Dish TV India concludes first ever hackathon for M&E and Broadcasting industry

New Delhi: Dish TV India Limited, world’s largest single-country DTH Company, has concluded the first ever hackathon – ‘Dish-a-thon’ – for M&E and Broadcasting industry.

Dish TV held the 30-hour Grand Finale on June 23-24 at CoWrks, Gurugram. More than 30 teams competed in an engaging battle of innovation, creativity and technical skills for over two days to resolve challenges and come up with constructive solutions to advance digital transformation for great customer experience.

This also included a round of live demo and Q&A session with judges from Dish TV India. Team Git Init from DTU claimed the top position with Teams Voicebox and Zodiac finishing as the first and second Runners up, respectively.

The winning teams created solutions like easy accessibility of DTH without using a remote, foolproof ready-to-use lead management system and AI enabled video commerce platform prototype. Dish-a-thon, powered by IncubateIND, was a unique hackathon aimed at inviting disruptive ideas covering path-breaking technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Big Data and witnessed spectacular participation of more than 1000 talented teams of young innovators, startups, students, developers, designers and data scientists across India.

Anil Dua, Group Chief Executive Officer, Dish TV India, said, “We received overwhelming response from all over India and we are thrilled with the success of Dish-a-thon. The innovative solutions designed by the top teams are pointers to the direction that technological advancements in Media & Entertainment industry will take. We are excited with the grand finish to our industry-first initiative and will work on these innovative ideas to turn them into revolutionary real-world solutions for the benefit of customers and the industry, as a whole.”

Talking about the solutions created during Dish-a-thon, V K Gupta, Chief Technical Officer, Dish TV India, said, “We are delighted to see participation from designers, developers, professionals, students and wizards from all over the country to create the future of M&E and Broadcasting industry. The teams used diverse themes in addition to their own disruptive ideas. These critical solutions based on absolute creativity will definitely have a wide impact on the entire industry and help us in further transforming and upgrading the television viewing experience for our customers.”

Sukhpreet Singh, Corporate Head – Marketing, Dish TV India, said, “As an industry-first initiative, Dish-a-thon accomplished wide scale and depth while encouraging the nation’s brightest minds to innovate and drive digital transformation in DTH industry. The grand finale, beaming with the enthusiasm of participants, was a fitting culmination to a successful competition sowing the seeds for future disruptions in the industry.”

Samkit Sharma, Co-founder of IncubateIND said, “We are proud to partner Dish TV, the pioneer in DTH industry in the inaugural year of Dish-a-thon. Dish TV has always been at the forefront of development with its path-breaking initiatives and the most receptive brand that has imbibed innovation in its culture. We are sure that some of the ideas that have come from this Dish-a-thon will be found useful by the leadership team of Dish TV."

Dish-a-thon was open for individual team of developers and startups. Dish TV, along with IncubateIND, shortlisted more than 40 teams for the 30-hour open-format grand finale. During the grand finale, participants got an opportunity to interact with industry experts and work with mentors to co-create and co-develop. The winners were recognized through certifications and cash rewards and also stand a chance to start a strategic engagement with DishTV. Before this, the first grand finale took place in Bangalore on June 16 & 17, 2018 with Team CoDish from Hyderabad claiming the title. Please visit dish-a-thon for further details.