HackerEarth, Andhra Pradesh to host Finackathon 2017

NEW DELHI: Bangalore-based startup HackerEarth has been selected by Fintech Valley Vizag - a Government of Andhra Pradesh initiative, to host Finackathon 2017.

The hackathon, project managed by KPMG, is being held to crowdsource ideas for the development of fintech ecosystem in Vizag and catapult it as the country’s hub for BFSI innovation and business development. More than 10 leading fintech players in India have partnered with Fintech Valley to promote and execute solutions coming out of this hackathon.

The hackathon will be held in two stages. The idea phase which began on September 14th is currently underway with entries set to close on October 30th. The shortlisted teams will participate in the final round to be conducted in the first week of December in Visakhapatnam.

The winning teams in each category (Banks, Insurance, Capital Markets, and NBFCs) will be awarded a sum of Rs 3,00,000. The winners will also be given a chance to carry out Proof of Concept (PoC) with corporates and will need to be executed in Fintech Valley Vizag. Investor network of The Fintech Valley, Vizag will be invited for Hack Day, where they will go through the prototyped solution.

The hackathon is looking for solutions across the following 5 themes:

1. Customer Experience: In a bid to boost the average revenue per customer, solutions are required to increase client life-cycle stickiness and engagement. Insurance companies also require facial recognition technology to identify customers and predict their life-span, BMI, health issues etc. and reduce the need for extensive and invasive medical procedures to judge their qualification for insurance.

2. Process Automation: Solutions are required in the field of auto insurance, one of the most frequently availed services in the insurance industry, to automate damage assessment to motor vehicles and fast-track reimbursements to customers. Additionally, there is a growing need to enhance KYC norms and automate e-KYC using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to reduce manual labour.

3. Financial Inclusion: With the rapid adoption of cashless transactions, there is a demand for the inclusion of rural communities to engage in the model and simplify financial transactions for their inclusion using innovative solutions.

4. Risk Management: The health conscious consumers today are heavily dependent on mobile applications and wearable devices to monitor their vitals. This information can be leveraged by insurers and consumers themselves to track their health and deviations from the norm. Solutions which can provide predictive recommendations and alerts to both parties can revolutionize the healthcare and insurance industries.

5. Lending: With the soaring cost of healthcare services, it has become difficult for the average citizen to borrow money from commercial institutions. The need of the hour is to identify new models of lending including crowd sourcing and P2P lending enabled by credit scoring and credit risk management amongst others.

AP Fintech Valley Vizag was conceptualized with an aim to bring together public and private players, state of the art incubators and accelerators, innovation labs, mentorships, angel investors and anyone willing to break free from traditional processes. Fintech Valley Vizag has also launched a ‘Use Case Repository’ across banks, NBFCs, insurance companies, and capital market companies to accelerate innovation in financial services industry. Selected use cases are opened up for the hackathon to seek relevant solutions to current business problems (use cases), and provide opportunities to start-ups and developer community.

Sprint, HackerEarth’s innovation management software is a platform to ideate and collaborate on interesting products, solutions and processes. It also helps organizations to crowdsource solutions, from internal and external audiences, helping them minimize the time, effort and capital spent on driving innovation. HackerEarth also hosts a global network of top developers which companies and governments can tap into through Sprint, to generate ideas and solutions. Organizations use Sprint to crowdsource ideas that help them meet larger goals, which are broken down into distinct themes and specific campaigns.

“We are honoured to partner with the AP government to curate Finackathon 2017. It is a great initiative to promote the rising fintech ecosystem in Vizag and we hope to see some creative and innovative hacks from the participants. Banks have stored and moved money across borders for centuries, however, technology is slowly disrupting banking and financial services. e-commerce, micro payments and blockchain will give access to billions of people left outside until now, making money transactions more dynamic and inclusive than ever," said Sachin Gupta, CEO and Cofounder, HackerEarth.

“Fintech is a very promising sector and with the rapid rate of adoption of mobile transactions, it will prove it be one of the most profitable sectors in the coming years. We aim to make Vizag a central hub for all businesses and investors dealing in fintech. The hackathon has already picked up momentum and we hope to see a lot more traction in the coming days. HackerEarth has been an indispensable partner for our government for this initiative," said JA Chowdary, Special Chief Secretary & IT Advisor, Govt of Andhra Pradesh.