The Smart India Hackathon (SIH) seeks to encourage an innovative spirit across the nation

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the Smart India Hackathon 2022 Grand Finale on August 25 via video conferencing, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) announced on Tuesday.

According to the PMO, the Prime Minister has made a consistent effort to encourage an innovative spirit across the nation, particularly among young people. The Smart India Hackathon (SIH), which was founded in 2017, was created with this objective in mind.

SIH is a national project designed to provide students with a forum to address important issues facing society, businesses, and the government. It strives to foster a culture of product innovation, problem-solving, and unconventional thinking among students.

The fact that the number of teams registered for SIH has increased four-fold, from roughly 7500 in the first edition to about 29,600 in the currently running fifth edition, indicates the event's rising popularity. This year, more than 15,000 students and mentors are travelling to the 75 nodal centres to take part in the SIH 2022 grand finale, the PMO said.

Students from over 2900 schools and 2200 Higher Education Institutions will tackle 476 problem statements from across 53 Union Ministries in the finale, including Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of Temple inscriptions and translations in Devanagari Scripts, IoT-enabled risk monitoring system in Cold Supply Chain for perishable food items, High-resolution 3D model of terrain, infrastructure and roads conditions in disaster struck areas, etc.

In an effort to foster an innovative culture and inculcate a problem-solving mindset among school pupils, the Smart India Hackathon-Junior has also been launched this year.