hSenid Mobile hosted TADHack Sri Lanka for the third consecutive time this year The competition was intense among the teams with unique ideas. However, among the very innovative ideas, only 17 teams were selected for the final hackathon. Team Siplo was one of the lucky contestants at TADHack Sri Lanka 2016 held in Colombo.
The team had plans to work on an online tutoring platform, which has virtual classroom facility. The platform focuses on both local and international students to help them overcome the barrier of access to education. The team’s proposed idea, was captivating and innovative at the same time that it took everybody’s attention at TADHack Final pitching day. Following their debut pitch at the hackathon, we wanted to ask few questions from Siplo team leader Upekha Atupola, to talk about their future plans to take their product to the next level.
How did you get involved in Telecom Application Development?
We are students from university of Moratuwa, and since the day we started learning about coding, we wanted to see the practical use of them. Initially, we did that as a hobby but later on we understood that there is a much bigger role we can play, therefore we moved into different ventures including telco industry.
Have you and your team done telecom app development projects before?
Not directly related to telco, but in most cases, our products needed telco integration either to create connectivity or to provide value addition features to the users
Do you think that you and your team were able to get the best out of TADHack meet ups?
TADHack was one of the greatest opportunities we got so far. It is something that went beyond from a mere hackathon, providing us a total experience. The mentoring sessions, during the hackathon, gave us a lot of insights and value addition to our careers as well as to our products.
What were your expectations at TADHack ?
The initial idea was to win the challenge. At the same time, we expected that we will get exposed to lot of knowledge and to lot of people that can support us from different aspects.
How did the mentors help your team in overcoming problems?
They gave us a great support in terms of handling technical issues. They were always with us, guiding us, in the right direction.
How do you plan to implement the project?
We have already formed a startup for our idea and we are a registered company now. Similarly, we got the people with right chemistry to execute the project. Currently, we are planning the marketing campaign and we will be in the market soon.
Where do you see your project in five years down the line?
We want to see our project as an internationally accepted product with brand presence over different countries of the world.
Team Siplo, is optimistic and what they have planned for their future seems promising. With the passion to drive innovation and bring in new businesses, team Siplo has a bright future ahead of them backed by the success of TADHack. We wish them best of luck in their future endeavors.
