BENGALURU: More than 100 women developers came together for the final round of the All Women Hackathon held in the city on Wednesday. Three apps focusing on bettering society won awards at the event.
The women, who were software professionals and students, formed 16 different teams and hailed not just from the IT city but also from Hyderabad and Chennai.
The award winning apps were ‘Kaam Hai’, ‘Expert Care’ and Play For Good’.
Kaam Hai is a referral-based platform for maids, cooks, and drivers who can use it to seek jobs. Expert Care aims to reduce fetal and neonatal mortality in rural Karnataka by sending nutrition alerts through IVR calls to expecting mothers. Play for Good devises ways to reduce time spent on apps for gaming and social networking, and also helps with donations for social causes.
“A great learning experience. We were groups of young people clustered around tables, chatting and focusing on our laptops, yet this was an event with a difference - all of us were women. Would love to be part of such hackathons that have a much larger mission,” said Karishma, a participant.
All the apps were built according to the theme of the hackathon ‘Tech For Good’. The evaluation was based on the relevance of the app and also technical aspects such as coding standards and percentage of code completion.
Shaila Srinivas, chairperson of the hackathon, said, “The mission of this hackathon was to unleash the entrepreneurship potential in women where they could come up with an idea of their own, develop the app and also take their app further to the community creating a huge social impact.”
The hackathon was organised by the Anita Borg Institute in association with the Association of Computing Machinery India.