ICICI Bank, which conducted an ‘Appathon’, a virtual mobile solution development program for developers, said it exposed over 200 APIs from across the entire group and allowed the developers and entrepreneurs to use these to create products. The bank announced the top three winners based on selection process lasting over two months and included over 2,000 applicants. Rajiv Sabharwal, ED of the bank, said this was the largest such competition in India. The first prize went to Mohit Talwadia from Bengaluru, who created Conversational Banking, a mobile solution aimed at enabling banking through conversations based on natural language processing and artificial intelligence on various channels like chat and speech. Yethapu Parthsaradhi Reddy from Hyderabad, who developed ICICIKey that increased the ease of payments and security through a digital keyboard, bagged the second prize. The third prize went to Samyag S. Shah from Pune, who developed iBanking, a mobile solution based on creating a mobile banking application with an interface that was similar to messaging service, WhatsApp. The awards included cash prizes worth Rs 10 lakh, 7.5 lakh and 5 lakh respectively, besides the option of participating in accelerator programs. Sabharwal said the bank will work with them to convert these mobile solutions into real life products and ensure that they are robust. Sabharwal added that the bank has been working with startups individually as well as through incubation workshops to discover and develop solutions.
