Solving for India

We treated the hackathon as a purely technical thing. That's why we lost in Pune. But it was our first real hackathon, and we got to Pune by coming first at our university.

I had tried to take part in hackathons before, but college exams always got in the way. This was the first one we actually made it to.

Four, in the last hour

Smita Chauhan and I are friends, and she was the one who brought me the news: GeeksforGeeks was running the Solving for India Hackathon, with Google Cloud and AMD. We decided to enter. Then we read the rules. A team needed four people, and we were two.

We asked Prashant Sahatiya sir, who taught our Java Android development crash course and became our mentor for the hackathon. He suggested a few names. In the last hour of registration, Harsh Surani joined us, and Hardik Sarvaiya, Smita's friend, made four.

the last hour, literally

ResQme

We built ResQme, an Android app for health guidance and SOS emergencies, in Java with Firebase.1

Its main feature was the emergency call. You saved someone close to you, kept the app open and locked your phone. From then on, pressing the power button called them automatically. Around it sat a symptom checker, first aid tips, symptom reports, a quiz game and health news.

The home screen: Hello, Krushang Patel, with tiles for the symptom checker, first aid tips, emergency call, symptom reports and a quiz game.
Emergency Call: a saved contact, and the note that pressing the power button with the phone locked calls them automatically.
Symptom Reports: Keep your symptoms report clear, with a list of saved reports.
ResQMe, Your Personal Health Assistant: it tracks symptoms, gives instant feedback and personalised recommendations.
Broadcast: health news posts from ResQMe.
The login screen: Hello Again! Welcome back, you've been missed.
Screens from the app. A phone number is blurred.

Turning the problem statement into a solution was my part, and so was the design. Harsh took care of the backend.

I did it as well as I could at that age, long before AI could help.

University first

For the first round, we submitted a Git repository and a video, and then we relaxed. We had no hope at all.

Krushang's certificate of achievement from Google Cloud, AMD and GeeksforGeeks, for winning the institute level of the Solving For India Hackathon on 16 April 2023.

The results came out during the vacation. We were first in the university.

The university round prizes laid out on a striped rug: a gaming keyboard, an RGB mouse pad, wireless headphones, a Solving for India bag, T-shirt and notebook, stickers, a lanyard, and Hardik's certificate.
What came home from the university round.
1Round 1: a Git repo and a video
2First in the university
3Regional round, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Pune
4Not selected
From our university round to the regional round in Pune.

Pune

So we went to Pimpri-Chinchwad, in Pune, for the regional round. It was our first hackathon, so we had no real idea what each round would bring: a little excitement, a little curiosity.

A selfie of the four of us in front of a lift in Pune, Krushang on the right.
The four of us in Pune.

We enjoyed it, and we met a lot of people.

Three of us seated with laptops in a hall full of teams at the regional round, Krushang nearest the camera.
At the regional round.

Where we lost

Then we lost, and I know why. It was our communication. We had built something that worked, but we treated the whole hackathon as a technical contest.

Thanks to Prashant Sahatiya sir for his guidance, and to GeeksforGeeks, Google Cloud Community India and AMD for their support.

Next time, we prepared for more than the code.

That next time was the Vadodara Hackathon 4.0.

Footnotes

  1. Firebase is Google's ready-made backend, for data, files and sign-in. ↩