The Smart India Hackathon will focus on finding solutions to existing day-to-day life problems.

Highlights The 36-hour event finale will be held at 26 locations in the country

The program focuses on solving problems of social importance

Groups will sit locked in to find digital solutions for problems

Giving another push to his Digital India initiative, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to address what is being dubbed as the world's largest hackathon today via video conferencing. 10,000 programmers will compete in the 36-hour event finale which is being held at 26 locations in the country. The program focuses on solving problems of social importance. 29 ministries and government departments have identified 598 problems, the initial response for which came from over 7,500 teams of approximately 42,000 students.The Grand Finale of Smart India Hackathon will start at 8 am today and will go in till 8 pm on April 2. 1,266 teams of 10,000 participants from 28 states have been shortlisted for the finale. For 36 hours, the selected groups will sit locked in and find digital solutions for the problem statements by creating software or mobile apps.The end products will then be evaluated by judges from the respective ministry and industry experts, and the top three teams with the best solutions will be awarded Rs. 1 lakh, Rs 75,000 and Rs 50,000. The winners will also form the Community of Innovative Minds.The awarded software will then be used by the relevant ministry or department to improve their governance systems, with suitable upgrades if necessary.In the run up to the finale, online training was given to students by over 2,000 mentors."Digital India, Start-up India and Make in India campaigns which need skilled and innovative workforce are the starting point of the Smart India Hackathon," a senior official of the IT Ministry said.The IT industry especially M/S i4C, Persistent Systems along with NASSCOM have led the effort.

As per statistics of World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), India registers 40 patents per million population. This indicates that a lot more can be done in the field of innovation.Government sources say Smart India Hackathon is an effort to improve innovation by encouraging students to apply knowledge to real-life situations and find innovative solutions.