Inauguration of Smart India Hackathon 2022 grand finale at Nodal Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

The Smart India Hackathon (SIH) is a nationwide initiative by the Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell to provide students a platform to solve the pressing problems of the government, ministries, departments, industries and other organizations. SIH has been acclaimed as the world’s biggest open innovation model, which inculcates the culture of product innovation and problem-solving among students. SIH is being conducted every year since 2017 in two formats - SIH Software and SIH Hardware Editions for higher education students. This year, Smart India Hackathon - Junior has also been introduced for school students to build a culture of Innovation and problem-solving attitude right from the school level.

The scope of the Smart India hackathon has been widening with each passing day since its launch in 2017. The increased enthusiasm among participating students and participating organizations could be seen in the growing number of participation over the years. Every year, SIH impacts lakhs of students by providing them a national platform to test their educational learnings in a real-world problem-solving environment. It also aligns their interest toward innovation and entrepreneurship.

Smart India Hackathon 2022 hardware grand finale is scheduled from 25th August to 29th August 2022 and the Smart India Hackathon 2022 software grand finale is scheduled from 25th August to 26th August 2022. Smart India hackathon has witnessed huge participation from Ministries, departments, PSUs, and private organizations in providing problem statements. SIH 2022 has offered 476 problem statements received from 62 organizations. 2033 winner teams of campus level hackathons organized under Smart India Hackathon 2022, comprising more than 15000 students will participate in this year’s SIH grand finale at the national level. These teams will travel to the assigned nodal centers and will work on the problem statements during the grand finale of SIH 2022.

As part of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav celebrations, the Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell and All India Council for Technical Education have identified 75 higher educational institutes/ incubators as Smart India Hackathon nodal centers to host the participants of SIH and facilitate an environment to conduct the Smart India hackathon in its well-defined and established format. At each nodal center, an officer designated by the Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell will monitor and preside over the proceedings during the entire duration of SIH grand finale.

Hon’ble Prime Minister of India has been interacting with the student participants of the Smart India Hackathon every year since its inception and is expected to interact with the students this year again on the evening of 25th August 2022.

Smart India Hackathon 2022 is jointly organized by the Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell, All India Council for Technical Education, Persistent Systems, and i4c. Doordarshan and All India Radio are the media partners, while Shell, and AWS are the sponsoring partners of the Smart India Hackathon 2022.

Each year, Smart India Hackathon is conducted at various nodal centers, where selected student teams, industry representatives, design mentors, and evaluators travel to the assigned physical centers. The Premier and prominent higher educational institutes/ incubators are identified as nodal centers by the Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell and All India Council for Technical Education in different cities. During the SIH grand finale, the student team works round the clock under the guidance of mentors and industry/Ministry representatives to produce the working solutions for the selected problem statements.

For the said purpose, the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur was selected as one of the nodal centers to facilitate the Smart India Hackathon Software edition. A total of 27 teams having 150 participants are competing against 27 problem statements from 23 organizations. The Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur is hosting problem statements given by the Ministry of Education, Government of India. Each Problem statement has a winning amount of Rs 1 lakh. Under the student innovation category, three prizes of Rs. 1 lakh, Rs. 75000, and Rs. 50000 will be provided to the winning teams.

The program will be centrally inaugurated by the Ministry of Education at 9:00 AM on 25th August 2022.