Smart India Hackathon 2023 Grand Finale Begins Today, PM Modi to Address Students

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all set to interact with the participants of the Smart India Hackathon 2023 today, December 19. The grand finale of the hackathon will be held tonight and PM Modi will be interacting with the participants at 9:30 pm through video conferencing. Over 50,000 ideas have been received from 44,000 teams this year.

Smart India Hackathon is held every year to inculcate the culture of startup and innovation ecosystem across different age groups. There are two groups — junior and senior. The Junior (Jr) group includes school students from 6th to 12th class. The Senior (Sr) group includes regular students of higher educational institutions who are pursuing graduate/post-graduate, and PhD. The students can showcase their talent and generate out-of-the-box open innovation ideas through the hackathon. SIH was launched in 2017.

The grand finale of the SIH Senior will continue till December 23. The grand finale of the SIH Junior will be held on the first week of February. This year, the grand finale will be conducted at 48 nodal centres across the country. Over 12,000 participants and 2500 mentors will be taking part in the programme. A total of 1282 teams have been shortlisted who will be showcasing their talent and providing solutions across several themes such as Medtech, Biotech, Healthtech, Space Technology, Smart Vehicles, Robotics and Drones, Clean Technology, Heritage and Culture etc.

Participating teams are present with problem statements by Central and State Ministries, Departments, PSUs, Industries, and NGOs and it includes both Software and Hardware editions. This year, a total of 231 problem statements (176 software and 55 hardware) have been posed by 51 departments of 25 Union Ministers and state governments. Each winning team of the Smart Indian Hackathon will receive a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh per problem statement.