Meet The Winners Of Optum Stratethon Season 3 Who Won USD 19,400 And Pre-Placement Interviews

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After facing a tight race against students across 6 countries and 202 B-Schools and E-Schools, only a handful of them secured a podium finish. Presenting to you the winner stories of Optum Stratethon - Season 3. 

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Rundown of Optum Stratethon - Season 3

Spanned across 5 rounds, the competition was open to both B-Schools and E-schools students from India, the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Malaysia. 

All the teams gave a commendable performance by presenting scalable solutions with the potential to change the future of health care. To reward the grit and grace of the winners, the esteemed jury awarded the Regional winners and Regional runners-up of both the tracks with USD 6700 and USD 3000 each. Apart from this, the finalists bagged Pre-Placement Interviews to the finalists. 

To appreciate the bright youth marching ahead, the jury also rewarded the Strength in Numbers Award to 1 college in each country with the most number of teams that register in Optum Stratethon - Season 3; Audience Choice Award for the most popular choice of participating team in the 1st round of the Grand Finale; Star of the Show Award for the best presenter from each track in the 1st round of the Grand Finale; and Living Our Values Award for the team who presented their case study showcasing Optum Values.

Let’s see what the winners have to say.

“Our emotions were running high”

When asked about how did he feel when his team name was announced as the winners, Kinshuk Dua from Team Optumus Prime said, “When the host called out our team's name, we couldn't believe the moment. We were looking at each other in utter awe. We looked at our family and they were overwhelmed with happiness. It was one of the proudest and ecstatic moments of our lives, making an impact globally with our application.”

Expressing his joy, Shivang Rastogi from team Phoenix said, “I felt really happy and rewarded, this also gave me a sense of self-satisfaction as the solution my team proposed was appreciated. The feedback I got was really constructive and will help me in problem-solving in the future.”

“18,000 students and immense competition - we had to be at our A-game”

“The first two rounds meant everything to us, the quiz and coding round. The immense competition, 18,000 students, the unpredictability - we had to be at our A-game. One mistake and potentially we were jeopardizing our entire chance at even seeing the use case”, said Jayit Saha from VIT Chennai. He continued, 

“We wanted a solution that had the potential to impact the world and wanted our idea to be utilized by people in real-time, our product to be used by millions. Starting from building the whole idea from scratch, connecting every dots, daily stand-ups, devoting time amongst other things, kicking off with the development phase, maintaining a steady pace, and giving our best at every phase. The never-ending zeal to give up at any point I feel, makes Optumus Prime, well Optumus Prime.”

Talking about the preparation strategy, Debdeep Banerjee from the winning team Phoenix from Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, IIT Bombay (B-track), said -

He continued, “We worked for over a month on the problem. The most challenging phase was when we had multiple technological interventions in consideration and had to zero down on a few to address the present problem, with viability and value addition as constraints.”

Aman Kumar from Team Bytecoders, SRM Institute of Science and Technology shared, “ We analyzed the problem statement in-depth in the given timeframe and then came up with alternative solutions to it after a vivid discussion. We concluded to the point that our solution should be something more feasible and an easy to use application for each and every age group of people.”

He added, 

“The most challenging phase was as to how do we intend to make sure that our solution was really followed by the people and if not how do we ensure that they follow it. I would even like to mention that this was brought into the limelight by our mentor and later the solution to this became an essential part of our overall solution.”

Sharing her team's thoughts on working on the problem statement, Tharani N, Team The Last Leaves from IIM Trichy, said - 

The winners of the Star of the Show Award and Audience Choice Award - Team Digi-Tams from Far Eastern University - Institute of Technology said that they could not qualify as a finalist in the first announcement, but later on, authorities emailed them to compete as the wild card team one day before the grand finale! 

Here is what the Lead Programmer of Digi-Tams, Ervin A. Co has to say -

Adding on to his teammate’s statement, Joey Bisnar said,

"It took me 5 days to design the user interface of our mobile application, 2 weeks to code the whole innovative solution, while it took me only 3 days to understand the data set given. What gave me a challenge was pitching the idea to my teammates, as I am an introvert, and telling a story isn't really my forte (which is, by the way, a big no on this kind of competition), and they all have their own ideas to share. So what I did was just listen to them and materialize through coding their ideas, I really appreciate my teammate Jay Anne on most of these ideas."

“Backtracking and solving problems by weighing feasibility”

Sharing the learnings garnered during the journey,  one of the finalists, Karmanya Tyagi from Team - BitMagic said, “I have learned to work in a team and have generated values of healthy competition. Optum had a deep impact on me in a whole way. I have gained patience and the art of accepting and working on your flaws. Overall, this competition made me realize the importance of some good technologies as well as the importance of some values to be a better person in life.”

Another finalist Takuya Oso from Team Always Extra, Nanyang Technological University also agreed to Karmanya, and said, “Since the judges were from the sponsor company it was our privilege to get authentic feedback.”

Appreciating the competition, Mayank Chittora from SRM Institute of Science and Technology said, “The competition was quite stiff in terms of judging quality, organization, and framing. Judges were talented, seasoned, and most importantly had an excellent eye for detail. The competition was also well-organized with no major snafus or problems that I could discern.”

Continuing to it, his teammate Shivam Singhal said -

It goes without saying that hackathons are also an excellent venue for self-education in general. So find something you're passionate about, like coding or app design, and work on it from time to time during your weekends when you don't have any commitments or obligations.

A big congratulations to all the winners of Optum Stratethon Season 3!

The glory of their feat shall be inspired by many!

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