Home Competition Stories Engineers From Across The Country Shine Bright At Kotak Mahindra Bank’s Hackathon REIGN

Table of content:

“Ecstatic, astonished, and excited to have won the hackathon”
“The first step was choosing the track had the best problem statement”
“Finding a creative solution was the biggest challenge”
“Conflicts are one of the most important parts of the project”

Engineers From Across The Country Shine Bright At Kotak Mahindra Bank’s Hackathon REIGN

5 mins read

Engineers From Across The Country Shine Bright At Kotak Mahindra Bank’s Hackathon REIGN

With an aim to bring the best minds in India together, Kotak Mahindra Bank, one of India's leading banking and financial services groups, launched REIGN, inviting students to REImaGiNe the way they bank!

Open to 2nd/3rd/4th year (B.E/B.Tech) and 3rd/4th/5th-year Integrated/Dual Degree engineering students across all Indian engineering colleges, the students identified ideas and solutions that reimagined banking to create a rewarding experience every day for the customers.

Spanning across two stages, the competition required students to build a prototype of the Idea/solution on any one of the five problem tracks. Students impressed the jury by incorporating trends like gamification, nudge theory, personalization, social integration, etc.

With 4,959 registrations and 2,29,407 impressions, Kotak REIGN offered students an opportunity to select a track of their choice from 5 available options:

Track 1: Reimagine banking with conversational AI

Track 2: Reimagine the bank’s user dashboard for next-gen

Track 3: Reimagine personal financial management & Investments

Track 4: Reimagine how we can use voice as a feature for banking

Track 5: Reimagine payment gateway & payment pages

Students lived a once-in-a-lifetime experience to work on industry redefining problems, meeting seasoned professionals and thought leaders, winning attractive prizes, and securing Potential Interview Opportunities with Kotak Mahindra Bank!

“Ecstatic, astonished, and excited to have won the hackathon”

The winners of track 2, Team Bhagwan_Bharose from Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology said -

“We were really excited about the finale, the judges had inspected our prototype with much detail and had even asked questions which we weren't even prepared for. When we got to know we were the runners up, both of us were really happy and relieved!!”

Sharing their excitement on securing the place of 2nd Runners Up of Track 5, Team Ctrl+Alt+Elite from SRM Institute of Science and Technology said, “Certainly we were excited for the results to be announced and somewhere we were hoping for a positive outcome. When our name got announced it was an amazing and proud moment for us.”

“The first step was choosing the track with the best problem statement”

When asked about the preparation strategy, the winners of Track 3, Team Titans from Dr. Vishwanath Karad MIT World Peace University (MIT-WPU), Pune said, “We started our preparations with Market Research and then took reference from the Kotak Cherry Website. We then started app development and ideas began flowing in as we worked on the app. Developing the app in the time constraint was the most challenging phase.”

Team CYNTAX from Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore - the winners of Track 1 quoted -

“We had 5 tracks to select from and our idea matched two of them. We had to choose which track had the best problem statement for our project. We started working on the project as soon as we sorted out the track and problem statement. The most challenging phase was to bring together the project idea into one single piece. We had several good ideas and ultimately we took parts of each to fill the project.”

“Finding a creative solution was the biggest challenge”

In an exclusive interview with the winners of all tracks, Team Bhagwan_Bharose quoted, “The most challenging phase was coming up with the design, we were really confident with the tech stack and development but had to think hard to come up with a proper design. The design took around a week and after that, it took us four days to write the code. Then we made the presentation in a couple of days.”

Adding to the challenges, Team Ctrl+Alt+Elite said -

“We went through a lot of banking websites and did our research work. We came across various improvements that could be done to make the Payment Gateway more efficient. We worked for about three weeks. The most challenging phase was to implement machine learning in the Payment Gateway.”

“Conflicts are one of the most important parts of the project”

When asked if they ever had conflicts, Team CYNTAX replied, “Conflicts are one of the most important parts of the project. The difference of opinions structured the project without any problems and bugs. The solutions helped us to shape up our project step-by-step.”

To this, Team Titans said, “We didn't have many conflicts. We had conflicting ideas in the ideation phase but they were resolved through discussions and some more research with the viability of the solutions. We all had complimenting skills, hence, we knew what was our work, and things were sorted.”

All in all, the students found Kotak REIGN well-organized with great judgment. As team CYNTAX said, “The competition was top-notch, and the way they had set up the meetings were organized. Judges asked good questions related to the project which helped us take measures accordingly.”

We wish all the winners of Kotak REIGN a big congratulations!

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