BlackBerry JamHack winners to attend global hackathon in Bangkok

A group of young technophiles from Kerala are flying to Bangkok next month to join a global hackathon competition after winning the first prize in the BlackBerry JamHack in Bangalore, organised by the telecom giant Research in Motion (RIM) in association with the technology firm incubator Startup Village.

Jibin Jose, Anoop Nayak, Nithin George and Bijin Abraham make up the QEdge team, which developed the prize-winning Story Board, an innovative application that provides a novel way of showcasing presentations using BlackBerry smartphones.

The winners, now representing Hangout India (the Indian team), will take part in the BlackBerry Jam Asia 2012 in Bangkok, to be held on November 29-30, and compete against other international teams in the Asia-Pacific finals.

The JamHack involved 40 hours of non-stop coding – from 7 pm on October 12 till the midday of October 14, at the premises of Innoz Technologies. It featured teams from all over India and 32 students from Kerala.

"We love hearing and telling stories. So we thought of creating an app which will convert a boring conventional presentation into a story-telling experience," said Nithin George. "My team is proud to have created this product and to have survived 40 hours of coding. We dedicate our success to Startup Village and its CEO Sijo Kuruvila George for inspiring the entrepreneur in us."

"It is wonderful to see college students thinking out of the box and taking on challenges like these. We are seeing the next generation of entrepreneurs at work here," the Startup Village CEO said.

Bangalore is among the 10 cities in the Asia-Pacific region to host the BlackBerry JamHack. Besides advancing to the Asia Pacific finals, winners from each city are awarded BlackBerry devices and will get RIM's advice to develop their apps further.

Teams making it to the finals in Bangkok will be vying for a prize pot that includes cash award, a chance to be at the much-anticipated global launch of BlackBerry 10 and RIM's support for marketing their apps.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)