Digitising the entire Indian Railways is a herculean task. However, leading the way to a paperless ticketing process is Team Logic View—the winner of the Smart India Hackathon 2018.

A total of 17,000 teams had participated in the hackathon, that aimed to bring innovative technological solutions for several issues flagged by 27 ministries. Out of that number, 46 teams were shortlisted for the Student Innovation category, with just 6 coming out victorious.

Team Logic View topped the list with their application which will help ticket collectors (TCs) to track and record tickets, by scanning a simple QR code present in the railway tickets. This will also solve the issue of black-ticketing in Indian Railways and TCs selling away pre-booked tickets.

For the development of their application, the six-member team from the Oriental Institute of Science and Technology, Bhopal, was awarded Rs 1 lakh.

“We came to know that the railways spend ₹1.2 lakh per train on paper charts, and there are around 12,500 trains in India. So the project was to reduce this cost of paper by eliminating the pen-paper work in the railways and digitising it,” said 21-year old Yash Bhayre, from Team Logic View.

Team Apostrophe from Sarvajanik College of Engineering and Technology, Surat and Team Fashion from KK Somnath College of Engineering, Mumbai, were the first and second runners-up at the event, respectively.

There were other fantastic innovations as well. For example, Kryptonite6, a team, has created an App to minimise food wastage, which allows donors to upload the availability of food and using a cross-platform application, individuals or NGOs who need it, can track and reach the location to collect the food.

The event was a major success in terms of bringing out concepts that can be applied in our day to day life. Students across India are a valuable resource and using their skills is a sure way to secure a technologically advanced future.

Congratulations to the winners and to every participant for their time and effort!