Nasscom 10,000 Start-Ups to Woo Mobile App Developers in Kolkata

10,000 Startups (a NASSCOM initiative to impact 10,000 Tech Startups by 2023) along with IBM recently hosted 24 hours Hackathon which was about building mobile applications on the Bluemix platform. The Hackathon brought together developers, entrepreneurs and technology leaders together to explore and discuss new ideas. The event also witnessed Mr. Jonathan P. Ward- Principal Commerce Officer of American Embassy/ Consulate Kolkata and  Greg Pardo - Public Affairs Officers along with  Nidhi Saraf from Indian Angel Network .

Rajat Tandon, Vice President, NASSCOM 10,000 start-up program , said, “We are happy looking at the excitement and participation from Kolkata. We received over 300 applications for this Hackathon including a mix of students from across West Bengal, developer and startups, all participants came up with interesting solutions and the IBM Bluemix platform granted them even more opportunities to develop their own ideas and present them. On the whole, the cloud-based hackathon always forces teams to think differently and at the same time gain knowledge”.

Mangesh Patankar, Cloud Technical Evangelist, IBM , said, that “Hackathons are a great way to interact with so many zealous and enthusiastic professionals. We were truly inspired by the ideation and liveliness of the participants and look forward to more such hackathons and collaborations”.

The winner of the IBM hackathon was team Jarviz who created an application to identify grey areas to avoid call dropping and low band with internet for Users. Followed with the first runner up was the team Feel Great Factor who created an application to take better Selfies which automatically get transferred to every person in picture based on facial recognition. Second runner up was Victory Hacker , who created On Demand Doctor and Emergency Health Services Application and Revolgen , who created an App to find every single Puja Ceremony in Kolkata based on Location with options to Book VIP Darshan. With an impressive gathering of over 200 participants and a notable set of speakers, the participants showed their potential, caliber with building innovative mobile applications at the event. Apart from gaining valuable knowledge and exposure, the participants also had a chance to win cash vouchers up to INR 40,000.

“To nurture and empower the passionate entrepreneurs in the Eastern India, NASSCOM 10,000 start-up program has introduced a series of new initiatives together with our partners Google, Microsoft, IBM and Amazon Web Services” added Tandon.

Started in April 2013, 10,000 Startups is an ambitious attempt by NASSCOM to scale up the startup ecosystem in India by 10x. 10,000 Startups aims to enable incubation, funding and support for 10,000 technology startups in India over the next ten years. The program’s vision is to foster entrepreneurship, build entrepreneurial capabilities at scale and strengthen early stage support for tech startups. The initiative brings together key stakeholders of the ecosystem including startup incubators, accelerators, angel investors, venture capitalists, startup support groups, mentors, and technology corporations. Since its launch in April 2013, we’ve done about 600+ events in 25 cities of the country which were attended by a whopping 25,000 attendees and received 11,000 Applicants, 1100 Startups Shortlists, and 150 Impacts. The program is supported by our founding partner Google for Entrepreneurs, and Industry Partners Microsoft Ventures, Kotak, IBM and Amazon