The Kaffeine Lab, Nations Trust Bank’s innovation centre at Gregory’s Road, Colombo, recently hosted the first ever Fintech Hackathon in the country.
About 150 teams from across Sri Lanka put forward their applications to contest in the Hackathon and the best 16 were selected to compete.
 Team Nations Trust Bank with first runners-up - ‘LinearSix’ from Linear Six (Pvt) Ltd
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 Team Nations Trust Bank with second runners-up - ‘Phastem’ from SLIIT and University of Kelaniya. |
The Nations Trust Fintech Hackathon 2017 saw some vibrant talent and enthusiastic participants competing all through the night and the early hours of the morning.
Teams had projects ranging from an islandwide bus route/positioning collator with trip planning features, a handy person aggregator to put users in touch with plumbers, mechanics and other handymen closest to them, a VR based car sale experience and an ambitious project to introduce direct P2P energy trading between producers of excess solar power and consumers, along with many other fascinating and possibly game changing ideas.
Chief Operating Officer of Nations Trust Bank, Thilak Piyadigama said, “We provide young people with platforms to innovate and showcase their ideas and talent.
That’s why this is such a great initiative, that makes us feel great and proud of what we’re doing.
It’s also a way to encourage competitiveness and boost productivity, when you have to deliver a functional solution in 12 hours.
“Traditionally, banks are quiet, conventional, full suit people, so this is a major step forward not only for us, but for the whole sector. We are setting a trend here and I’m sure other players in the sector will follow,” he said.
Chief Innovation Officer at Nations Trust Bank, and one of the key organizers of the event, Dinesh Thomas said, “Hackathons have become increasingly common in other industries these days and most of the teams who put forward their applications told us that they’re now very selective about participation and do not participate unless they see real value. This is very encouraging.
“I think what sets the Nations Trust Fintech Hackathon apart from most other hackathons is that we were not after participants’ intellectual property.”
The team, ‘Tech Devs’ with their idea for Online Auctioning Platform was the ultimate winner of the Nations Trust Fintech Hackathon 2017 and walked away with a cash prize of Rs. 250,000 and a business loan worth Rs. 1 million at a discounted rate of interest.
Online bidding application ‘BIDME’ is an Android application developed for banks to auction overdue pawned items.
The runners-up were ‘Team Linear Six’ with an idea to create an inter-bank blockchain that will help Sri Lanka’s financial institutions collaborate to improve the customer experience, lower costs and reduce operational risk in areas such as KYC, faster payments, loan defaults and insurance claims.
Team ‘Phastem’ which aims to create an IoT based cabinet system which provides secure access to the cabinets remotely through mobile and web app while providing courier service,which will resolve the hassle of baggage during a tour.
They walked away with handsome cash prizes.