Team Mirai of Japanese and Indian youth project Japan as a solution to unemployment in India, wins 1st award: Ideathon – Hack the Innovative Future    

VARANASI: The 9-day long venture-based Ideathon – Hack the Innovative Future finally ended here at the International Cooperation and Convention Centre (ICCC) – Rudraksha in Varanasi on Saturday with the announcement of winning teams comprising 20 Japanese and equal number of Indian youths. Traveling 900-km distance between Delhi and Varanasi by road together in 10 teams, these youth (18-25 years) with the help of their respective mentors identified problems that plagued India, and put their heads together and offered solutions with their innovative ideas after conducting through primary and secondary research.

The Mirai team comprising Takatoshi Shotsubo, Ms. Ruriko  Kubota, Ms. Mansi, and Tejasawi Samavedula that offered solutions to the unemployment problem prevalent in India, emerged as the winner in the team category. The winning theme of their presentation was “Reducing unemployment rate in India through the adjustment of supply and demand in both countries.”

The team Jijivisha with the theme “Centralization of ambulance services” was adjudged as runner up while team Sakura Sahay with the theme “Agriculture and Employment-Online agricultural land market connecting entrepreneurs and farmers” was announced at 3^rd position in the team category.

The awardees were felicitated by the outgoing Ambassador of Japan to India Mr. Satoshi SUZUKI, the jury members and also the mentors.

The jury included the Chairman of this Ideathon, and Chairman and Managing Director of Mitsubishi Corporation India Pvt. Ltd. Yoji Taguchi, Advisor (Japan) to the Prime Minister of India Prof. Ashok Chawla, Chairman at the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry in India (JCCII), and Chairman & Managing Director at Marubeni Corporation India Susumu Wakamori, Director of Associated Container Terminals Ltd. Bharat Joshi, and a representative of the Embassy of Japan, New Delhi.

The team work award was won by the team ViNgae that made presentation on  “Staffing of nurses between Japan and India” followed by two runner up teams – Metro with “Production of clean energy using food-loss” theme and team Doraemon with “Solving the supply chain of agricultural products through block chain” theme.

A special award – Silent but Dangerous went to team SATORI (Making India cleaner through waste segregation), the best poster award went to team Direction (Solving gender gap issues in India through English training and special contents), and the award One With Brain Power was won by the team Motto Chalo (System the problem of traffic jam). The team Masala & Sushi won the excellent team award.

The bridge building award was won by Deepti Chaurasia, Nice assistance award by Tejasawi, the mood maker award to Kritika, and the leadership award to H. Yuta. Ogawa Jun and Saurabh Joshi won the HIF award.

However, the selection of teams for various category award went through a long and tedious process. On the final days, various jury members hurled normal to tough questions on the contestants.

According to Ms. Naho Shigeta, CEO, InfoBRIDGE India – one of the organizors and event Producer who remained with the youths during the 9-day long road journey, said that various teams of mentors, mostly Japanese professionals and entrepreneurs assisted the touring youngsters from Japan and India to nurture the latter’s ideas, helped with identifying gap areas and concerns, grow their skills, make them take better decisions, and helped them gain new perspectives on their life and career.

Aged between 23 and 29, these mentors included Kohsuke Kumagai, Ms. Aparna Ramkumar, both from Mitsubishi, Takashi Akiba from Sumitomo, Ms. Madoka Horio, Okaya Kouki, Rahul Gupta from All Nippon Airways (ANA), Ms. Akari Oda from Japan Embassy. Jokyu an entrepreneur turned monk from Tokyo and Ono Hirofumoi from Tokyo, and other three Japanese professionals joined online from India (two from Bengaluru and one from Hyderabad) to assist the youths.

Kenji Sugino, Secretary-General, JCCII who accompanied the teams of youths from Japan and India throughout the 900-km long stretch between Delhi and Varanasi, said that the journey was long and tiring but the participants never let up their efforts to learn more about each other’s culture, they explored more and worked extra hard to make presentations for the final day.

Also present on the final day included Shusuke Suto, Managing Director Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (I), Tsuneya Katagiri, Country Manager, ANA, Raman Narula, Managing Director, FORMULA Group, Yoso Nakashima, Director, NTT India, Junichi Wakabayashi, Managing Director, MOL Logistics (India), Seiichi Suzuki, Chief Representative, Dai Nippon Printing(DNP), Toshihiko KURIHARA, Chief Representative, Japan Bank of International Cooperation (JBIC), New Delhi, SAKUMA TAKASHI, Director, Sumitomo Corporation India.

The 900-km long journey took off from Gurugram (New Delhi), from where they first went to Agra – the city of Taj Mehal, then to  Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh and finally to Prayagraj (Allahabad) experiencing diverse culture and values through their route. Here, these teams stayed for three days, and made presentations at the International Cooperation and Convention Centre – Rudraksha (means Bodhi tree fruit). It was developed with the assistance of Japan.  On Saturday, a sumptuous dinner was hosted by the Embassy of Japan in Delhi for the traveling teams.

Also read: For Japanese youth, India is a country of hope, bright future, and prospects despite many odds