Code for India is a not-for-profit organisation that employs professionally certified engineers and partners with other non-profits and Non-Governmental Organisations to provide engineering solutions for the betterment of the economically marginalised population of India. After a successful Hackathon in October last year, The Akshaya Patra Foundation once again partnered with Code for India this year to find solutions for some of the challenges faced by the mid-day meal provider.

Last week saw an exciting Hackathon when more than 224 engineering students and enthusiasts from different professional and academic backgrounds participated in the event, Code for India. Aimed at solving various challenges in India, the Hackathon went on for 24 hours on Google campuses both in India and the USA. Renowned industrial establishments like NASSCOM, Amnesty International, World Bank Group Finances and Action for India, apart from The Akshaya Patra Foundation tied up with Code for India for the Hackathon.

The Hackathon aimed at creating applications that are technology based solutions to leverage technology and empower Indian organisations to address social problems. "Design a solution that will help a large number of NGOs attack meta problems they need to solve with the power of your applications and make the life of millions of people better by using the algorithms effectively," Keynote Speaker, Narayan Murthy told the techies.

Of the set of challenges that we put forth at the Hackathon, the experts focussed on three which were shortlisted for presentations to be made towards the end of the Hackathon. A lot of engineers expressed their keen interest in Akshaya Patra’s challenges which indicated that these issues were some of the most intriguing ones.

Delivery and Route Optimisation challenge expected a solution in the form of an application or software to calculate the most optimised route from the kitchens to schools dodging issues like traffic congestion and lack of road connectivity. The latter issue looked for an application that could calculate the amount of meals required by each operational region going by its historical data so as to avoid both wastage and shortage. From 70 groups of participants working on different projects, 15 were shortlisted, of which two were Akshaya Patra projects.

We hope that many technology based solutions coming out of this event aid NGO’s in tackling issues by easing the processes at the organisations, empowering them in solving larger concerns of the society.