Addressing the growing problem of unorganised parking in major urban centres of the country in their prompt statement at the Grand Finale round of ‘Smart India Hackathon 2023’, a team of six exceptional students developed a working prototype of an innovative application called, ‘iPark’. The students behind the innovation received a cash prize of INR 1,00,000 as well as appreciation from the judges. The participants will use the cash prize to further improve and develop the mobile application. Moreover, in the next few months, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs will start testing ‘iPark’ across the country.
The application leverages technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Computer Vision (CV), and is designed to help traffic regulators live-track and detect unorganised and illegal parking. The team presented a fully functional working prototype of their product in front of the judges at the finale.
Sam Varghese, Nishtha Pandya, Suhani Khandelwal, Priyansh Chhablani, Arohi Jain and Shalom Ram were part of the team from SVKM’s NMIMS School of Technology, Management and Engineering (STME) Indore that participated in the All-India Council for Technical Education’s (AICTE) ‘Smart India Hackathon 2023’, a national-level competition for young innovators. The team was selected among the top 5 teams for the ‘Grand Finale’ round of the competition. Participants included top teams from India. The team were adjudged the winner of the competition.
For the Grand Finale round, participating schools were required to organise internal hackathons at their respective campuses and select the top 30 teams. The AICTE then selected the top 5 teams from all the participating teams for the finale. This year, the esteemed judges included Product Managers from top companies such as Wipro as well as owners of US-based start-ups. Honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi attended the event virtually and interacted with the participants, encouraging them to think innovatively to usher in new chapters of ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’.
The winning team from STME selected the problem statement by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, which required them to solve the problem of parking spaces across cities in India. They were required to develop and present their innovation within 2-3 weeks. In the endeavour, they received help at every step of the way from the esteemed faculty at NMIMS Indore and were mentored by Prof. Abhay Deep Seth, STME, NMIMS, Indore.
Speaking about the learnings from the competition, Sam Varghese, a student from the winning team said, “Participating in events like the Smart India Hackathon 2023 provides you with global exposure. They provide you with a unique platform for knowledge exchange and interaction with students from top educational institutions such as IITs.”
Appreciating the achievement of the NMIMS Indore team, Dr. Anshuman Jaswal, Director, NMIMS Indore, said, “We welcome the victory of our students at the Smart India Hackathon 2023. iPark is a first-of-its-kind application that uses AI technology to manage parking and traffic adherence and can transform urban infrastructure by decongesting road traffic. We look forward to their collaboration with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.”
Expressing his thoughts on this student achievement, Dr. Vikas khare, Program Coordinator, STME, NMIMS Indore, said, “The success at the Smart India Hackathon 2023 is the result of the relentless efforts of the students and their fascination towards innovation and technology.”
