July 15, 2016 TnH Global 0

Team FlyBot wins flydubai’s first Air Travel Hackathon by HackMania

100 coders participated in developing innovative travel solutions for flydubai

Dubai-based flydubai’s Air Travel Hackathon held on 09 and 10 July 2016 in Hyderabad saw participation from 100 developers. The hackathon, which was organised in partnership with Hyderabad-based tech start-up, HackMania, aimed at building ideas for enhancing air travel using flydubai’s Application Programming Interface (API) from its newly launched developer and API portal https://developer.flydubai.com/. The event was held at T-Hub, IIIT Campus.

FlyBot, an all girls’ team, won the Hackathon and they received a prize of a trip to Dubai including three nights’ accommodation as well as the opportunity to explore another destination on the flydubai network. The second prize was a return ticket to Dubai with three nights’ stay and the team that won the third prize received return tickets to Dubai.

Selected from over 400 applicants the hackers were selected based on their knowledge of the coding language, their past experience of participating in a Hackathon. The event was focused on developing products around the themes of air travel and customer experience. During the two days, teams pitched their ideas and received feedback from the panel of judges and mentors including flydubai’s IT Team as well as other veterans from the travel and tech industry.

Commenting on the success of the Hackathon, Ramesh Venkat, flydubai’s Chief Information Officer (CIO), said: “The flydubai team is committed to enhancing our product offerings. This initiative has helped us reach young bright minds and we are happy to see such high standards of innovation. We are keen to build on the ideas that have resulted from the Hackathon and use it to enrich our customer experience. This is only the beginning and we look forward to a wealth of ideas being generated from the entire series of Hackathons that are scheduled throughout the year. This will ensure that we remain at the forefront of our technological development.”

flydubai’s open Application Programming Interface (API) strategy allows business partners, consumers and the developer communities to build a customised booking experience and create their own apps using a comprehensive set of APIs from reservations to check-in. The Hackathon is part of a series that flydubai will conduct throughout the year in order to promote its API App Store and connect with the young developer community that is driving innovation.

“We are overwhelmed with the tremendous response we received from the Hackathon. HackMania is proud to be part of this initiative and it is great to see an international airline like flydubai encourage innovation in the travel industry. Around 15 working prototypes were developed during the event. We hope that the ideas that were generated will help flydubai take its offerings to the next level,” said 23-year-old Rajat Shahi, Founder and CEO, HackMania.