CHENNAI: Four engineering students from Chennai who developed a business productivity tool using Artificial Intelligence are on their way to Silicon Valley to get product development and mentoring support after winning a global hackathon hosted by the Kerala Startup Mission ( KSUM ) in partnership with AngelHack , a global hacker community of coders.

More than 150 coders from the southern region ideated and coded non-stop for 48 hours over the weekend to develop products and prototypes with the potential to build into commercial start-ups.

A four-member team of Rithwin Siva , Sricharan Ravi , Adithya J and Venkatesh S, representing Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar (SSN) College of Engineering, Chennnai has made their way to Silicon Valley after developing “Phantom”, a tool which will use various performance metrics to analyse the productivity of a company and its employees.

They now get an opportunity to visit Silicon Valley in California, US, and receive guidance from mentors at the AngelHack headquarters to help polish and finish their product.

They will also be given the opportunity to present their project and pitch in front of several entrepreneurs and investors on a global platform.

The Global Hackathon Series is organised every year all across the globe and they have grown from 11 cities to 60 cities in three years.

Now in its third year, AngelHack is not the only hackathon in town but it's certainly the largest, according to Nasif N.M., Ambassador of AngelHack and KSUM Fellow.

“We were happy to bring such big pool of talent together. The teams of designers and programmers were asked to produce an application or at least a working prototype of an application. The winners also get prizes from KSUM and credits from Amazon Web Services and IBM,” Nasif added.

“As a part of this event, the best developers and aspiring developers came under one roof for 2 days networking, learning and participating in various events organized by the hosts. In the span of these 2 days, the participants got chance to listen to a lot of pep talks, to participate in fun games and competitions,” said Ratish Narayanan, Marketing Head (Asia-Pacific) of AngelHack.

