The ‘Women Makers Celebration’ hosted by Kerala Startup Mission saw over 300 innovators selected via ‘Tink Her Hack 4.0’ gather from across the state to brainstorm and demonstrate their tech brilliance over the weekend.
The event held in Kochi was the culmination of TinkerSpace’s women-only hackathon movement that has been encouraging young minds to explore technology and experiment with their ideas. Over 2,800 women students from across the state participated in Tink Her Hack 4.0, generating over 1,500 project ideas.
On March 14, the finalists were given less than 24 hours to come up with innovative projects, many of which addressed real-world challenges. One notable project was ‘Sakhi’, a women’s health platform that assesses postpartum depression risk and offers a voice-based interface in multiple Indian languages. This was created in about 12 hours.
Another project, ‘Ormma’, which took 18 hours, is an app designed to assist people living with Alzheimer’s disease through reminders, a digital diary and face recognition features.
Nima Fathima and Swaliha C A, B.Tech students from Adi Shankara Institute of Engineering and Technology, were the duo behind ‘Sakhi’. “The system we created works like a health companion for women, with a focus on postpartum women,” says Nima.
“‘Sakhi’ is a conversational agent that conducts a five-stage analysis daily, keeping track of how women are feeling. We hope to expand our ideas further with the help of mental health professionals in the future.”
Adithya Vijay and Snoopa K, B.Tech students from NSS College of Engineering, Palakkad, created ‘Ormma’. “It’s a cognitive assistance system. We attended the event with just this small idea,” says Adithya.
The final concept, she adds, was then developed at the event. “We created a facial recognition system and trained the model. Using our system, a person with Alzheimer’s can just turn on the camera on their phone, scan a face they do not recognise, and the system would identify the person,” says Adithya.
“The organisers encouraged us to take it further. We then created settings where a person with memory issues could look up the details of the last conversation they had with someone, be reminded about medicines or appointments and so on.”
Two teams from Thiruvananthapuram stood out for their projects. ‘Trustora’, developed by DigitalDuo (Sabeena F and Sareena B S) of LBS Institute of Technology for Women, is a hyperlocal marketplace designed to help women and home-based entrepreneurs sell their products and services within their communities.
The other one, ‘StockStar’ by ‘CtrlAltSolve’ (Aasrsha Philbi and Aleena Wilson) of College of Engineering - Trivandrum, is a market simulation platform where users can compete against an AI-powered trader to understand how stock markets work.
The event also featured discussions and mentoring sessions to help participants explore the next steps in their technology journeys, including careers, research and startup opportunities.
Participants say the event was quite different from other hackathons that they had attended in the past. “The mentors and leaders present there were open and non-judgmental. They listened to us patiently, and we had the freedom to explore our ideas freely,” says Nima.
Sareena adds that there was “no feeling of heavy competition”. “Such environments will help budding makers like us dream without inhibitions and grow,” she says.
Startup Mission COO Tom Thomas, too, lauds the Tink Her Hack concept, noting that “such initiatives are helping build a strong pipeline of women innovators in Kerala”.
“By creating spaces where young women can experiment, build, and collaborate, we are enabling them to become creators and leaders in the technology ecosystem,” he says.