Avaya India Announces Winners of First Hackathon Held at Pune R&D center

The challenge invited developers to design innovative & sustainable smart solutions to help drive Digital India

Avaya, the global leader in delivering superior communications experiences, announced ‘DigiCrafters’ as the winners of the company’s first Hackathon challenge, held at Avaya Pune R&D center.

The two-day event attracted a large group of developers and enthusiasts from universities, colleges and businesses across India. Teams used platforms such as Avaya Breeze Client SDK™ and Zang™ Cloud, as well as the Avaya’s Vantage™ Device, to create smart applications aiming at supporting India’s digital objectives in industries including hospitality, healthcare, smart enterprise, smart city and open category.

A total of 482 teams participated, with 22 teams making it to the finals. The teams were awarded points based on complexity, creativity and impact as well as integration of the Avaya communication features. In the finals, the winning team, DigiCrafters, competed with ‘SmartZangers’ & ‘ExploreEnable’ team. The first-place team won a cash prize of Rs. 2, 00, 000, first runner-up’s prize was Rs. 1, 25,000 and the second runner-up was awarded Rs. 75,000.

The winning teams and their ideas are as follows:
First Prize: A cash prize of Rs. 2, 00, 000 went to DigiCrafters who built an insurance application that solved practical challenges faced by the insurance industry. The team’s application aims to deliver instant communication between patients, service providers and insurers for an enhanced patient experience. Participants in the DigiCrafters team and winners of first prize are Alok Kulkarni, Tanaji Bhale and Imran Solanki.

First Runner Up: Team SmartZangers won a cash prize of Rs. 1, 25,000. Their smart healthcare application integrates Ambulance and Emergency Services Tracking with the Hospital’s Management System to deliver instant and contextual communication between various departments. SmartZangers’ solution digitally links all city departments to communicate and take instant decisions to save lives. SmartZangers team members and winners are Prathamesh Kale, Vipin Kumar

Second Runner Up: Team ExploreEnable, represented by Avirup Ganguly and Rishi built an application for that connects rural clinics to city hospitals, making clinics in remote areas connected to city hospitals with instant and contextual communication.

“It feels great to be honored for your creativity and innovation. Wining Avaya Hackathon holds a significant accomplishment in our career as developers. We are very grateful to Avaya for providing a platform of such a magnitude to enhance our skills and contribute towards building seamless applications for a digital era”.
DigiCrafters, Winning Team, Avaya Hackathon

“We are delighted to announce Avaya’s Hackathon winners today. It’s been an absolute pleasure to see some of these most innovative and utility based applications created by these enthusiasts. We are glad that we provided them with this platform to showcase their ideas and inspire India’s developer community to build the next generation of communication-enabled applications that will help businesses meet the challenges of digital transformation. We congratulate all the participants and teams who were part of Hackathon, and we look forward to creating more opportunities for the tech and developers community to create unique and innovative solutions”.
Gary E. Barnett, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Engagement Solutions, Avaya

“Communication is at the heart of any Digital Transformation story. Through Hackathon we aimed to bring out the best application to communicate from any device, anywhere and anytime. We invited the best minds from across India to build the next generation of Android-based communication-enabled applications using Avaya’s Breeze Client SDK™, Vantage™ and Zang™ Cloud. We are glad to see such phenomenal results. The innovation and creativity of today’s youth needs to be encouraged more and more”.
Raman Adlakha, R&D Lead- Pune, Avaya

“At Avaya, we understand that “going digital” is the need of the hour. In today’s business world, customers are looking at flexible, secured and high end solutions in order to eliminate communication gap. So, it is important to understand the key things that make applications work seamlessly and deliver a smooth customer experience. Building an ecosystem of developers and other innovators is a key driver for Avaya, and through this Hackathon we have demonstrated our commitment to build the next generation of communications applications and solutions”.
Vishal Agrawal, MD, India and SAARC