Flipkart employees also face traffic blues first hand with most of their offices located on busy areas
Highlights
- Flipkart asks people to come up with solutions to Bengaluru's traffic
- Participants will be given about two weeks to work on their ideas
- The best solutions will be presented on July 1
E-commerce major Flipkart turns 10 this year, and in order to do something for Bengaluru - the city in which it took birth - it are trying to help sort out the city's notorious traffic. The Gridlock Hackathon goes live today - an initiative in which Flipkart is asking people to get on the platform and share ideas to help come up with solutions to Bengaluru's traffic blues.
Flipkart's Chief Architect, Utkarsh B, told NDTV, "In our own small way we are creating an open innovation platform. People can come in, collaborate, discuss, brainstorm. And seed certain ideas that can help solve part of the problem. It could be small localised junctions like Silk Board junction, KR Puram junction - what can be done for that. Or it could be a micro problem Flipkart is invested towards."
"Bengaluru is certainly facing the brunt of traffic. Is there a systemic solve to it - whether completely backed by technology or if you are leveraging technology in a partial way? We being a technology power house, can we create this platform, nudge people and motivate them? It is the power of collective will. We will be setting up a portal where people can come and register their teams," he added.
On being asked whether there was a conflict of interest, after all, many people shop online so that they can avoid the terrible traffic, Mr Utkarsh said, "None of the customers will be happy if the ecosystem around them is not happy. It will be a lot of gratification that we can give back to the city."
Flipkart employees also face traffic blues first hand with most of their offices located on busy areas.
Participants will be given about two weeks to work on their ideas. Then the submissions will stop and the best ideas will be shortlisted on the basis of whether they are feasible, impactful and relevant. The top ten teams will present their ideas before a jury.
Mr Utkarsh said, "At the end we don't just want a theoretical solution. We want them to convert it into a working prototype."
The best solutions will be presented on July 1 - and the winners will get Flipkart vouchers worth 2 lakhs, 1 lakh and 50 000 for the first three places.