We scored second place in APAC’s largest Hackathon – ACS #flattenthecurvehack

In just a few months, we’ve also seen innovation, resilience and agility rise from all corners of society – from parents and teachers delivering homeschooling to businesses reinventing their services and friends and families finding new ways to connect virtually.

Over the Easter long weekend, the ACS #flattenthecurvehack unveiled the power of this in a 48hr pressure cooker. Imagine 2,700 people from over 20 countries, experts across tech, health, education, business and more, united by a common goal to solve some of the most pressing challenges faced by the world today.

Capgemini was proud to partner with the ACS (Australian Computer Society) and over 40 other partners to support this amazing hackathon. We didn’t really know what to expect when we signed up to partner, but as registrations numbers grew into the 1000s in only a few days, we knew this was going to be something special. And it was – one of the largest hackathons ever held in the APAC region.

Led by Capgemini’s Applied Innovation Exchange, we rallied our troops, from across Capgemini’s business areas, our partner ecosystem and extended network. Over 40 of us joined – forming five cross-organisational teams, alongside a mentor group. Competing against 230 registered teams, our teams tackled challenges across mental health and wellbeing, education, protecting the vulnerable and assisting health systems. And we came out with some wins – Three finalist teams, with two going onto win second place in their respective categories!

Here’s a little more about our teams and their ideas – you can view their pitch videos in links below too.

SkySchool

2nd Place in Education Challenge

Reimagining Education: A centralised, secure and flexible cloud-based education platform which simplifies the needs of the 21st Century student

Team: SkyCap – Senthill Sundaram (Capgemini FS), Chris Symes (WhiteSky Labs), John Moses (WhiteSkyLabs), Monica Racha (WhiteSkyLabs), Elham Abawi (Salesforce Maps)

Sanctum

2nd Place in Wellness & Mental Health Challenge

Sanctum seeks to combat the isolation and loneliness of COVID and beyond through meaningful, supportive, anonymous connection.

Team: Carebears – Kirit Kundu (Capgemini Invent), Hester Bax (Capgemini I&D), Palang Anivan (Capgemini Invent), Angie Glance (Capgemini Invent), Eromanga Adermann (Capgemini I&D), Rynaldo Zain (Capgemini DCX)

BHappy

Finalist in Wellness & Mental Health Challenge

BHappy is an interactive chatbot powered by Artificial Intelligence to provide comfort, support and entertainment for individuals through their challenging times.

Team: CoBot – Dominic So (Capgemini CSD), Raymond Tran (Capgemini DCX), Huy Cat Hoang (HeartBug), Leyi Wang (UoM), Selina Yang (USYD), Amie Dsouza (AGL)

Beano

Protecting Vulnerable Populations Challenge

Beano empowers everyday people with the means to guide and support the health and wellbeing of our senior citizens; especially, during COVID19.

Team: Christian Nguyen (Capgemini DCX), David Zhao (Capgemini SAP), Gulige Metin (Capgemini I&D), Jordan Sands (Capgemini I&D), Adithyan Natarajan (Capgemini I&D), Liam Frappell (Unleash Live), Laura Lio (Dep. of Customer Service)

BeSafe

Protecting Vulnerable Populations Challenge

BeSafe tracking app for COVID-19 or any other non-social activity, and density check

Team: Vamsikrishna Patchava (Capgemini FS), Amiya Pradhan (Capgemini FS), Sujay Singh (Capgemini FS), Raksha Saxena (Capgemini FS)

A huge congratulations to all teams – we’re extremely proud of the innovation, agility, resilience, collaboration and selflessness you displayed giving up part of your Easter break.

A number of the teams are now looking at ways to take these ideas forward – and we’re excited for what’s next! If any of these interest to you, please reach out and we can put you in touch.

Thanks also to our Capgemini mentor team (Dheeren Velu, Saugata Ghosh and Nithin Naik), our partners who joined our teams, including WhiteSky Labs, Salesforce Maps and Unleash Live, and the external mentors who provided our teams with their expertise (including Pauline Fetaui, Yong Ly and Melissa Pye among others).

Lastly, a huge thanks and kudos to the Australian Computer Society who invited us to be involved and put on this fantastic event in such a short timeframe. If you’d like to see all the winning ideas from the hackathon, check out the ACS website.

#flattenthecurvehack #strongertogether #appliedinnovation

Monique Alvis
Innovation Lead
Capgemini Applied Innovation Exchange