Yamu GPS app for taxis tops Colombo Hackathon
A Sri Lankan IT start-up hackathon (hacking marathon), held over an intensive 36-hour period (Saturday, March 24, 2012, to Sunday, March 25, 2012), saw local teams set out to develop applications (apps) based on a set of ideas shortlisted following a 60-second, "elevator" pitch.
Working through these ideas as much as possible over the stipulated 36-hour period, from a very early, concept stage to working demonstrations, and including a business/financial plan, this event, the Colombo Hackathon, was organised by local ITBPO body SLASSCOM and promoted as a competition "inspired" by the Startup Weekend India. The event is planned to be a quarterly occurrence.
For those unfamiliar with hacking, or at least those only familiar with its negative connotations, hacking is, in fact, the practice of finding bugs, or any type of errors, even spelling mistakes, in software, as well as other types of content, with the aim of fixing it before a final, consumer version of the app is released. In the case of the Colombo Hackathon, this resulted in brainstorming all the possible problems an app could encounter with the intent to fix them or, at least, set up plans for when they arise. For example, the readying of a business or financial plan to address future funding/expansion needs.
Meanwhile, the first Colombo Hackathon saw top ranked teams (Yamu, Wedding wishlist, Sangeetha Superstar and Whackit) earning priority placement for May 2012's high-profile Venture Engine local entrepreneurship challenge (see related story) as well as feedback from a panel of judges that included an IT executive from a John Keells Holdings group company as well as IT startup entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from Blue Ocean Ventures and the Calamander Group.
An additional goal of the judging panel, and the IT entrepreneurs/mentors available to the teams throughout the hackathon, being advising them on how they could more fully flesh out these ideas and, most important of all, generate more revenue streams from their business models, while also readying them for the needs of potential venture capitals who will undoubtedly be required to keep product development going.
Teams were judged on multiple criteria, such as their vision, the market opportunity they want to exploit, how they plan on reaching their target market, how well their product fits with the need they perceive and its ease-of-use, their idea's sustainabiity and Unique Selling Proposition (USP), barriers to market entry for their product, how to generate revenues/additional revenue streams, and their concept's fundability.
The following 13 applications were shortlisted for this quarter: Yamu - a location based (via a smart device's Global Positioning System) taxi booking service mobile app which allows the user to send the taxi driver the coordinates of where they want to go Wedding wishlist - a web-based wedding registry app that allows access to multiple retailers Sangeetha Superstar - a Karaoke app for mobile smart devices along the lines of the popular "Rock Band" series of games that allows the device to rate the player based on the pitch of their voice Whackit - a web-based food ordering app for groups/companies that allows users to order from multiple restaurants Find-a-car - a web-based app for those looking to buy/sell cars whereby they can advertise. It also offers package deals for advertising to car dealerships Guideme - a mobile app for online travel information, package deals, weather conditions, etc. to be used when travelling within Sri Lanka Hireme.lk - a web-based human resources matchmaking service whereby potential employees and employers in the IT start-up field register to meet each other
Commenting on the event, sponsor and judging panel member Prajeeth Balasubramaniam, Managing Director of venture capital fund Blue Ocean Ventures, noted that, to date, the local IT entrepreneurial efforts stemmed mostly from Sri Lankans liv- ing abroad who came back and set up businesses. He added that there were still no success stories from local universities at least that he had personally witnessed. Further, he additionally elaborated that local students were still not ready to become entrepreneurs, instead opting to work for others. As such, the Colombo Hackathon, as well as the Blue Ocean Ventures-organised Venture Engine, according to each respective event's online literature, has been set up to facilitate a culture of entrepreneurship, particularly amongst local students.
In fact, adding to this, Colombo Hackathon organisers, again in the event's online promotional material, specifically noted that, while there was supposed to be a 40/60 split for students/professionals, the "actual applicant count was biased towards a larger number of students" and, as a result, participant numbers were increased to 125 (with about 75 finally showing up to work in teams based around the 13 shortlisted ideas). This was because, despite having slots for only 50, there were 187 applying for entry into the competition (with the total being 29 ideas). In addition, it was also revealed that ideas not selected for this hackathon would gain automatic entry into the next one.
Mr. Balasubramaniam also suggested that, as of right now, there were more funds than ideas locally. Organisations such as his were interested in funding local IT startups but, at the same time, there were nowhere near enough start-ups taking advantage of this.
He also indicated that, a similar start-up competition run by his partner, the Indian Angel Network, had begun with a total of 100 plus ideas just five years ago and, today, had grown to include more than a 1,000 start-ups entering from each Indian state with a billion Indian rupees invested in 2011 alone.