GCC is a pre-incubation activity targeted mainly to discover innovative solutions for fintech-related problems. IBITF wishes to invite individuals from different regions with innovative solutions for solving issues and challenges (particularly in the Indian context) in one or more of the four thematic areas of financial technologies designated to the organization. Entrepreneurs need strong support and an advisory system in order to turn their start-up ideas into valuable businesses. As a part of the activities at IBITF, one of the ambitions is to establish a strong support system for entrepreneurship and start-ups in the Fintech arena.
The Identification of problem areas is what differentiates the GCC from other hackathons or challenges conducted by educational institutions.IBITF, in consultation with relevant government departments, has been able to determine a few real-world problem statements in the specified Fintech domain(s), which, if resolved, would greatly benefit a large population or solve a major bottleneck by augmenting or replacing the traditional functioning of the financial sectors, Mentioned below is the list of departments that submitted the problem statements for the first GCC:
1. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)
2. National Informatics Centre, Chhattisgarh State Centre
- The competition is open only to bona fide students of educational institutes of repute (Centrally Funded Technical Institutions (CFTI)/NIRF ranking below 100) of the course B.E./B. Tech (3rd and 4th Year) and M. Tech(1st year).
- Students shall apply individually or in groups, with a maximum of three students per group.\\
- Only those proposals that are duly signed and approved by the Director/Dean(R&D)/Head of the Institution would be accepted.
- All the proposals should be submitted for financial support ONLINE MODE ONLY. A copy of the same should be emailed to [email protected]
Problem statement – 1 (NPCI)
Detection of fraudulent transactions among transactions between persons and merchants (P2M) by machine learning models that are robust to inconsistencies and imbalance. The Metric for evaluation is a high recall value with minimum possible false positives.
Expectations: Discover and develop novel machine learning approaches, that are robust to inconsistencies and imbalance that can capture fraudulent transactions in the continuously changing landscape of UPI transactions, that not just have the best possible recall but also, have significantly low false positives, that’ll help hundreds of thousands of businesses reduce their fraud loss and increase their revenue and of course, you will save party people just like you the hassle of false positives.
Problem statement – 2 (NPCI)
QR-based payments are the preferred mode of making digital payments as these are easy to generate, deploy, share and use(scanning). As QRs are extremely low-cost solutions and asset lite, their proliferation is also very high. However, QR-based payments are also a potential source of risk in the payments systems as these are easy to be replaced, copied, or tampered with. There is a need to make enhancements in the QR-based payments to make these more secure while retaining its core strengths of being easy to generate, share, deploy, use, and keeping the cost low.
Expectations:
● Make the QRs generation and sharing complete secure.
● Ability to identify the tampering of QR.
● The prescribed solution should not make the QR heavy so that it does not impact the transaction flow.
● The suggested solution should be created using open-sourced tools & software. No part of the solution should contain anything proprietary.
Problem statement – 3 (NPCI)
In the case of financial transactions, getting the transaction confirmation is essential. This becomes very important in the case of merchant payments wherein the payer sends money, however, the merchant does not receive the confirmation or is not able to track the specific transaction, and then refuses to provide goods/services. This leads to customer disputes and grievances. Currently, standard methods such as SMS, email, payment confirmation screenshot, or in case of face-to-face payments, the payer shows their payment screen. However, these solutions are sometimes unreliable, expensive to implement, and require multiple system-level integrations. These solutions also have limitations such as the confirmation can be received by only one person (in the case of merchant transactions typically the one getting the payment confirmation and the one delivering goods are different), and the onus is on the recipient to manually check the payment confirmation leading to inefficiencies. Most importantly it leads to reconciliation issues. There are few solutions in the markets, however, they are proprietary.
There is a need to create a solution that:
● Provides instant payment confirmation to both sender and receiver.
● Provides a mechanism for the receiver (especially merchants) to reconcile previous payments.
● Are interface and channel-agnostic
● Caters to the need of all sections of users.
Expectations
● Create a solution that provides a payment confirmation and reconciliation mechanism for all types of digital payments.
● The solution should be interface (e.g. mobile) or channel (e.g. SMS) agnostic and should support all existing and future modes of communication.
● The solution should cater to the needs of all cross-sections of users.
● The suggested solution should be created using open-sourced tools & software. No part of the solution should contain anything proprietary.
Problem statement – 4 (NIC, CHHATTISGARH STATE CENTRE)
The government of India as well as the state Government launches many flagship projects from time to time for the welfare of the various sections of people residing in rural and urban areas of the state like MGNREGA, PM Awas Yojana, National Rural livelihood mission, various pensions like old-age pension, disability pension, widow pension, etc. All these schemes involve payment to the beneficiaries residing in the far-flung areas of the state. Many of these areas in rural have many challenges related to reaching the banking institutions, huge distances from the urban/semi-urban areas, road and transport facilities, and network connectivity. Due to these challenges the allotted benefits fail to reach the beneficiary within time, depriving him/her of the facilities extended by the government for the upliftment of their income/basic facilities.
Since the launch of the flagship schemes of the Government like NREGA in 2006 through which government provides minimum wages to the poor beneficiaries, many initiatives have been taken to ensure that the wages reach the beneficiary in cash within the stipulated time. Owing to the limited reach of banks/ post offices a BCM(business correspondent model) model was launched by many banks through which a designated sum was issued to a village entrepreneur, who in turn moves around his/her designated area and distributes the eligible amount in cash to the beneficiary through the micro atm attached with a biometric device or through a kiosk. Under the National Rural livelihood Mission (NRLM) scheme the Government has also enrolled women self-help groups (SHG) called ‘BC Sakhi’ to provide a livelihood to the women entrepreneurs, as well as to extend the reach of rural payments to the beneficiaries. Despite various efforts, various studies and reports show delayed payments to the beneficiaries and a concrete solution to the wage/pension payment to the rural beneficiaries remains a challenge to the Government agencies.
Problem Statement
Design and development of a suitable IT-based solution for the timely wage/pension payment to the rural beneficiaries, under various Government schemes.
Awards:-
Benefits to Participants
Selected applications making it to the next phases would receive monetary prizes as detailed below. Eventually, a few selected startups would be qualified to register their product/service as a startup and receive financial assistance in the form of seed money from IIT-Bhilai. Applicants/teams that provide a very positive, effective, and efficient solution to a major bottleneck/challenge for the identified problem statements could be selected by your department and may receive work orders to implement such solutions on the ground.
Stage1: If the application is shortlisted for Phase IV. INR 9,000/application
Stage2: Application is selected for the Final Presentation Round, Phase V. Rs. 20,000/-
Stage 3: Top 3 applications selected after the final presentations 3rd Prize: 50000/- 2nd Prize 75000/- 1st Prize Rs. 1,00,000/-
Non-Fiscal Incentives
Technical Mentorship by IIT Bhilai Faculty.
Business Mentorship by Business & Industry Experts.
Collaborate with the user Agencies in solving major FinTech Challenge.
Special Incentives
Jackpot Stage: Winners of Stages 2 and 3 could be provided financial assistance in the form of Seed Money of up to INR 10,00,000/- (if the expert committee decides and the applicant/team is able to register a start-up and render a pilot demonstration by Dec. 2022 (IBITF startup policy is applicable).
Deadline:- 31-08-2022
