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Hackathons jolt innovation for smarter living and finance

Cyberport co-organised two hackathons with SmarTone and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) during October and November. For two weekends, hundreds of young innovators were challenged to develop solutions for smarter living and smarter finance. 

 

In addition to bridging corporations and innovators and allowing them to tap one another’s strengths, the events aimed to identify and nurture promising tech talent and to promote corporate digital transformation.

 

At the SmarTone Hackathon, more than 150 software developers, designers, and start-ups gathered at Cyberport to create solutions for “5G & Smart City”, the theme of this year’s competition. A third of the participants were from overseas, including the US, Canada, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, India, and the Greater Bay Area.

 

After 48 hours of intense development, prototype-making, and pitching, WeAR, a teamed formed by participants from five different regions, clinched championship. The team developed an augmented reality (AR) platform to enable users, such as salespeople, to read all the information regarding a product by scanning its QR code. The tremendous applicability and innovativeness of this smart shopping solution won the judges’ hearts.

 

Meanwhile, the 1st Runner-up and 2nd Runner-up titles were picked up by I&AI and Softcare respectively. The former developed a platform that lets users analyse their own shopping habits for smarter shopping, while the latter created a smart driving system for drivers that harnesses the power of 5G.

 

Bizkathon@HKUST was the 1st “Virtual Bank” themed hackathon. The competition invited students and alumni of tertiary institutions in Hong Kong to develop solutions that help virtual banks win customer trust, tackle compliance issues, and automate banking operations with FinTech. Cyberport, as a supporting organisation, engaged closely with three prominent Fintech start-ups - Zhong An, WeLab and Ping An to support this.

 

The champion – Phoenix Innovation, developed a customizable banking service via Chatbot and Speech-to-Text function, which enhance user experience. SG Business, the 1st runner-up, developed encrypted machine Learning tools with “Simple Homomorphic Encryption Master”; Impetus, the 2nd runner-up, worked on a “Fishing Gaming with Shopping Experience”.

 

The winners were given cash prizes and other perks, while some of them will further receive fast-track opportunities to the Cyberport Creative Micro Fund (CCMF) or Cyberport Incubation Programme (CIP) to realise their entrepreneurial dreams.