Students and Start-ups participate to build business solutions using Cognitive Technologies
IBM and Indian Institute of Management – Ahmedabad announced the first-of-its kind Cognitive Tech based Challenge -“Cognitive 
Entrepreneurship Challenge”. The Challenge will reach out to students and start-ups across India. Registrations started on September 5, 2016 with various rounds and the finale is expected to happen towards mid-November 2016.
Cognitive Entrepreneurship Challenge (CEC) is an IBM led initiative wherein students and start-ups will be trained via interactive workshops on Cognitive based API on Bluemix. CEC is part of “Masterplan 2016” – which is an annual competition held within IIM-A where students and startups build business solutions and win exciting prizes. The Cognitive track will be an integral part of Masterplan 2016.
The main objective of CEC is to encourage young entrepreneurs and the student community to build business solutions around capabilities using IBM’s Cognitive platform – Bluemix. Bluemix is a platform as a Service (PaaS) offering from IBM based on open standards and cloud to build, deploy, manage and run omni-channel applications like web and mobile, big data and other smart services. Other than the IBM Bluemix platform, students will also have access to other relevant IBM technology platforms in the areas of Analytics and Security.
The participants will be evaluated and mentored by the IBM India Watson team. Students across all engineering and management disciplines will be invited to take part in this event.
“Cognitive computing is fast augmenting human knowledge, capabilities and experience. Recent applications of this technology in data analytics, financial services, medical diagnostics and public service delivery shows potential to generate tremendous societal and enterprise value. Specifically, in the case of rapidly digitizing Indian economy, there is vast untapped potential for creative applications of cognitive technologies by enterprises, entrepreneurs and changemakers. IIM-A Masterplan 2016 is excited to partner with IBM, which brings IBM’s legendary Watson technology — that beat humans on the game of Jeopardy — to the vast pool of CEC participants and startups to help them create cutting-edge solutions.” says Prof. Anish Sugathan, faculty of Business Policy, and the Masterplan faculty advisor at IIM-A.
“We are pleased to partner with IIM-Ahmedabad on the first-ever Cognitive Entrepreneur Challenge in India. In the cognitive era, we see various ecosystem constituents coming together to co-create game changing applications to solve real world challenges. IBM is committed to creating this innovation ecosystem by opening up Watson APIs to the world. India as a region has tremendous potential for applying Cognitive at scale, and Indian entrepreneurs have shown tremendous creativity and passion in applying technology to create value. So we really see this as the start of an exciting partnership, and a testimony to our commitment to make India Digital,” reiterated Dr. Prashant Pradhan, Watson India Lead, IBM India / South Asia.
