Unleashing innovation at the 36-hour Tech Fest

What do you get when you scale a hackathon? You benefit from a Netathon, a 36-hour solutions festival filled with innovative uses of cutting-edge technologies, including generative AI, augmented reality (AR), low code/no code, cybersecurity, creation of Cloud data dashboards and serverless architecture.

“We wanted to launch a series of technology-focused events for our community to encourage new solutions to common problems across various industries, from retail to healthcare and other social and community areas,” said declared Sameer Jain, CEO of Net Solutions. “There are so many amazing open source options available not only for professionals but also for students, which is why we launched Netathon to bring together the brightest minds of Chandigarh Tricity to think about improving our world through to technology.”

Néathon in a few words

Netathon 2023 provided unique opportunities for participants to conceptualize their cutting-edge solutions, win a cash prize (INR 1,00,000 for the winning team), and network with others who are also invested in technological advancement.

This special hackathon was open to programmers, business analysts, product designers and other creatives from the Chandigarh Tricity region. Participating teams were confronted with real-world scenarios and challenged to develop innovative solutions in 36 hours. Options for use cases and associated technologies included:

• Serverless architecture (i.e. e-commerce application, online blood donation system, e-commerce website directory)
• Low code/no code (i.e. location-based social media app, emergency response center app, community development app)
• Cloud data dashboard (i.e. daily visualization of stock market data)
• Augmented reality (i.e. virtual fashion application).

Beyond specific applications and technologies, the driving force behind Netathon 2023 was to demonstrate the power of human ingenuity when unleashed in a free and open environment. That’s why we encouraged Netathon participants not to hesitate to use existing technologies, like libraries, frameworks or open source code, as a spark for their creative flames.

“Our company deeply believes that new ideas can come from anyone, anywhere, at any time,” Jain said. “We saw this at Netathon, where passion, enthusiasm and imagination fueled inventive software applications. »

In this way, all 15 Netathon teams were winners. We honored the top three teams.

Netathon 2023 winners announced

Two industry experts judged the Netathon 2023: the Chief Technology (CTO) of Net Solutions, Joseph “JJ” Judewho has more than 25 years of experience in the world of technology, and Modulor Capital Bhavish Sood, a veteran of deep tech venture funds, a dedicated advisor to IT companies, and a former Gartner consultant. The jury evaluated the participating teams and winners were chosen based on the project’s relevance to the theme, innovativeness, design, execution and presentation.

The first prize of INR 1,00,000 was won by a team comprising Raman Saini, Vipan Sharma and Shekhar Ken – from Tech Hindustan. Their confidence, in-depth knowledge, innovative work, global perspective and speed of solution execution convinced them of the competition.

Shruti Sharma, Anil Sharma, Ashok Singh, Babit Kumar, Rajat Kumar and Rudrakshi Arora from “The Byte Crunchers” team, Net Solutions won the second prize of INR 50,000. With their creative problem-solving approach, they have won awards for being the best coding team at other tech conferences. During the Netathon, their creativity, their dynamism in their chosen field (the cloud) and their commitment impressed the jury.

Ashwini, Manish, Rohan, Vikram and Vipin from team ‘Bro Coders’ won the second prize of INR 25,000. They pride themselves on their constant pursuit of excellence and their expertise in writing code. They worked on a relatively new service area: low code, without code development.

A special jury prize of INR 25,000 was awarded to Harshit, Deepak, Devashish, Tarun, Manraj and Uday, Team Champions, an enthusiastic group of students from Chandigarh College of Engineering, who decided to take up in no-code low-code development, even though it was a new area of ​​work for them. Their spirit was commendable and they worked to create user-friendly solutions. Talent, creativity and the will to win earned them this special mention and this prize.