- Swiss Re engages with young tech enthusiast for its first Hackathon for developing innovative ideas to advise on personal risk
- An app for monitoring food intake of high-risk patients using image recognition and NLP, wins the first prize
- 16 teams representing brightest minds from start-ups, developers and students community developed prototypes using IBM Bluemix suite
Bangalore, India 3 February 2016 — What if a mobile phone app could assess the risk of an individual and provide ideas to better manage that risk? Well, that thought helped IIT-B bag the first prize.
Between 30-31 January, Swiss Re held an event entitled “My Personal Risk Advisor” Hackathon. Where16 teams of 70 technologists comprising students, developers and entrepreneurs built applications that enable individuals or small business owners to assess their total risk.
Organised along with IBM, India’s first reinsurance hackathon offered a unique garage-like experience for its participants and provided an opportunity to develop ideas into prototypes. The prototypes were judged based on innovative technology integration, dimensions of risks that were considered while developing the solution, user experience and technical complexity. A panel of esteem judges, which included members from Swiss Re and IBM evaluated the apps.
“The reinsurance sector is at the cusp of a radical transition and the convergence of new technologies will help us manage consumer expectations and to better manage risk.” said Alok Kumar, Managing Director, Swiss Re Bangalore. “Such a platform enables exploration of emerging and disruptive technology to reduce the protection gap, besides further encouraging and nurturing entrepreneurs and start-ups in the sector,” he added.
Team IIIT-B represented by Abhijay Vuyyuru, Anubhav Bhardwaj, and Lijo Johny were adjudged as the winners for their solution. This WhatsApp-based application can click a picture of the food you eat and distribute it to a specific group. This application analyses the image of the food and highlights the calorie content and recommends healthier alternatives. The winning team was awarded a cash prize of INR 3 lakhs.
Team IIIT-B represented by Amit Gupta, Daksh Varshneya, Tanmayee Narendra, Prerit Jain, Pawan Dhananjay bagged the second prize and were awarded INR 2 Lakhs.
Manu Dwivedi, Chakshu Ahuja, Rahul Radhakrishnan and Saurav Tomar were declared as the second runners-up and were awarded INR 1 Lakh.
Commenting on winning the hackathon, the first prize winners said, “We are thrilled to win. Being the second most populous nation, India is prone to high health risks and diseases. Our idea was to develop a solution that enable individual to assess and foresee their risk based on the individual’s personality and dietary profiling.”
Swiss Re
The Swiss Re Group is a leading wholesale provider of reinsurance, insurance and other insurance-based forms of risk transfer. Dealing direct and working through brokers, its global client base consists of insurance companies, mid-to-large-sized corporations and public sector clients. From standard products to tailor-made coverage across all lines of business, Swiss Re deploys its capital strength, expertise and innovation power to enable the risk-taking upon which enterprise and progress in society depend. Founded in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1863, Swiss Re serves clients through a network of around 70 offices globally and is rated “AA-” by Standard & Poor’s, “Aa3” by Moody’s and “A+” by A.M. Best. Registered shares in the Swiss Re Group holding company, Swiss Re Ltd, are listed in accordance with the Main Standard on the SIX Swiss Exchange and trade under the symbol SREN. For more information about Swiss Re Group, please visit: www.swissre.com or follow us on Twitter @SwissRe.