Hack-a-thon@localhostUrban Company: Engineering tech solution for real problems

What happens when you bring developers and engineers under one roof in a 30-hour event? Lively discussions on trending technologies, tech-enabled problem solving, table tennis and some awesome apps. Well, this what we did (and more) in our annual hackathon event at Urban Company. The goal was simple – collaborate and excel. Here’s what happened.

Urban Company hosted a hackathon event over 2 days: 10^th February to 11^th February. The companies participating in the event included:

1. LimeTray
2. SquadRun
3. Urban Company (of course!) – 3 teams
4. LiveLikeVR – 2 teams
5. Careers360

The Hackathon was kicked off by Raghav Chandra (Co-Founder) and Kanav Arora (VP-Engineering) followed by an ice-breaker round of table tennis. Once everyone settled in, the teams started working on their mini projects.

Teams and their Hackathon Projects

1.Nudge It (AR) @localhostSquadrun

This was an interactive 3-D Model. The team enhanced and supplemented the traditional print medium with technology and AR. The team showed a demo of augmenting ads in newspaper. The overarching goal was to conceptualize the use of 3-D images to assist in medical surgeries and education.

2.Smart Gym (IoT, VR) @localhostUrban Company

Team SmartGym from Urban Company worked on solving the problem of carrying paper to gym by assigning control of gym equipment via a mobile app. They used an NXP iOT chip with android to connect to the equipment making it easy to install. They also paired it with a VR device which can give you instructions on what speed is coming up and overall guide you through the workout. Pretty cool, right?

3. P2P Travel Insurance (Block Chain) @localhostLimetray

Limestray’s team developed a travel insurance model using Ethereum blockchain. It demonstrated how this concept can be used to build social security. It revolved around 3 main use cases: user missing the flight, flight accident and flight cancellation. With this, the user could insure his/her flight on the app and pay a premium, for which his claim would be given, based on the investors available in the pool. And on the investor side, he/she can have a pool where one can invest based on the risk in the pool.

4. Decentralized Voting @localhostlivelikeVR

The cost of previous Lok Sabha Election was about Rs 3,000 crores. LivelikeVR’s team ‘Need More Time’ focused on reducing this cost and building secure voting using block chain. Here you could find out the number of votes being cast without any identity proof.

5.Home appliances as a service @localhostUrban Company

Team SixthFloor from Urban Company assembled a low-power, easy setup IoT Chip with its end to end IoT platform. Here, hardware manufacturers can register their device signature and schema. A normal user can buy this hardware and install it in their homes.

6.Super Smart Bots @localhostUrban Company

Urban Company’s team Super Smart Bots focused on reducing manpower effort on social media customer service. The model was trained to understand the sentiment of social posts and pick up keywords to figure out the most probable question. It then searches it database for possible answers and replies to social media posts within seconds.

7.Napkin (AR, Geo Location) @localhostlivelikeVR

LivelikeVR‘s team Burning Vector took up the “Swacha Bharat Abhiyaan” as a challenge to be solved and gamified it. Napkin is a location and augmented reality-based game. The idea was to make the users join clans of friends and further spread the influence of their clan using technology.

8. Unifying Support Channels (Django) @localhostCareers360

The team at @localhostCareers360 took a stab at solving the problem of handling multiple channels of customer experience. The model showcased a centralized platform that could aggregate queries from different platforms (like twitter, Facebook, etc.). Here, they developed the ability to reply as well as tag questions to build a knowledge repository.

Amid all this talk of serious tech stuff, was also a jam session wherein the techies got to show off their musical side. From playing the G chords on their guitars to singing songs, they kept the mood lively and the momentum strong.

After a long night in, the teams were got to experience Urban Company’s spa at desk service. Our trained and experienced masseuses gave our techies the much-needed and rejuvenating massages!

Hackathon Winners

Once all the teams were done with their projects, it was time to announce the winners, and here they are:

1st — Nudge It (Squad)

2nd — iOT Controller (Urban Company)

3rd — Blockchain Voting (livelikeVR)