The Rajasthan DigiFest 2017 kicked-off in Udaipur on Saturday. The two-day IT event is hosted by the Department of Information Technology & Communication, Government of Rajasthan aimed at building upon the e-governance and using digitization to address the various issues within the state.
The DigiFest was started off with a 24-hour long Hackathon and also focuses on Rajasthan Government’s digital initiatives like Bhamashah and E-Mitra. The 2017 edition of the Rajasthan DigiFest also attracts various start-ups, and big IT companies as well. The Rajasthan government claims to have set a budget of Rs 500 Crore to invest in the start-ups to push the entrepreneurship in the state.
Rajasthan DigiFest, all about the 2017 edition
The event is focused on digitization of government services right from the digital initiatives like e-Mitra, e-Bazaar and like, the current efforts towards building more such digitization schemes through start-ups and IT sector. The festival is keeping Bhamashah scheme and the E-Mitra platform as the central theme with multiple branches in relevant fields.
Bhamashah
Bhamashah scheme is a direct benefit scheme with a focus on women empowerment. Initiated in 2008, the scheme recognizes the family as a unit and ‘lady of the house’ as the head of the family. The Bhamashah family card and the bank account are made in the name of the lady of the house and all the family benefits are directly transferred to her account.
E-Mitra
E-Mitra, on the other hand, is a digital platform offering over 290 government services via a single interface. The E-Mitra platform reached the people through 40,000+ kiosks in 33 districts across Rajasthan. The portal is much like the central Government’s UMANG app which was launched earlier this month.
iStartup Initiative
Another key element in limelight at the IT festival were various start-ups which displayed their ongoing work, business model and how they plan to disrupt the market with their ideas. This is in accordance with the Govt of Rajasthan’s iStartup initiative wherein the state government provides support to start-ups from and outside of Rajasthan.
Apart from these, they also demonstrated an employment portal and e-commerce portal as well. The e-bazar is a single-window access to e-commerce activities for various products. An integrated health management system and Online emission and Effluent Monitoring system are also demonstrated.
The Hackathon
The event kicked-off with a 24-hour long Hackathon. The IT competition saw a total of 1800 participants from various parts of India, who worked on their desired IT projects. These projects covered areas like the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, Virtual Reality, Big Data, Blockchain and many more.
Hackathon
The day-long hackathon was concluded on Sunday morning and the winners of the competition will be announced later in the day. There are prices worth Rs 15 Lakh, 10 Lakh and Rs 7.5 Lakh for the first, second and the third-place holders respectively.
The DigiFest Udaipur 2017 is the biggest IT event so far hosted by any state government. The DigiFest will also see the presence of Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. Moreover, speakers from various established IT firms across the globe such as Uber, Microsoft, Autodesk are also going to be there. The DigiFest 2017 will be open until December 3 for all visitors and the locals of Udaipur can visit until December 4.
