. They will be invited to Mumbai to compete in the ‘Grand Finale’ in May 2017

Three 'ICICI Appathon' champions will be selected by a jury of eminent leaders from the banking industry and startup ecosystem. All participants will be judged on criteria that include novelty, functionality, business potential and relevance, user experience and scalability.

The top three winners will win prizes from a pool of over Rs. 20 lakh along with a potential engagement opportunity with ICICI Bank. They also stand to win USD 20,000 worth of ‘Google Cloud Credits’ for further development of their products. One of the finalists will also have the opportunity to co-develop a proof of concept with Infosys Finacle and to showcase their product/innovation at the Infosys Confluence at San Francisco.

Additionally, winners of the 'ICICI Appathon', who apply to the '10,000 Startups' of NASSCOM will get a fast tracked entry into it. Moreover, two members of the winning team shall also have access to the network and co-working community of 91springboard (a co-working community of freelancers, startups and established small to large businesses) across India for next three months.

Top three Appathon winners will get gift vouchers worth Rs. 25,000 each from Envestnet|Yodlee, cloud based digital financial platform. Winners will also get an opportunity to present their ideas to the executive team of Envestnet|Yodlee at their flagship event – GarageFest 2017.