ICICI Bank announces winners of ‘ICICI Appathon’, its mobile app development challenge

The eminent jury chose the top three winners from over 2,000 participants including a large number of entries from international developers and startups. The bank will incorporate the winning mobile innovations into its digital road map.            

The first winning application focused on conversational banking based on artificial intelligence and natural language processing. The other winning applications emphasized on enabling payments using digital keyboards and a chat messenger based banking app that uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to simplify information, respectively.

The jury comprised  Rajiv Sabharwal, Executive Director, ICICI Bank; Mr. Anup Gupta, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners; Mr. Ashish Kumar, Vice President - Cloud, IBM Asia Pacific; and T.R. Ramachandran, Group Country Manager-India & South Asia, VISA.

Rajiv Sabharwal, Executive Director, ICICI Bank said, “It is encouraging to see the response that ‘ICICI Appathon’ has received. With India becoming the second largest market globally in terms of mobile subscribers as well as smartphones, we are witnessing a paradigm shift in consumer preference towards doing everything ‘on-the-go’, on the mobile phone. We introduced ‘ICICI Appathon’ to tap into the exceptional talent in developers, technopreneurs and technology startups in our country and across the globe. We are delighted to have got interesting ideas which we believe will enable development of breakthrough solutions, making mobile banking simpler than ever before. We believe that such programmes will further provide impetus to many more young developers to think ‘out-of-the-box’ and strengthen the Government's 'Digital India' mission.”

Added, jury member,  Anup Gupta, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners, “It is indeed a pleasure to be part of this program and I congratulate ICICI Bank for this initiative. The Grand Finale had a good mix of diverse ideas across themes like payments, rural banking, SMEs and insurance among others. Technology is playing a central role in increasing reach and improving efficiency across financial services; and initiatives like these will go a long way in encouraging talent and innovation in the ecosystem.”

Said jury member, Ashish Kumar, Vice President - Cloud, IBM Asia Pacific, “The cloud is opening up new opportunities for app development by making it easier for developers to scale and incorporate data in ways that was never possible before. Together on an innovation journey, we partnered with ICICI to deliver unique experiences to its clients. The partnership embraces the contribution from developers, students and technology enthusiast to create next generation banking applications.  Bringing together the best of IBM technology and depth of expertise, we will support the bank in its mission to develop innovative applications for its customers and propel it into the digital era.”

Added, jury member, TR Ramachandran, Group Country Manager, India and South Asia, Visa, “Visa sees opening-up access to our global network as an opportunity to foster innovation in payments and global commerce. With Visa’s rich set of APIs we are excited how the open platforms can support our clients, industry partners and the developer community to fuel payment innovation. ICICI Appathon saw large participation from the start-up and student communities and it was very encouraging to hear some of the ideas that will help move the industry forward.”

All participants were judged on five criteria - uniqueness of the proposition, functionality, business potential, user experience and scalability. The top three winners won a total prize money of over Rs 20 lakh along with a potential engagement opportunity with ICICI Bank. They will also be mentored by ICICI Bank and the partners of the programme, IBM and VISA. Additionally, winners of ‘ICICI Appathon’ will get fast-tracked entry into the '10,000 Startups' of NASSCOM, if they choose to apply for it. Moreover, two members of each winning team will also have access to 91springboard, a community of freelancers, startups and established businesses.