Amazon Smbhav Hackathon 2024: Meet the winners driving AI-powered innovations for SMBs in e-commerce

In October this year, Amazon India had announced the launch of Amazon Smbhav Hackathon 2024, a nationwide competition that invited innovators to contribute groundbreaking ideas and AI-powered solutions that can significantly impact the growth and success of small and medium businesses (SMBs) in e-commerce. The hackathon was part of the lead-up to Amazon Smbhav 2024, the fifth edition of the company’s flagship annual summit in India. This year, the hackathon drew 100,000+ applications from which three bagged top spots for their ingenuity and innovation.

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Innovators from across India participated to contribute to the growth of India’s digital economy. Aligned with the Prime Minister's vision of 'Viksit Bharat,' the hackathon aimed to harness India's innovative spirit and drive digitisation, unlocking new growth opportunities for SMBs.

The Grand Finale of Smbhav Hackathon 2024 concluded on December 10 where three winners with the most innovative ideas were announced. These are:

1. Coders@IIITB (students from International Institute Of Information Technology, Bangalore): The group bagged the first prize for their ‘WorldWise: AI-Powered Regulatory Navigator for E-Commerce Expansion’ project. The solution leverages advanced technologies to address the core pain points of exporting with features like step-by-step guide, multilingual AI chatbot, country-specific insights, market opportunity, and risk analysis.
   Team members: Parsania Ramya Parulbhai, Ansh Gupta, Prakrititz Borah and Sriram Srikanth
2. Team Malaai (students from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi): They won the second prize for their idea ‘Social2Amazon: Transforming Social Media Posts into Seamless Amazon Listings’. Social2Amazon is an innovative AI-powered platform that automates the conversion of social media content into detailed e-commerce product listings.
   Team members: Pushpender Singh, Aakansh Kasana, Priyadarshi Anand and Ujjawal Saini
3. Squadron (students from Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune, and Vignan's Institute of Information Technology, Andhra Pradesh): They won the third prize for their idea GlobalEase, a platform designed to help companies expand internationally by addressing complex compliance, market knowledge, financial support, and regulatory challenges. The comprehensive tool, powered by Generative AI (GenAI) and Machine Learning (ML), simplifies these challenges into clear, actionable insights.
   Team Members: Sanket Sopan Disale, Rajkumar Dongre, Madha Jyothi Sai Priya and Arya Khullar

For this hackathon, Amazon had partnered with Startup India (DPIIT), National Innovation Foundation (NIF; Dept. of Science and Technology), the NIF Incubation and Entrepreneurship Council (NIFientreC), and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE; Dept. of Higher Education). Over 100,000 students, entrepreneurs, grassroots innovators, service providers, working professionals, and SMBs participated in the hackathon to showcase India's innovative spirit.

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Participants tackled challenges such as leveraging social media for product listings, streamlining multi-channel fulfillment, simplifying cross-border trade, and developing sustainable solutions for e-commerce. The hackathon progressed through multiple phases, from idea submission to prototype development, culminating in a demo day before a distinguished jury panel comprising industry leaders. Throughout the journey, the participants benefited from expert mentoring sessions to refine their ideas and prototypes. The top three teams finally competed for an opportunity to visit Amazon's Seattle headquarters and received cash prizes worth up to ₹10 lakh. The winners were announced at the Amazon Smbhav 2024 Summit on December 10, taking center stage among thousands of business owners, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and global leaders.

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Since the inaugural edition in 2020, Amazon Smbhav has evolved into a marquee industry event bringing together government leaders, industry experts, MSMEs and the larger ecommerce ecosystem to ideate, plan, inspire, and unleash the true potential of a Digital India in the 21st century. The first four editions were attended by over 1,95,000 participants and focused on helping SMBs unlock growth opportunities, learn about new technologies/innovations, and explore other avenues. Amazon Smbhav 2024 took place on December 9 and 10 this year at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. It focused on SMB digitisation, exports, innovation, and sustainability, with a special focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Here are all the key announcements from the Smbhav 2024 event that support India’s priority sectors.