 Swayam Prabhakar, Digital India, Educated India. Smart India Hackathon is a platform that encourages students to solve real world problems through innovative technological solutions. Handling problem statements in the Smart India Hackathon involves a structured approach to understand, analyze and propose viable solutions. Today we are going to meet a past winner of SIH who will advise us on one of the problem statements of SIH-2023. The problem statement that we have chosen today to discuss is SIH-1392 which is E-Waste Facility Locator and we have with us Rudrakshi Soni to discuss it. Welcome to the show Rudrakshi. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. Right, Rudrakshi, so please let us know something about you, introduce yourself and let our viewers know who exactly you are, what do you do and what are you doing right now. So, I was the VTEC student and passed out from the Jesus Academy of Technical Education. I was also the past Smart India Hackathon 2022 winner and also the winner of NISCO India Africa Hackathon. So, I am currently working as a software developer at Morgan Stanley. Okay, to discuss this problem statement you have chosen 1392, so any particular reason for you to choose this particular PS to discuss with us today? Yeah, so this problem statement basically deals with the E-Waste or the electronic waste. So basically, if we are going to thrown out our gadgets like mobile or laptops anywhere, so it causes a big issue for the environment. So proper disposal of these type of gadgets needs to be done just to basically keep our environment safe from different types of consequences. Right, that's a pretty valid thought and I think everybody should think in those terms that you just said. So now coming to the problem statement itself, so the question here is, if you were to handle this PS this time around, how will you go ahead and do it? So let's begin with the team and how do you form a team? What kind of people do you think are best suited to team up for this particular thing? So basically, forming a team requires the different skill sets to build a project. So first analyze that what project or whatever the problem statement that you have chosen is asking or dividing the technologies. So based upon that, make sure your team should have the variety of skill sets. So like you should have a backend, frontend and ML engineer based upon the need of the problem statement and also the bonding of all the members is also required, which basically at present age over the other teams. So as an example, who all will be your team members if you were to make a team in terms of their proficiency? So basically like most of the members from my team are from my college and they are from the same year, except one of the guys who is my junior, but I basically chosen him over the other because he is basically like most the best frontend developer of that year. So like in my team, we have the variety of skill sets like we were working on the project which needs the like Android application something. So basically I took the frontend developers who are proficient in react native and for the backend, I choose one and two backend developers. And I also like include one person who is best in the UI UX design. So like it basically conclude all the members from different diverse skill sets. Okay, so what kind of research do you think this particular PS requires? What all avenues can you approach to get information or anything which is suitable to help you solve this? So basically like this problem statement is more dedicated to the environmental issues. So first you need to research about what are the types of devices that we can dispose of and what are the elements that that devices contains and what are the harmful things it causes to the environment. So you can like go through various different sites which are basically giving the information regarding that or you can also visit to the Ministry of Environmental Site which consists of these type of issues. So gathering all this information helps us to frame the solution. And as a part of your plan, what is the next step after gathering information, doing a bit of a research? Jump into the solution directly. Like first understand the problem and break down it into the key components. That what are the main feature, what are the main thing it is demanding? Like here in this problem statement, it basically asking to build a website. So that website is divided into the three major key components. The first one is the recycling of these type of waste and locating all the waste center nearby to the particular user or a particular person. So the first thing is we need to like make sure that you have all the details of all the locations. Then apart from that, it demands the educational pop-ups to just make the awareness among the people. So make sure your website consistent of these type of information, these type of newsletter or kind of things or something notification should be sent to particular user, which basically educate them how to proper dispose all these type of devices. The third one that I find out, it requires a business model to basically provide the credit points to encourage the users to dispose these type of devices particularly and how to handle these kinds of ways. So these credit models or the credit points can be used by the user to redeem various kind of offers and something. So these are the main key core concepts of the problem segment that you need to first understand. So Rudraksha, according to you, what could be the challenges in creating this kind of an application? What all do you think can be tough points to deal with? One of the tough points that I am thinking is related to the data set because from where we need to gather all these type of data because it consists of huge data about the devices, about the location and all. So you need to basically research about these kind of things very much that from where you are going to gathering these all data. Also, maybe you can able to face some issues while redeeming the credit points. So it can be in the form of manual, it can be in the form of offers where you can be able to encourage other various startups and various companies to invest and basically give the promotional offer. So there can be a bridge that you need to fulfill between those. Okay, so this is about the difficult part. What do you think is the easiest part of this? Which we should be not afraid of and we should be happy. Okay, this is to be done and we can do it like this. So like for the locations, like to pointing out the nearby location, like there are lots of APIs like Google map API, it is like very much used for the like locating everything to a particular area. So that can be done easily. The educational pop-up thing is also a very easy thing because once you gather the information, it's just easy to just send the notification to that particular person. So the notification part can be done easily. There are various kinds of notifications you can send. You can send device notification, you can send normal SMS, you can send the WhatsApp SMS messages or something like that. Great, so now we have kind of a good breakdown of, you know, easy part and not so easy part with us. Now please share with us the breakdown in terms of planning. Like obviously, I mean, when you reach the hackathon, when you are already done with a certain amount of work. So what is the kind of work and the quantum of work that will already be done before you reach the venue and what all would you be doing there at the venue while the hackathon is on? Yeah, so basically like before reaching to the finals, you should be done with your main core features because these are the things that on which you are basically going to judge on that. Make sure you have your strong MVP. It's the minimum viable product that you need to make rather than just adding different additional features into it. Yeah, adding additional features will give you an edge but first make sure you are done with your MVP. So once you are done with your MVP, just try to enhance those features, make it properly so that it will reflect that what you have done according to the problem statement that it demands and just try to think upon what additional thing you can add over that or make sure you have your if you can't even if you can't be able to add those features, make sure you have the future plan that how to incorporate those features to enhance your product. Good, those are some very fair points. So tell me one more thing. When you are in the finale, I mean going over those 36 hours, then mentors chip in, evaluators chip in, then there is a certain demand of either to alter something or add something or something which is not liked by them or processed by them in a very positive manner. So how do you adapt to that while the hackathon is on? Yeah, so we also got some good comments or some negative comments regarding our project to make our future more executable. So we worked on the team, we think about, we researched more about that particular thing that what the person is going to be demand. Don't think just that you are building just a solution to win a hackathon. Think about you are building a product that is going to be used by thousands of people and you are helping those people to make a difference in the nation. So if you are going to think your problem statement in that way, you can able to gather and think in more particular way rather than just building a thing just to win a hackathon. So we got some comments like regarding our product that it contains more or less all the features that is already present in the existing products. So we need to do something more about it like thinking out of the box so that it will look differently with that already existing products. So like we researched more about it like how we can add that thing. One of the biggest problem that we are going to face with the data side because if you are going to add that features we are not getting the data but you can use some dummy data as well in that part. Once you get the data or the support from the ministry for that data you can able to incorporate that particular feature but still just try to add that feature just to show them that this can happen if you're going to get the data. So just try to mock your database or use the dummy data at that point. Those are some very valid and very fair points. Now to wrap it up please give one single piece of advice to the people participating this time around and even in the future on how to go about solving such type of problem statements single piece of advice or any tips or tricks that come to your mind which you would want to share. Yeah, so the first thing that I always wants to say to everyone that make sure you plan and prioritize your work don't just want to basically build everything whatever comes to your mind make sure you divide your features into the main features that must be incorporated in your product and some other set of features that can be or may not be like basically incorporated in your product but they can be an additional edge over it. So first make sure you will plan and distribute all the work accordingly the skill set of the team members and work upon that and just try to build a product not just a solution for an hackathon. That's very well summed up Dr. Archie and very well put up. So I'm sure people will benefit out of your thoughts and you've presented a very holistic picture of this problem statement not only the problem statement but the competition as a whole. So hats off to you and thank you so much for joining us to share your thoughts and views and I hope people will benefit and they will make the most of it. Thank you so much for joining us today Dr. Archie. Thank you so much. Thank you, thanks everyone. Effective communication and a well thought out solution are key elements in successfully addressing problem statements in smart India hackathon. Hope you will all deal with the problem statements thoughtfully. Good luck.