After running for straight 36 hours, the country’s first Smart City Hackathon wrapped up at GP House with innovations reaching a new height. The hackathon, jointly initiated by Preneur Lab and Grameenphone’s innovation center White Board, hosted 30 teams of young innovators who coded at the competition to bring solutions to turn Dhaka into a smart city.

After 36 hours of rigorous brain-storming and coding, three teams were announced as Champions, 1^st Runners Up and 2^nd Runners Up. Team App Flakes was declared as 2^nd Runners Up, Team Spark was declared as 1^st Runner Up and Durbin as Champion.

John Taylor, Director, UNDP, was present at the closing ceremony as chief guest. Grameenphone’s CTO Medhat ELHusseiny and CCAO Mahmud Hossain were also present on the occasion.

The participants of the hackathon came up with ideas to solve the existing problems of Dhaka City. Each team presented their innovative thinking through software or hardware, and there was a mentor for each team who assisted the participants in realizing their concepts. The objective of this hackathon was to identify talents and provide them proper guidance and resources so that they could turn their ideas into reality and use those projects in the development of the country.

About this initiative, Arif Nezami, CEO of Preneur Lab said, “We are overwhelmed with passion and thinking capacity of the participants. Preneur Lab will keep the cycle going and take those innovations to market with the support of the Government and VCs."

The ICT Division, Dhaka North City Corporation, Avira, Bikroy.com, The Daily Ittefaq, Radio Foorti, IEEE BDS, Google Developer Group Dhaka, Userhub, Junction (Dnet), Mozilla Bangladesh, Bangladesh Local Guides and Women Techmakers Bangladesh were partners of the Smart City Hackathon.

Thirty teams participated in the hackathon with each team comprising of maximum four participants and minimum two participants. The idea behind the initiative was to bring solutions that can efficiently manage the resources of a city and improve the quality of life for its residents through utilizing information technology. This Smart City Hackathon was a platform for the youths to transform their innovative ideas into reality.