 Thank you so much sir for such warmth shown to our people now may I call upon as a tradition what we welcome our guests over here Dr. Abhay J. Ray chief innovation officer to please come Dr. Abhay J. Ray please come and welcome the chief guest of today myself will honor mr. Aung, minister of education Singapore Dr. B. V. R. Chaudhary he's going to honor our HRD minister mr. Ramesh Nishant then Dr. Papri Banerjee going to honor mr. Subra Suresh. Thank you so much everyone I would now like to invite Professor Anil Sahesbudde chairman all India council for technical education to present his welcome address so a very good morning to you all the distinguished honorable Prime Minister of India Sri Narendra Modi ji minister of education Singapore mr. Aung Yeh Kunn minister of HRD Sri Ramesh Pokharyal Nishank Dr. Subra Suresh president Nanyang technological University Dr. Bhaskar Ramurthy director of IIT Madras organizing team members from Singapore NTU, NTUITE, MIC that is the MHRD's Innovation Council IIT Madras students and mentors from Singapore and India students from schools, persons from media, brothers and sisters it's a great privilege for me to welcome you all for this price distribution function of Singapore India hackathon particularly the Prime Minister of India for three reasons number one it was his idea to start such a joint hackathon in June 2018 he broached this idea while visiting NTU Singapore and the Prime Minister of Singapore immediately accepted the same and NTU Singapore and NTUTIU organized the same on November the 12th and 13th and Prime Minister Modi was present for the award function held on immediate next day on November 14 and on the same day it was decided to complement it by holding the next event in India and in Chennai in IIT Madras Prime Minister Modi is an inspiration for this hackathon secondly he has just returned after a successful and highly-growing visit of US for a week and barely within 36 hours he's here to encourage young students who have toiled hard for 36 hours third when most important he's a man of innovation and great vision beat in governance beat various missions like Swachh Bharat Abhyan, Unad Bharat Abhyan, Digital India, Making India, Startup India, Gas Subsidy through DBT, Electricity to all villages, Zero Balance Bank accounts for all and Jandhan Yojana and the list goes on so hence all the participants and organizers thank the honorable Prime Minister for being with us today on this occasion. Now let me brief you about this hackathon. This hackathon has few differentiators compared to the previous one. The previous version certainly had same number of teams that is 20 teams but the 20 teams from India and 20 teams from Singapore had three members each and one mentor for each of those teams and the number was same 60 plus 61 20 but this time we have decided to have a team of six members and 20 teams three members belonging to Singapore and three members belonging to India that means this is certainly still a competition but it's a competition with collaboration. I think today world talks about collaboration and we are making a movement towards collaborating collaboration between two nations actually this is very important. As far as the selection process is concerned in India we had three smart India hackathons already held and last hackathon had more than 200,000 students who participated and the prize winners who were about 1200 in number they were given a test on the problem statements given for this hackathon and we shortlisted about 600 then down to 200 then down to finally 60. I think therefore the cream de cream are here in this particular hackathon. The problem statements are also very interesting we have chosen this time three areas unlike in the last time when we had problems on the smart campus this time we have first problem statement on good health and well-being again subdivided into two problems one of them is epidemiology and hospital waste management both are critical for health care because the first one takes care of early detection based on the epidemics which is likely to occur and therefore take precautionary measures the second one is about tracking of hospital hospital waste material such as syringes, gloves and avoid the misuse and therefore both are using ICT, IT and IOT in order to do that. The second one is for quality education there are again two problems in this one of them is to recognize the sentiment and psychology of the students by creating IA device where you will take the photograph of the entire class and find out which of the students are having some kind of possible problems well in advance and take precautionary measures thereby. The next one is about attentiveness in a class so by taking a picture in the classroom and by using the image processing as well as artificial intelligence how do we know which of the students are not interested in the class and how do you make them motivated and make the teachers also aware of where they have to concentrate. The third problem is about affordable and clean energy which is very important from the sustainable development goals perspective and the environmental indoor air quality monitoring is what is being done in this honorable prime minister sir students have attempted solving such intricate problems using image processing artificial intelligence data analytics and IOT which are the you know the areas of the future and the current very very interesting areas these are not only useful for Singapore and India but the entire globe. The jury involved were also technology practitioners of high repute they had tough time in identifying the best teams finally there are three teams who are going to be awarded today with the prizes of dollar ten thousand eight thousand and six thousand respectively the other prize winners were of four thousand and two thousand dollars each my congratulations to all the winning teams and all those who participated in this grand hackathon many of this can be converted into startups all the students who had great learning experience in this hackathon we will continue to have such kind of arrangements in the future as well thank you very much Jai Hind. Thank you so much Professor Anil Sastrabudde I would like to request Minister of Education Singapore Mr. Ong to share his thoughts with us sir please. His Excellency Prime Minister Narendra Amuni his Excellency Dr. Ramesh Pokharyar Minister for Human Resource Development Professor Bhaskar Ramamuti Director of IIT Madras colleagues friends ladies and gentlemen it's a real honor to be here it's my second trip to India this year I was here in June and back here again today but I must admit it's been quite a few years since I came to Tamil Nadu so it's wonderful to be back here again the the ministers coming to and fro from Singapore from India is numerous numerous and our relationship is so multifaceted if I talk about it it will be a very long speech but let me just highlight a few things that meant so much to us number one our economic linkages we make a living together in this world economically 8,000 Indian companies is in Singapore 8,000 hundreds of thousands of Indian professionals workers are in Singapore building system running systems building literally building Singapore for us and we really value that and Singapore somehow we are so small but we remain India's top foreign investors Tamil Nadu where we are some of our biggest companies are here for many years PSA, Ascender Singh Bridge, they ran an industry park, Escort many other small companies many Singaporeans all working here so the exchanges are very tight we have a seeker a free trade agreement comprehensive economic cooperation agreement that we signed some years ago and then we have reviewed and we are completed upgraded it since June last year and I think this is a signal for both our people both our governments to say that to progress together we must be open to the world open to the world work together that is the key to progress prosperity and bring up hopes for our young in FinTech is another very exciting area it started we have started a joint working group since Prime Minister Modi visited Singapore last year we started this working group they have met a few times and they are working on very exciting projects we're trying to link our startups our FinTech startups SMEs together and work together we are working on the internationalization of Indian stack which is essentially the technology behind the Atheha program most exciting to me is to link up our payment systems in Singapore the electronic payment system we have is nets in your case is the MPCI the National Payment Corporation of India so with that and I'm very thankful the Prime Minister mentioned this in his independent speech earlier this year and with that we hope sometime next year rupee card holders from India you go to Singapore you can use all the nets terminals to make payment similarly similarly reciprocate arrangement nets cards holders coming to India there should be many terminals they can also use to make payment with that we are linking our payment system in such a seamless way it will be tremendous change in experience and draw our two countries much closer together one more area that I think is a very significant part of our cooperation and which I'm personally very involved in is skills training Prime Minister last year also visited our Institute of technology a technical education in Singapore and this is part of his effort to push for skills in there and Singapore we will do our best to work with India to develop skills training we have worked with various Indian authorities and bodies to set up training institutes one is in New Delhi is already upside the team from India to run the Institute and another one that's coming up is Bhopal Madhya Pradesh that one also special because it is supported also by the Asian Development Bank who decided to bring both parties together to work on this in education is another exciting area I I seized the chance to come to Tamil Nadu because this the language spoken here is one of our mother tongues and so many of our specialists teaching mother tongue demo mother tongue in Singapore they graduated from Tamil Nadu they got a PhD from them and I do and since I'm here I'm gonna make a trip later in this afternoon to Mama Ola Puram and I think it's such a wonderful opportunity to visit the place it's a it's a very old port but it's not just the place alone but what it means because this was 7th century port and that was the time when China was Tang dynasty and Tang dynasty is a outwardly open very open minded dynasty in China coincided with the Palawai dynasty in India in Tamil Nadu and then that trade between India and China at that time including through the port of Mama Ola Puram and goes through Southeast Asia goes through Sumatra where the Srivajaya Empire was reigning then goes through Java where Mataram Kingdom was there so Palembang Jogja these were also port cities and that whole trade India China through Southeast Asia brought prosperity to all of us for hundreds of years and I'm really excited now that I read Prime Minister Modi will be meeting presidency Jinping in that port city and I think it is such a wise choice and such a far-sighted endeavor to maybe revive this and I think in Southeast Asia in Singapore's definitely we are all quietly rooting for very positive India-China relationship now after all this let me talk about the hackathon thank you to the Prime Minister for raising this is a wonderful idea my Prime Minister accepted it straight away and I'm tasked to get it going and of course I delegate to Professor Subra Suraj who ran with it and this year is our second installment I'm very glad that we had this change of format where now our two teams are working together because the first format we've was in Singapore team competing against India team I think this it was a good good hackathon but I think we can do better so this year we did better for combining the team so they now work side-by-side and speaking to our Singaporean students just now I think they really relish that experience I think two big things that happen to them today at university is not just attending lectures and learning knowledge today through experiences such as this they first get to do something hands on so it wasn't just lectures they actually get to create something create the prototype create an idea secondly is an platform is an opportunity to do cross-cultural projects where they Singaporeans work with students from other countries other cultures because for our students today when they grow up they must know the world they must know that there are different cultures in the world and we must appreciate them this project gave them the opportunity and I think we can do better even better next year I have two small ideas that maybe our organizers can consider number one if we have stabilized if we run this program well maybe we can consider inviting other universities from Southeast Asia make that cooperation make that understanding even richer second small idea maybe we should include students also who are trained vocationally and trained in skills for us will be polytechnic for you maybe your technical colleges because I think we need to demonstrate to young people knowledge coding IT plus skills hands-on skills have to work together but whatever ideas we make sure we do it well most important what this hackathon I feel to represent and really inspire many people is that we all know young people idealistic which is a good thing and I young people are full of energy also a good thing the idealism that energy will go somewhere will go somewhere if you don't harness it it will go somewhere that maybe not so useful but it is the job of governments it's the job of our global community our regional community to make sure we have a system we have a government we have society and economy that can channel the idealism and energy of our young people to good users and through hackathon like that I think our young people are feeling a strong sense of fulfillment they're putting their knowledge their ideas into improving healthcare improving clean energy improving education and let's continue to work together to fulfill their hopes to channel their idealism and their energy thank you very much thank you so much mr. Wang for sharing your thoughts views with us friends the long-awaited movement has arrived and may now call upon the winning teams in reverse order to collect their chicks and also request dignitaries on the dice please provide your wishes to the students third prize goes to team name team a is the $6,000 worth Singaporean price these students are getting me now call upon the second prize winner team name air hero and the prize money is worth 8,000 Singaporean dollars and friends now the first prize winner team name that sec the prize money but 10,000 Singaporean dollars thank you so much everyone for motivating the students I would now like to request the Prime Minister Srinagar in a movie to please address this August scouting thank you so much sir dr. Nishank minister on professor Sahasrabuddha director I had Timur Josh professor Amurthy see Subra Shureshi guests friends friends you have been working nonstop for the last 36 hours to solve challenging problems heads up to you and your energy and I don't see fatigue only and only freshness I see satisfaction of a toss well accomplished I think this sense of satisfaction comes also from Chennai's special breakfast idli dosa vada sambar the hospitality offered by the city of Chennai is extraordinary in its warmth I am confident that everybody here particularly our visitors from Singapore must have enjoyed Chennai friends I congratulate the winners of the hackathon and I congratulate each and every young friend assembled here particularly my student friends your willingness to confront challenges and find workable solutions your energy your enthusiasm is of much greater value than just winning a competition my young friends here has solved many problems today I especially like the solution about cameras to detect who is paying attention and now what will happen you know I will talk to my speaker in the parliament and I'm sure it will be very useful to the for me each of you is a winner you are winners because you are not afraid of taking risks you are committed to your efforts without worrying about the results I will also take this opportunity to specially thank mr. Angekong education minister of Singapore Nyananda technical University for extending help and support to make the India Singapore hackathon a ground success friends there are few things it's satisfying as seeing an effort one is associated from the very beginning become vibrant and successful I had suggested this idea of a joint hackathon during a previous visit to Singapore last year this was organized in Nanyang technical University in Singapore this year it is being organized in the historic eight modern campus of IIT Madras friends I have also been told that last year the focus of the hackathon watch competition this time each team consists of students of both countries who have worked together to solve problems so it can be safely said we have moved from competition to collaboration this is the strength that we need to bear jointly on the challenges that both our country face friends hackathons like these are great for youngsters participants great access to state of the art technology for the solution of global problems and they have to do it in a time frame participants can test their ideas their innovative skills and I firmly believe that the solutions found in today's hackathons are the start-up ideas for tomorrow be in India have been doing the smart India hackathon for the last few years this initiative brings together government departments people a process associated with industry and all premier industries we incubate fun and hand-hold solutions from the smart India hackathon and try converting them into startups on similar lines I hope that NTU MHRD and AICT will jointly explore the possibility of creating ventures on ideas from this joint hackathon friends today India is poised to grow into a five trillion dollar economy for that innovation and startups will play a crucial role already India is among the top three startup friendly economies ecosystems during the last five years we have given great emphasis to encourage innovation and incubation programs like utterly innovation mission PM research fellowship start of India Abhyan are the foundation of 21st century India and India that promotes culture of innovation we are now trying to give exposure to modern technology like machine learning artificial intelligence blockchain to our students as early as in sixth grade from school to research in a higher education an ecosystem is being created that becomes a medium for innovation friends we are encouraging innovation and incubation for two big reasons one each we want easy solution to solve India's problems to make life easier and another be in India want to find solutions for the whole of the world Indian solutions for global application this is our goal and our commitment we would also like our cost effective solutions to be available to serve the needs of the poorest countries India innovation in support of the poorest and the most deprived no matter where they live friends I genuinely believe that technology unites people even across countries across continents I welcome the suggestions of minister on let me take this opportunity to propose a similar hackathon involving those ASEAN countries that may be interested in participating with support from NTU government of Singapore and government of India let base brain in ASEAN countries compete to offer innovative solution for reducing global warming and climate change to conclude I once again congratulate all the participants and organizers for making this initiative a grand success you are in Chennai which offers rich culture great heritage and food I request all participants especially our friends from Singapore to enjoy their stay in Chennai take this opportunity to visit place like Mahabalipuram which is home famous for a stone carvings and stone temples they are classified as Unesco World Heritage Site thank you thank you very much I request dignitaries on the dais to please move down for a group photograph very quick we are going to have on the front seats