Nineleaps, a Bengaluru-based product engineering company that provides application services and accelerates product development for a range of customers, has successfully been able to manage and conduct recently a two day Virtual Hackathon for its employees working remotely in more than 75 cities across India. In-spite of the challenges of working remotely, the Virtual Hackathon saw participation of over 183 employees of Nineleaps split across 24 teams. Finally, 10 of the teams were awarded prizes across various categories.
This year’s Hackathon saw a change as it was held remotely and was one of the key initiatives taken by Nineleaps to boost Remote Employee Engagement during the pandemic and maintain a strong work culture digitally.
The Hackathon, a flagship event of Nineleaps, is a two-day annual coding event at the company. It encourages employees to form teams and create innovative solutions for real-life problems by coding overnight. The purpose of the Hackathon is to rekindle the coder’s spirit by challenging them to think and create out-of-the-box solutions for everyday problems. The best solutions from the event are then selected and further support is extended so that the project launches into the market.
As the Hackathon was held remotely, it utilized various virtual platforms such as GitHub, AWS, Slack. All communication with judges happened on Zoom and Hangout calls. Though the challenge of remote operation was ever-present, there was an overwhelming response from the employees’ side.
“Nineleaps has always been dynamic when it comes to adapting to change. We foresaw the possibility of remote working and started establishing protocols way before it was made mandatory,” said Divy Shrivastava, Co-Founder and CEO of Nineleaps. “Thanks to our employees, we were not only able to successfully implement a remote working framework but also took it one step ahead by organizing and successfully conducting a Virtual Hackathon. Despite the challenges, we have been able to deliver better value for our clients and are hiring more aggressively than before the pandemic.”