 Hello everyone, we welcome you to another interesting episode of how to ace the hackathon. I are in the mandal on behalf of entire smart India hackathon team. Welcome you to another important and interesting masterclass on how to crack the hackathon. Today we have with us another participant and a winner of previous edition of smart India hackathon, Ms. Sanika. Let's have her on screen and directly speak to her about her experience about the hackathon. So, Sanika, hi, welcome to the show. Hello. How are you? I am nice, how are you? Good, good, good, good. So, thanks for taking out this time for us and you know as we want to help the first timers, the smart India hackathon aspirants to understand and have some tips from the so-called pros of the previous edition of smart India hackathon and why not because first hand experience is always the best. So, we'll start with this. What was your take about smart India hackathon? How did you hear about it first and what was the initial reaction to this entire event? In the hackathon as a network, a mail was shot in our college that says this is happening and in turn the hackathon is happening and we have to participate in it. So, we were locked down batch so we didn't have much of a exposure in college and that was our first year in our college. Being in the second year, it was our first year. So, we were a little scared to participate but our professors and all asked us to participate and give it a try. So, we made a team and we participated in the internal hackathon. Good. Did you hear about the word hackathon before this event or was it the first time thing that you were experiencing? No, no. Before, when in COVID, I have participated in various hackathons like online on other platforms. Okay. So, for the user, I mean the for the viewers who are listening to us right now, what is the one thing or what is the thing that separates smart India hackathon from the rest of the hackathons and how do you think it is a entirely different platform or ballgame together? If you can just let us know. Other hackathons were like a small exposure but smart India hackathon was a vast exposure. Like it was the first hackathon and it was so long for me. It was 36 hours long. And like other hackathons, they really asked us to participate on our problem statement this time we were challenged by SI stream as for the problem statement to work on. Great. So, viewers and my dear friends, you just heard it. Smart India hackathon is basically a platform where the real-time problems that have been faced by the country and the nation and the entire world today is being put as problem statement to you and you have been given a platform to develop a solution on that. So, basically you are in turn helping the nation grow. So, that's something that separates smart India hackathon from the rest. So, Sanika coming back to you, breaking down this entire process from initial idea submission to the training and finally to the grand finale where the main action happens. If I want to take your inputs and if you want to give our viewers that this kind of thing should be kept in mind while each phase happens, what would it be? The first and the foremost thing that everyone should keep in mind while participating in the hackathon is you have to be clear about the problem statement and you have to understand as in what the problem statement is. Our problem statement was attractiveness and user friendliness of AICP. So, we understood it as attractive as in the website being user friendly so that every user could access and attract them in an aesthetic way so that everyone finds it pleasing and everyone's attention could be caught on the side. So, understanding the problem statement, then a presentation was on the basis of what everyone is selected. So, from the first stage till the final stage until you reach the loader center, it is your presentation which presents what you are going to implement in the hackathon. So, a good presentation is a plus one for getting selected and on moreover, you have to have a strong team of good domain experience or whatever your problem statement is. So, that's all I need to go ahead with. Great. So, participants, you just as you heard that you know, we have been constantly reiterating from all the winners of the past edition that the base thing is be clear about what exactly the problem statement is demanding from you and secondly, a strong team to back it up. So, it's basically a combination of both which leads you to the final round and leads you to become a winner. Okay, Sanika, coming back to your point, any mentor was there with you and how did they contribute and how important do you think a mentor should be for a team? According to me, mentors are pretty much important in the initial stages of your hackathon. If you are participating for the first time, definitely take help of your mentor. We chose a mentor from our college professors. He assisted us with like how you have to present, how to identify your users and he also helped us with meeting a past elimination of parasites. They also guided us in a way that how all process goes on. So, I guess, mentors are pretty much important when you are participating for the first time. Great. If I talk about on-ground during the grand finale that was happening at your noodle center, what was the experience and anything that you would like to share to the viewers on the interaction between the evaluators, the mentors that happens. I mean, there are three evaluation rounds that generally happens during the session. What are the things that has to be kept in mind while you are interacting on those evaluation sessions with the evaluators? Firstly, our noodle center was Chandigarh University. So, we were very fascinated by going there and the whole process, the 36 hours were broken down into three rounds and three mentoring sessions. Like first, the mentor used to come evaluate whatever we have done and based on that, he used to mentor us as in what all could be done, what all unique could be done or what all needs to be implemented in the problem statement so that it could be presented well. So, every mentoring round was carried upon by an evaluation round. In the evaluation round, they used to judge us on the basis of what we have implemented. So, in our case, it was like first, the mentors used to come and they used to evaluate the more well we presented, our points used to go up. And that way, we carried upon with three rounds and we had very good competitors, but still we managed to get the position. That's great. So, here we want to highlight another important point for all the first-timers that it's not only about the ideation that you do. It's how much you can implement it on a real time while you are at the hackathon menu. And also, is your prototype actually implementable in the real time? Is it scalable? So, these are points should be kept in mind while you present or develop your prototype during the 36 hours hackathon or in case 72 hours hackathon which happens for the hardware problem statements. So, Sanika, what exactly were evaluators, were there any suggestions that were given to you and how do you think the mentoring round during those 36 hours helped you out? The mentoring rounds were pretty much important. Like it was the clue which you have to implement. Like the mentor used to come and he used to give us a clue that this problem is very much important right now and like how it could be implemented and what could be the use case. Like what is the main problem? So based upon the problem we used to think like what more could be implemented so that that problem could be solved. So, that is what they expected in an evaluation round. And on the basis of those mentoring rounds only we got points. So, like in our case it was like first mentoring round we was pretty much excited about like we did very well but in that excitement we like we did not do the second round very good. So, you have to maintain the consistency to that also plays a very important role ahead. Exactly. So, you know as you heard from directly from the winners it's consistency. So, you know sometimes it ought to happen that you are so excited that you forget where you are actually heading towards. So, do not do that mistake. So, yes Anika I think it was pretty much insightful to conclude it. If you can just give couple of tips and hacks that would help these first timers to you know sail through this entire process what would it be? A couple of pointers. A couple of pointers to get selected is a good presentation understanding of your problem statement and knowing the implementation value is all I could say. Be confident if like there are enough sources on the internet you would study and solve the problem. So, you have to be confident is what could take you forward. Perfect. Thank you so much Anika. Thank you for taking out this time and all the very best for your all future endeavours hope to see you soon. Thank you. Thank you so much. So, viewers wasn't that interesting? I am sure you could relate to Sanika at some point of time. If not in the coming hackathon you will definitely do. With this I think you got a great set of ideas and tricks that will definitely help you during all these rounds of smart India hackathon. And finally who knows you might be the next winner of smart India hackathon. Till then have a great time and stay tuned for more information and interesting videos like this. See you take care.