News Summary
- One-of-a-kind design-led innovation platform to power ideas supported by technology that enables human progress
- The theme for this year’s challenge was ‘Design for Change’
- Dell Designathon 2022 was backed by Headstart, Kerala Startup Mission, Maharashtra State Innovation Society, IIIT Hyderabad, NASSCOM DTC, Indian School of Business, and IIT Bombay’s Sine Business Incubator.
Full story
Dell Technologies held the 4th edition of Dell Designathon, at the company’s annual event – Dell Technologies Forum, on August 25, 2022, at Grand Hyatt, Mumbai. The theme for this year’s challenge was ‘Design for Change’, wherein 10 young startup teams comprising product designers, application developers & UI/UX designers were invited to showcase their path-breaking applications and solutions that enabled:
- Accessibility – Better Health and/or Education for All
- Inclusion – Championing Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) to empower the future workforce
- Sustainability – Building a sustainable future through Circular Economy and Climate Action
The participating teams were equipped with Precision Mobile Workstations with their preferred solutions/software for a smooth and seamless experience. The participants were also provided with a Wacom device to augment productivity.
On the occasion of Dell Designathon 2022, Indrajit Belgundi, Senior Director and General Manager, Client Solutions Group, Dell Technologies, India, said, "At Dell, we create technologies that drive human progress, and it’s promising to witness the ideas that were part of Dell Designathon 2022. Sustainability and improving the quality of human life being core themes, the event is a testament to the spirit of social entrepreneurship. Backed by Dell's Precision laptops that brought the ideas to life, I congratulate all the participants and the winners for endeavoring ‘Design for Change’."
Dell Designathon 2022 was announced on 5th August 2022 for startups across India. Teams were invited to submit a concept note elaborating on the context, target audience, problem statement, and solution as well as how their concepts were smarter by design. Subsequently, 10 concepts were shortlisted and further mentored by Pradeep Kumar, Head of Strategic Initiatives, Paypal, Taha Malik, Founder, Baari Labs Startup Ecosystem Enabler, Headstart, Ekta Rohra Jafri, Head of Compass Design, IDC along with Ujjwal Trivedi, Senior Director of Products, WorkInSync and Dr. Lakshmi Jagannathan, CEO, Derbi Foundation.
Focused on designs that enable human progress, the winners of Dell Designathon 2022 are:
- 1st Place – Backyard Creators’ cost-effective, first-time commercially developed, nonsurgical adhesive hearing device built at the cost of just 6% of the traditional hearing aid implantation.
- 2nd Place – Eyecan’ app for visually impaired students to achieve their academic goals. The app based on Kotlin, uses natural language processing and optical character recognition to recognize PDFs, images, and handwritten text while also converting PDFs to audio files.
- 3rd Place – Wize’s solution for the freelance community where they intend to formalize freelance employment & salary certificates to ensure gig economy workers are able to get financial and other benefits compared to the salaried class. The design utilizes a distributed ledger technology for recording data from various sources to help update individuals’ records and protects HR data.
The finalists worked on the Precision laptops to mould their concepts and have ready designs/products for the jury members to evaluate. The jury consisted of Bina Trivedi – Partner, ITI Growth Opportunities Fund, Tanul Mishra – CEO, Afthonia Pvt Ltd, and Sanjay Mehta – Founder and Partner, 100X.VC and Hanisha Vaswani – Managing Partner, Majority Fund. The final submissions were judged on the ability of the solution to solve the given problem, the distinction of the concept’s features, visual appearance and feel, intuitive user design, and its feasibility in the present scenario.
Know more at Dell Technologies.com
