Manama – 28th, 29th & 30th November 2020

A journey of learning and innovation; this is what Brinc offered through the Empowering Youth Hackathon in partnership with Carve Startup Labs (CSL), 100 Open Startups and IKP EDEN from India.

The three day hackathon came to an end on Saturday 30th of November 2020, after the successful run that it had. The hackathon aimed to empower Indian youth and cultivate their passion for entrepreneurship. Minds, backgrounds, and skills came together, working together to come up with innovation and tech ideas that are aligned with the SDGs in four pillars: changing the way we live, what we eat, how we move, and how we feel. 

This hackathon was one of the biggest virtual hackathons Brinc had done. It gathered 31 mentors and experts in pitching, innovation & digitization, and technical areas from all over the world! The competition was fierce between the team from the participating Indian states, namely; Bihar, Rajasthan, Kerala, Tamilnadu, Odisha, Telangana, Karnataka, Pondicherry, and Uttarpradesh. More than 500 teams’ applications were received, out of which  only ten teams were shortlisted from each state. These teams went through a state pitching competition, where only 2 teams qualified to join the hackathon. The top two teams from all the states participated in the three day hackathon, where they learned everything from market analysis, business modeling, prototyping, and pitching in order to obtain the valuable knowledge and enthusiasm to start their businesses afterwards. They went through different workshops, sessions, and 1:1 office hours to be able to pitch in the final pitching competition on day three.  

The hackathon also aimed to solve the challenge of unemployment in the indian labour market, which stands at 7.8% at the end of  2020. Through the sessions, Brinc in collaboration with their Indian partners encouraged the Indian youth and gave them the opportunity to become job creators rather than job seekers, establishing their own businesses and creating more jobs in the economy.  

This initiative also reflects Brinc’s ecosystem building ethos, which focuses on empowering youth. To develop talent and entrepreneurship within this segment, Brinc has held 11 successful hackathons, with 65 problems tackled and 22 established graduate startups. Also, it generated 8 summer camps with participation from 215 students, ages ranging from 7-30. 

The participants took away a great deal of knowledge and experience, with one participant saying, “Basically, we (our team) are freshers and don’t have any idea about pitching and content that is needed to present. So this hackathon helps us a lot in understanding the mechanism through which everything works”, while another one said: “It’s a great platform for entrepreneurship and innovation because we learned about how to be sustainable in the market and how to manage all the things required for growth”.

The hackathon ended with a pitching competition where the teams had the opportunity to pitch their ideas to a panel of four judges who later picked the winner of the grand prize consisting of; $338USD from CSL, 6 hours of mentorship quarterly for 1 year from Brinc, as well as the chance to join Brinc acceleration pitch rehearsal, professional pitch mentorship, and get the chance to join Brinc accelerator ramp up if applicable. Also,  $1,025.29USD from IKP Eden, and  an incubation opportunity from 100 Open Startups. Through this pitching competition, the participants benefited by getting a sense of how it would feel like to be an entrepreneur pitching their ideas to investors, customers and partners. “Backyard Creators”, which was the winning team. Are going to impact the lives of 365 million children by improving accessibility to open skull surgery for hearing aid Implantation.

Brinc’s support for the startups will continue in the form of mentorship for the top three winners, who will be trained to pitch in an international accelerator pitch rehearsal, get the opportunity to enter the accelerator program as well as connect with industrial investors, innovators, experts and mentors.