Accenture, in partnership with Yahoo, announced the winners of the fourth season of Innovation Jockeys, The Hunt for India’s most Innovative Minds in a glitzy award ceremony held at Ritz Carlton, Bangalore.
This year’s contest focused on the concepts of disruptive technology innovations related to the themes of Cognitive Computing and Internet of Things & Digital Application Marketplace. It aimed to discover bright, young, home-grown innovators who could conceptualize ideas that would help businesses and governments create personalized customer or citizen experiences.
The participants hailing from under-graduate as well as post graduate courses submitted innovative ideas for using technology to transform India through a micro-site developed for the contest at InnovationJokeys. The winners were announced under the following categories: Grand Prize, Cognitive Computing & Internet of Things, Digital Application Marketplace and Jury Award.
The grand prize was awarded to Team Fuzz which comprised of Akash Kumar, Akash Kumar Singh, Amit Kumar Singh & Abhishek Kumar from IES College of Technology, Bhopal, for developing Seva, Connecting India Healthy India, an application aimed at digitizing healthcare services and offering a one-stop solution to tackle long queues and unnecessary delays in providing medical care. The app is programmed to provide quick service and help the patient reach their nearest hospital in order to ensure timely treatment in case of emergencies. As a part of the award, winners will fly to Silicon Valley to experience the frontline of technology at AccentureTechnology Labs. In addition to this, they also won a mentorship session with Nandini Vaidyanathan, CMD, CARMa Venture Services.
In the Cognitive Computing & Internet of Things category, Neeraj and Akshita Sachdeva who represented Team Eyeluminati from Manav Rachna International University, Faridabad were awarded the prize for Manovue, a wearable voice-controlled haptic device that aims to help the visually impaired by using natural language processing to provide voice-enabled guidance and vibrations.
The winning entry in the Digital Application Marketplace category belonged to Team Fivido. The members were Bhavesh from Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology and Abhijit, Gaurang who belong to the Delhi Technological University. They developed Navishoe: The Navigator on Feet, a shoe-based navigation system that relays data such as the user’s location as well as sends out distress messages without the need for a smartphone.
The Jury Award along with mentorship from Accenture was presented to Team Phoenix whose member Krithika from Amrita School of Engineering, Madurai developed the application Innovative divide & conquer for novel purpose. The application used machine-learning techniques to develop a cognitive system that attempts to grade short answers and aids candidates to learn faster.
The entries were rigorously evaluated by the panel of judges comprising the following:
- Kalyan Veeramachaneni, Research Scientist, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Nandini Vaidyanathan, CMD, CARMa Venture Services
- Raj Dam, Founder, QuizWorks; Ravi Gururaj, Chair – Product Council & Member – Executive Council, NASSCOM
- Unni Aravindakshan, Vice President – Production Engineering and Head
- Vinay Gupta, CEO, Via
- Raghu Polisetty, Managing Director for Accenture Digital in the Delivery Centers for Technology in India
- Jayant Swamy, Managing Director – Technology Platform, Accenture Delivery Centers for Technology in India
All category winners were awarded trophies and tech gadgets such as iPads and Pebble Smartwatch. The top five popular entries walked home with Amazon kindles. The entire awards ceremony was also live tweeted using #InnovationJockeys for all parents, college team mates and other contestants. For more information, please visit InnovationJockeys