EU holds hackathon for smart city apps in Bengaluru

The European Union's delegation to India on Friday held a hackathon challenge for Indian developers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) here to develop smart city applications (apps).

"The hackathon was held to familiarise Indian developers from start-ups and academia with emerging global standards for machine-machine communications and the Internet of Things (IoT)," EU Ambassador to India Tomasz Kozlowski said.

A total of 60 developers from across the country took part in the hackathon.

The winning team, which presented a project on using sensors to reduce road congestion near schools due to school buses, will get a trip to Estonia to attend the Baltic country's flagship start-up and technology event Latitude59 to be held in May.

The hackathon was meant to imagine new applications a smart city could offer its citizens, said Kozlowski.

The EU and Estonia, in particular, were looking at building connections with the Indian start-up community through the event, said the Estonian Ambassador to India Riho Kruuv.

"Estonia has one of the largest start-up ecosystems in Europe and we are keen on connecting and working with Indian start-ups," he said.

The EU delegation also held tutorials for developers in Bengaluru on Thursday, in Hyderabad on Wednesday and in Delhi on Monday. One more tutorial will be in Chandigarh on February 19.

The hackathon and tutorials have been organised under an EU-funded project, supporting cooperation between India and the EU on information and communications technology (ICT) standardisation.

"The initiative is an example of how we are implementing the decision taken the India-EU Summit on October 6 last year to broaden EU-India's cooperation on ICT standardisation," said Kozlowski.

Select participating teams will also have access to the final jury for the SAP Labs' start-up studio cohort in May 2019 and an opportunity to receive mentoring at the SAP studio here.

--IANS

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