Sahamati Hackathon 2020 Press Release
DigiSahamati Foundation (‘Sahamati’), the collective of the Account Aggregator ecosystem, is organizing a hackathon from July 4th until August 2nd. This hackathon is intended to drive awareness of RBI’s Account Aggregator (AA) framework, a set of specifications intended to give individuals and businesses greater control over their data.
The upshot of this increased control over data is enhanced security and portability between financial service providers, resulting in more choice, better pricing, personalized products, and increased financial inclusion.
The AA framework, which is the consent layer of the India Stack, comes into play whenever an individual or business wishes to port their data from a financial information provider (FIP), such as a bank, to a financial information user (FIU), such as a lender or an SME accounting system.
In the US, the largest account aggregator business – Plaid – was acquired for $5 bn by Visa; thanks to the AA framework, India now has the necessary conditions to nurture several similarly valuable and innovative businesses. With consented data flows becoming the norm due to legal and cultural reasons, the opportunity for AAs is set to expand significantly in the years ahead.
During the hackathon, teams will be able to consume mock APIs and dummy data in order to simulate the functioning of the AA framework. Using these tools, teams can build applications that can leverage financial data to deliver value to users.
Some examples of these applications include,
- Personal finance management (PFM) apps
- Price comparison and cost saving recommendation engines
- Robo-advisors for investment advice
- Data ingestion and underwriting tools for lending or insurance.
Over the 4-week course of the hackathon, which will be conducted entirely online, there will be a number of masterclasses and office hours sessions. In these masterclasses, experts from the AA industry will give presentations on topics such as AA security, user interface design, and business models. There will also be some office hours sessions in which participants of the hackathons can ask these mentors questions and receive personal feedback.
At the end of the four week period, teams from the hackathon will present their projects to a panel of judges. The judging panel, which will be comprised of leaders from the world of fintech, banking, AAs, and venture capital, will select and award prizes to the winning teams. The final presentations made during the hackathon will be public, and more than 35 venture capital investors are expected to attend this online demo day.
The hackathon is open to any individuals who have an interest in building financial technology for India; currently, more than 600 students, startups, corporates, and entrepreneurs have signed up. The hackathon is being organized in partnership with Devfolio, an Indian company specializing in managing community hackathons.
Interested participants can sign up at this link: https://aa-hackathon.devfolio.co and learn more on the Sahamati blog: https://bit.ly/aa-hackathon-01
For more information about the hackathon, please contact info@sahamati.org.in