Startup Assam Holds First Ever E Hackathon In NE India
Northeast India’s first e-hackathon was organised in Guwahati by startup accelerator Startup Assam over a webinar. Pankaj Gogoi, Founder of Startup Assam stated the concept of the hackathon. The programme started with the topic “How Startups and entrepreneurship will grow post Covid pandemic and how it would impact Northeast India” and was moderated by Mr Sharique Hussain.
In the webinar, Mr Pranjal Phukan, CGM, BCPL elaborated on various questions that one needs to ask before launching a startup and how to apply design thinking process to ideate and empathies a process.
Medalson Ronghang, Professor, Bineswar Engineering College , said “CEO of any company has not led everyone to go online, infact Covid made everyone to go online be it grocery, be it education or any online ecommerce platform market growth”.
Palash Jyoti Mahanta, COO for Olatus Systems Private Ltd, explained how electronics is a big market opportunity for startups to explore in the field of IOT. Samir Baruah, Startup Assam mentor emphasised the need for banks to play a key role in developing the startups arising from the pandemic. He also urged high net worth individuals to join hands to create a seed fund for startups like the initiative Brahmaputra angel investment network. Amitabh Baruah, Secretary, Startup Assam stated that a strong intervention has to be taken up by government to work in the field of startups at the grassroot level and PPP model for various industries.
In the second part of the programme on July 10th the participants were judged by a peanel cosisting of Dr. Sriparna Baruah, Head of Centre for Industrial extension, Indian institute of entrepreneurship, Dr.Arup Kumar Misra, former Director of ASTEC and Samir Baruah, Mentor of Startup Assam.
A session ‘Startups with Young India’ was moderated by Amrit Deorah, Co chair of YI Guwahati and Vishal More, Innovation Chair, YI Guwahati. They also spoke about their plans on startup initiative.
Safe Sync, a covid based IOT based solution from NIT Silchar won the First Prize worth Rs 25000, while EcoVac a robotics vacuum cleaner from Manipur technical University won second prize worth Rs 10,000. The Third Prize worth Rs 5,000 was won by SukhNidra, a mental health product for sleeping disorders from Assam Don Bosco University. These startups will be monitored for next three months in their scaling process and then proper mentoring would be provided to them by the organisers.
The Programme was supported by Kahudi farms and Emotoeast as safety partner to the hackathon.
