The highly anticipated finale of the Hult Prize at IoE 2024 was hosted at the Entrance Cafe on 17th Feb 2024. Amidst an atmosphere charged with anticipation and brilliance, students from Pulchowk Campus showcased their remarkable ingenuity through a myriad of innovative solutions aimed at addressing pressing global challenges.
As usual, the event began with the welcome of our esteemed guests and judges. It was followed by the strong speech of our campus director, Mr Aditya Pandey, who thanked all the participants and members involved in this wonderful journey of the Hult Prize.
To fairly judge the ideas of the participants, extremely qualified, educated and field respective judges were invited. Names: Nirdesh Dwa(founder of Veda app), Ashish Thakur(Chairman & Executive Director at Glocal Pvt. Ltd.) Barun Pandey(co-founder at Naamche) and Dr Sareesha Shrestha(Founder at The Shahayatri and TU gold medalist)
The notions of finalists were as below:
- EnerVision: IOT integrated app which pushes farmers towards technological agriculture with the use of AI chatbots for more accurate and efficient suggestions.
- Drishya: Glasses capable of image recognition, transforming texts and distance to audio that will have a significant impact on blind people.
- Park-E: acts as a mediator between vehicle-owned public and unused private property owners through which the parking system could be more systematic.
- BananaFiber: Uses banana fibre to make sanitary products and even its bi-products can be re-used to make clothes, accessories, paper, etc.
- Hawkeye: Integrating smart AI models to CCTV cameras in traffic light junctions.
Many more intriguing ideas were presented by the participants.
As expected, the competition was sort of a neck-to-neck battle and after continuous collaborative decisions of judges, DRISHYA was named the winner of the Hult Prize 2024. Likewise, HAWKEYE became the first runner-up and YONKO the second runner-up. From here, DRISHYA will be competing at the regional level.
Proceeding towards the end, Nirdesh Dwa sir gave valuable insights on the errors made by the participants and suggested improvements that could be made. It filled the hunger in every audience to pitch comparatively better ideas for the next year’s event. He also addressed that in each presentation, the students showcased not only their intellect but also their unwavering commitment to effecting positive change on a global scale.
The program’s success was indebted to The Himalayan Times as the Associate Sponsor, Taskade and Rastriya Badijya Bank as General Sponsors, Protozoa Host as the Hosting Partner, Milan Tara as the Celestial Impressions Partner, Unique Wooden Craft as the Artisan Woodcraft Partner, Froker Nepal as the Fooding Partner, IDP, doubling as the Education Partner and Trinkets as the Jewellery Partner.
