A unique event that combines data science prowess with development sector challenges, the Code4Change Hackathon 2023-24 (C4C), held by the Indian School of Development Management’s (ISDM) Centre for Data Science and Social Impact (CDSSI) came to a glittering conclusion at the SAIACS CEO Centre in Bengaluru on May 24.
Team DevSol4, from Delhi, composed of Jagannath R, Agrima Sahore, Sidra Ali, and Mallika Bhave from Development Solutions, a MERL+ services-based organisation in New Delhi focusing on strategic and actionable consulting across development sector stakeholders, was announced as the winner.
The C4C event was the culmination of a month-long hackathon; a distinctive platform to build bridges between the data science community and the development sector. C4C offered data science enthusiasts a chance to leverage their knowledge of data, data science, ML, and AI applications/tools, and create innovative, effective solutions for social impact.
Participants had to build a model addressing the problem statement: ‘Predicting the financial vulnerability of women-headed households in rural India’. For this, they were given access to a relevant data set from ISDM’s data partner, People Research on India’s Consumer Economy (PRICE), a Delhi-based non-profit think tank. Participants had to identify patterns that could help Social Purpose Organisations (SPOs) plan and deliver interventions in this area.
Over 200 participants, including students, development professionals, and data scientists, registered for the hackathon individually or in teams. The top five solutions were shortlisted for final presentations to an eminent panel of judges, including Dr. Anand Rao, Professor of Data Science and AI at Carnegie Mellon University, Jayita Bhattacharya, Senior Director of Insights & Data at Capgemini, and Mayukh Choudhury, Co-founder of MILAAP.
The other four finalists were, ‘EmpowerHer Finance’, a team of five students from Bharathi Vidyapeeth’s College of Engineering for Women, Pune; Balwant Singh Mehta and Siddharth Dhote from the Institute for Human Development, Delhi; Vivek Sinha from Pradan; and ‘The Soothsayers’, Harshavardhan Shete and Kaustubh Varat from PDAG Consultants & Haryana Urban Development Authority.
Dr. Rao, Chairperson of the CDSSI Advisory Council, commented, “We received many wonderful, interesting submissions, and evaluated them for relevance, accuracy, predictive power, fairness, impact, and the quality of visualisation. Such solutions will be immensely beneficial for SPOs to optimise their work, improve efficiency, and achieve impact at scale. We chose DevSol4’s solution, a robust financial vulnerability index, as it has a good balance between detailed analysis, relevance to the problems of the social sector, and is actionable.”
The hybrid event attracted 45 attendees, including funders, non-profit leaders, and data science professionals. Ravi Sreedharan, President & Co-founder, ISDM, said, “We are very excited by the response to this, the first edition of Code4Change. It is a biannual event in the CDSSI roster, and an integral part of ISDM’s ambition to help build communities, solutions and platforms for the social sector, to help SPOs become more effective, and ultimately, more resilient. An initiative such as this helps draw more data science professionals to the social sector, and involves them in facilitating social change”
The event also featured a panel discussion on ‘The Role of Enabling Organisations in Driving Social Change’ and the release of CDSSI’s report, ‘The Power of Data for Impact, Part 2: An Overview of Data Enablers in the Social Sector’. Panellists included Manije Kelkar, Founder of Goalkeep, Sandhya Vasudevan, Grants Committee Member at SVP, and Rajsekar Manokaran, AI/ML Consultant at DigitalGreen.
About Indian School of Development Management: The Indian School of Development Management (ISDM) is an internationally renowned, autonomous institution established in 2016. It aims to define Development Management as a distinct domain from business management or public administration, enabling social purpose organisations to achieve population-scale impact. ISDM is dedicated to building the theory and practice of Development Management and transforming how social purpose organisations are led and managed.
ISDM is a preeminent institution focused on establishing and strengthening the domain of Development Management. Citicorp Finance (India) Limited is part of the Citi franchise in India and is supporting CDSSI through CSR funding.