As part of the 19th IdeaLab! founders conference, the WHU initiative Business Meets Tech organized its second IdeaHack Hackathon last week. More than 70 participants from all over Germany came together to collectively find solutions within a 24-hour time limit to the given challenges.
"A platform which brings business and technology together." Jaschminca Naveenthirarajah, General Manager of IdeaHack, summarized this as the vision of the event in her opening speech. The aim would be to connect students from a wide variety of backgrounds and regions in Germany in order to create something new together.
This year, for the first time, a format was chosen in which students could decide between two challenges: The first challenge was presented by the Indian IT company Infosys. In the area of smart cities, the participants were asked to build either an app or a website that would simplify the lives of students in cities and at the same time make living more digital. The challenge was won by the trio Colate, who managed to develop an app that allows international students to find a place to live and to purchase a SIM-card before arriving in Germany.
The second challenge of this year's IdeaHack was sponsored by the German company Gedankentanken, which has made it its mission to "support people on their individual path to self-realization." GTBuddy best translated the challenge behind this mission by developing an app with which one can visualise goals and pursue them more easily.
But for Jaschminca and her team, it's not just about having two winners in the end of the event. They are motivated by the idea of providing a platform for students who actually want to create something. And in the best case, Jaschminca says, a start-up will be founded at the end.