The Batelco FinTech Hackathon returned with a bang last week amid much fanfare. Organized by Brinc Batelco IoT Hub in collaboration with Batelco, the competition this year was open only to Batelco employees.
However, the fact that the competition ended up being extremely exciting and competitive is a testimony itself to Batelco’s immense in-house talent pool.
The Batelco FinTech Hackathon is essentially a platform for like-minded individuals with a knack for innovation and problem-solving. There were three teams in total, each fighting against the other two and, of course, time.
The time-bound challenge was to come up with a FinTech solution that benefits Batelco on multiple fronts including one or more of the following: enhancing product offerings, boost customer experience, generate new streams of revenue, and ease transactions.
All the participants received guidance and mentorship from a slew of world-renowned experts serving the Kingdom’s financial sector. The winner was slated to receive a cash reward of BHD 1000.
The competitions spanned two days during which each team finalized their concepts and pitch their solutions to a panel of experts comprising Marwa Aleskafi from Brinc, Yasmeen Alsharaf from the Bahrain Central of Bank, Hussain Alaswad from Batelco.
Such fierce was the competition that in the end, two teams had to share the first prize in what was essentially the first tie in the history of the Hackathon.
Overall, the competition provided the participants with a valuable learning experience, which was reflected in their feedback following the declaration of the results.
Wafa Mohamed, one of the participants, stated “In those 2 days, I learned a lot from different experiences. I had a great time, getting exposed to different ideas and different perspectives, especially from the mentors that gave us hints, their experiences and their point of view. Thank you very much.”.
“It was a good experience for me and my team. We were able to challenge ourselves in multiple aspects of the hackathon. We were able to manage the time constraints we had. “ said Ahmed Bucheeri, another participant.
