Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL), the operator of Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru, India, has announced the winners of its ‘BIAL Genie Hackathon’ in collaboration with Microsoft.
More than 11,500 teams of developers and data scientists participated in the challenge to use Microsoft Azure services to design new innovations and solutions to improve the end-to-end passenger experience at Kempegowda Airport.
Team Reboot Rebels were named the grand winners of the hackathon with the ‘Fly Ezy’ application, winning INR 1.5 lakhs (US$2,000) as a cash reward. The four-member Reboot Rebels team suggested potential solutions to support the passenger journey from commuting to the airport, internal navigation at the airport, facilitating access to shopping offers as well as alerts for passenger flights to enhance the overall passenger experience. Another useful feature was a blockchain wallet which enables passengers to be rewarded with coins that can later be redeemed to get discount coupons at stores in and around the airport.
Team Code Blooded were declared the runner up with an AI-based solution called ‘Air Dash’ which included various uses of Azure services for AR-based easy navigation through Azure Maps, a Personalized Marketplace developed through Azure Machine Learning Studio including smooth onboarding for ecosystem partners. The team won a cash reward of INR 1 lakh (US$1,300).
George Fanthome, chief information officer, BIAL, said, “I would like to thank all participants of the hackathon for the overwhelming response and congratulate the winning teams. This brought together some of the brightest minds in the tech space and has enabled them to create solutions that would have an impact in enhancing customer experience at Kempegowda Airport, by leveraging the next generation of digital technologies. We look forward to seeing the transformative ideas develop into practical actions that will help us realize the vision of a digitalized and smart airport.”
Shivir Chordia, Azure business group lead, Microsoft India, said, “As a cloud service company, Microsoft has always been supporting developers all over the world to create solutions which help businesses and organizations transform. We received some very interesting and transformative ideas for the BIAL Genie Hackathon, and I would like to congratulate the winning teams and all the hackathon participants for their efforts.”
