 Hello and welcome. We are back to give you the insights into the minds of Smart India Hackathon winners. The one-of-a-kind Smart India Hackathon harnesses the creative and technical skills of students and uses them to solve real-world problems faced by society or the industry. But the question, how are the past winners able to ace it? Let's go across and talk to one of the winners, Sasi Karan. Hello Sasi, welcome to the program. Okay Sasi, as a part of this series, what we are aiming at is to let our viewers know how to deal with Smart India Hackathon and what can be the right ways to, you know, pursue this. So as a past winner, I mean, let's begin by understanding first of all what the problem was that you are working on. First of all, good afternoon everyone. I am Sasi Karan from RMD College CSC department and we are SIS 2022 winners and we took a problem statement given by DRDO. Our problem statement was to monitor human health due to the increasing level of pesticides used in food. Like this was the actual basic problem statement and to solve this, the approach we used was like the energy is given from food, like everything comes from food, health or disease. So we plan to monitor the food we eat and then we have gone through everything from the food. Okay, so coming to your first step, the team. I mean, how did this team come about and how did you manage the team? I mean, how did you guys, you know, work with each other and, you know, make this happen? Tell us about the team preparation first. Actually, all the team members are my classmates, so it was a little easy to start up with them. And then once I became the team leader, like I have to think who is expert in this thing so that we will get more clarity about on where, who has to work and then where we will get more productive outcome. We don't know each other means it will become a disaster at last. So we have came to know about each other and then we have segregated our work equally. And the 36 hours of hard work was not just easy. Like we all came to know about how the team work improves our team mentality actually. Like on the 36 hours, we all become the same simply. What we have to do on, we have coordinated without any help of any external force. Like that was the things on team work. Like it was actually like miracle. Like how we become like siblings at the end of the 36 hours. So how did you divide the work or responsibilities within these team members? What was the thought behind that? Was there any criteria? Okay, this guy is good at this particular thing. Or strategically speaking, this thing will be better. How did you divide the work amongst yourself? Actually, as I told, I know who is expert in what things. So like, I know one person who is really good at like searching things on research things. Like we have given the research thing a crisis thing to him and we asked him for any artist you want. When he asked, I need extra one person, we gave him. And then when it comes to development side, I was good at development and I was developing the automation things and then I need another person and I have picked one person. Like those for PPT presentation and those design works and for them we had a team. Like we know who is specialist and so we gave them as each category. And to support them, we gave an assistant person also. So like this, we have divided our responsibility. So before you actually went on with the event, you know, joined the event, what was your preparation before coming to the event? Actually, like last thing is the first year we entered to SIF. So we had no idea like actually to be frank what our college staff told us. And first year and all no one can win. Like it has to be like consecutively two to three years you have to compete and then only you can win. Like those talks only came to us and we came with the mindset like we have to give our best only. Like no, no, no thing about the results only we came to give our best. No, like further we came but as we got this and our hard work helped us. So we got the... Yes, of course, unless you work hard, there's no grand prize waiting for you at the end of it. But still we would like to understand in terms of preparation like what went on like your research part, your understanding of the subject part and you know, how do you wish to deal with all this? So what all happened before you came to the event? Yeah, the basic prerequisites we had was like the basic coding skills like all six of them we had. And then like on it we added like little designing parts and such things. And then a special thing we had was like as good at automation. Like automation, the things like we created a full chat board through automation. This was our prerequisite and we were all good at making websites like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, these basic things and all we had good knowledge. So we can make any website and even like our team had like app developments and these things also. Like so that on a problem statement, we can do whatever is possible. Like we are ready to make any website, app, API service, everything they were ready to do. So it was the prerequisites we had before starting. Okay, so now let's come to the main event part. You know when you came down to the place where hackathon was held. So you had to spend 36 hours nonstop to crack your problem area. So how did you manage those 36 hours? Was there a strategy behind you know timing out or what were the phases or how did you handle those 36 hours? What was the plan? Actually, I told you for like this was the first hack the first international hackathon we had. Like we had no particular strategy. Like we thought like no one should work when the brain is not working. So we had a rule like if you are not able to concentrate or if you are not able to focus, don't do it. Go you they had a nice table to play. We had a table to support everything you had. So we had nicely like if when we are we can't handle it, we have to go and do something else. That's all. And then when we want to sleep, we slept in a small little cycle like half an hour or half an hour. We kept on going and those 36 hours was like little difficult when it comes to like one whole day and half an hour. Like so we had managed somehow. And the most important things are like there was some leisure time we can spend there. So it was not that much difficult or else we have to sit again in that for some other leisure things. So we had little facilities there. Okay, so that's very interesting. If your mind is not working, don't work. I mean, that's a very logical way to think about the entire thing. So what were your team members doing when their mind was not working on? They were subsequently not working. How did you make use of that time? So were you a part of all those recreational stuff available around you? How did you spend your time in those 36 hours in that portion where the mind was not working? At the first 12 hours, we were not that much sleepy. So that time we had to play like wherever we get sleep. That time we will feel more comfortable to come and work again. So those things like we had a little walk or else we played like table tennis. There was a nice court for table tennis and then chess board everything was there. Like my teammates were mostly playing table tennis like one was going and playing all along with the wall. After that, another person will go for rest. They both will play and then they both will come and start to work. Like this was the routine. This was fun like first 12 hours. After that, we all got a little more sleepy. So when our brain is not working, we go and sleep for half an hour or 15 to 20 minutes. Once we get up, we go wash our face and that's how we get our equipment. And that's why they were providing all sort of snacks and everything so we had not hungry. Like we are keep on working. So it somehow we managed. Okay, so that was a nice way to spend those hours where things were little difficult in terms of concentration or otherwise. So now let us know more about how did you handle those portions where you had to interact with the mentors as well as the expert panel when they had come to you know kind of evaluate your project and what you're working on. Yeah, actually what we thought was like not to hide whatever we thinking to them. Like if we say whatever else thought we have, they can they are good at making a visit of this program. They are good at making it as is done. So we don't know how to do it. Our thoughts like if we give all the thoughts to them, they are good at making it as a working model or prototype or anything. So like I told to my friends, like whatever thoughts we have, say it one by one. If we say it as a fact, they can build a tower. So that was the basic idea we had. We told whatever thoughts we come like whether it can be a normal or a good idea or it would be a silly idea still we told it. So it can make some little difference in them. So we add everything to our mentors and we'll come to expertise and expertise panels like we had to get more convenient. So we search for those technical terms like how to make our conversation more little bit to their standard. And then we had just a normal conversation. So they understood whatever we tried to do. So evaluators usually they kind of change the course of your project sometimes. So did that happen in your case? Maybe they didn't like something or they thought something is not really workable and they made you work on it again. Did that happen in your case? Yes sir, yes sir. Like the first thing we did was like a normal only a watchful company involved. And then we had a payment system. The payment system was like we just had it here. But they asked to make an entire payment system from the scraps like to put everything on our own payment system. Not like from Google services or not like other services. They told to do it. And then we did a little prototype and then we showed them they got satisfied with it. Okay, so what about the presentation part? The entire process culminates into you know that one final thing which makes all the difference. So how did you prepare for the presentation, the final presentation? Actually the presentation before the presentation we thought that the TPP like whatever we are showing to them must convey things which I want to say in the visual field. So it will be more easy and I can add more points to them when I speak out. So we had more time for designing those presentation slideshows and everything. We had more images than text. I want them to understand on one look like showing like this. And then my communication part was like so nice like I made the point clear to them. And then when it comes for question and answer sections that time our entire time like when those things like they asked about research things. The person who did the actual research came forward and he gave down this. So those type of things was like very new to me and then those like these are the inspiring things in that entire system. So I mean coming from your experience what do you think are the expectations of the people who are taking your presentation, the experts who are eventually going to decide the quality or the you know if your project is worth enough or not? Actually first of all we are not so aware of those people. But once they come and go like we came to know these people are like doing these. We have just gone through Google's and we Google their names and we got them. Like we came to know what they are expected and what they are expert us and then we came to know what they are expecting us. Like when we get these two like we can go for the next level of communications and we can go and ask them what these are the states like we have to work on what these things we have to do. Like and then they can train us more on what their expertise is. Okay Saseethu if I have to ask you a kind of a list for the people who wish to participate in hackathons. So what are your kind of recommendations or your suggestions of what all they should be doing or taking care of for the participation? Actually the 2022 hackathon was like when we participated there was no AIs at all no AI tools. But 23 is like full of AI era and it is like even if you don't know much about coding. When you know to use the AI tools properly, surely surely you can do this. Like not only AI tools like we have to know little basic things. And then when we can put together and we can convince the judge like we have did this. Like we have made this things work like that. Like when we give the satisfaction to them surely we can do it. And the AI tools like that itself will solve the entire problem station. But that is not enough for the judge. Like that will be the things at this year. And the short they will crack this. And the list of things they need is little for instance and lot of knowledge about the AI tools. And on it the communication skills really if your communication is good. The point which you have in your brain will go to the judge and they can really see the vision which you had in your mind. That is the real powerful part. So in your case, in the case of your team, what do you think worked? What made you successful? Actually I don't know how to say that what was a particular thing. But most importantly the team works. Like we all had the mind to work together. We all had the mind to help each other. We all had to like when there is some problem all went to solve it. When there is something like any other place where we struck all helped them. And then like when someone is tired we eventually try to encourage the person. Like we did this at team everything good or bad or development or research everything we did as a team. So that is the part where it drive us to next level. Okay that was nice hearing from you Sajikaran. I mean the way you guys prepared and the way you came across this hackathon and went on winning it. So I'm sure your inputs your suggestions and your sharing of your own experiences will help the people who wish to come here and participate in the coming editions. So thank you so much for joining us and sharing your thoughts. And I hope people will make good use of what all you had to say. Thank you so much. So this was Sajikaran with his tips and tricks and all his insights into how they went on to win Smart India Hackathon. We'll bring to you so many other Smart India Hackathon winners to make you understand better how to deal with this competition. Till then keep watching.