Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham students win All-Track Grand Prize at HackHarvard 2024

They won for their AI-powered application, Sustainify, which guides users toward sustainable living.

Students from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, won the All-Track Grand Prize at HackHarvard 2024 which was held from October 11-13, 2024, on Harvard University's campus. The event is a collegiate hackathon organized by Harvard University students.

‘Sustainify’ enables users to upload images of waste items, such as bottles or soda cans, and suggests creative DIY upcycling ideas. (Official website)

Announcing the success, the institute said the students competed with teams from institutions like Stanford, MIT, Harvard, and the University of Toronto, to clinch the "Overall Best Hack" award.

The winning team comprises third-year B.Tech Artificial Intelligence students from Amrita’s Coimbatore campus: Amrit Subramanian, Kottakki Srikar Vamsi, Chukka Navneet Krishna, and Surya Santhosh Kumar.

The team won for their AI-powered application, Sustainify, which guides users toward sustainable living by facilitating waste repurposing and eco-conscious shopping decisions.

"HackHarvard featured renowned professors and industry experts leading parallel sessions. We attended sessions by Prof. David Malan from CS50 and Dr. Leslie Valiant, a Turing Award winner. Our team dedicated the first 10 hours to brainstorming the right idea within the provided tracks: Smart City, Sustainability, Open Source Data, and Healthcare. After much discussion, we developed an app that allows users to upload a video of a product’s packaging, instantly revealing its environmental and health impacts. If a product is deemed harmful, the app suggests healthier alternatives. The final evaluations were conducted by over 40 judges, including product managers and CEOs from companies like Microsoft and various startups," said C Amrit Subramanian, one of the winners.

‘Sustainify’ enables users to upload images of waste items, such as bottles or soda cans, and suggests creative DIY upcycling ideas. Additionally, the app has an eco-shopping assistant feature, which scans products in stores and offers recommendations for items with lower carbon footprints. The app aims to inspire sustainable lifestyles, benefiting both people and the planet, informed the institute.

"This year, HackHarvard brought together 600 college students from across the globe, including students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford. It was a 36-hour marathon of coding and collaboration. The competition was judged on four key criteria: innovation, technical complexity, functionality, and collaboration. Our students’ project, 'Sustainify,' was the Best Project presented at the Hackathon. Second and third prize went to MIT students. It is for the first time that an Indian Team won the overall best since its inception in 2015," said Professor Dr Soman K P, Dean, Amrita School of Artificial Intelligence, Coimbatore.