By 2025, half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas and IBM believes that technology can make a significant impact on the availability of water and its consumption. The environment is the next data frontier and collaboration is key to unlocking its insights. Today the world observes World Water Day, to celebrate the importance of water, raise awareness about the 2.2 billion people living without access to safe water and explores ways to how we can better protect this vital resource.
With this context, IBM has announced the launch of Call for Code 2021 Global Challenge with ‘Clean Water & Sanitation’ as one among 3 key themes. The ‘Call for Code’ is IBM’s largest and most ambitious Tech for Good platform – bringing together the world’s developers and problem-solvers to take on some of the most pressing concerns faced by the world today. The focus for the global challenge this year, is Climate Change & Sustainability. Key themes under this are: Clean water and Sanitation; Zero Hunger; and responsible production and green consumption.
What makes Call for Code unique is the impact it is making on the ground through its deployments in communities around the world. This isn’t check-book philanthropy. The winning solutions are successfully incubated, field-tested, and deployed in communities where they can make the greatest impact.
And it is in this context that the challenge in India is even more special. There are 24.5 million developers in the world (Worldwide Developer Population and Demographic Study 2020, Volume 1), with India being second-largest at 4.1 million and the fastest growing developer base globally. India and the United States are the only nations projected to have more than 5 million developers by 2025.
In IBM’s first three years of Call for Code, the company has consistently had more people participate from India than anywhere else. In recognition of this extraordinary engagement IBM has this year has added a standalone award of $5,000 USD for India. IBM highly values the developer ecosystem and open source community in India and its desire to help make a real difference with technology.
IBM started this journey of Call for Code, three years back as a multi-year, multi-million dollar investment that has today grown quickly into so much more. Since its inception in 2018, this movement has witnessed an overwhelming response from the developer community, with over 400,000 developer participants across 179 countries; and has already created more than 15,000 applications using IBM technologies.
With Call for Code, IBM is empowering the developer ecosystem globally with technologies like Open Hybrid Cloud, AI, Automation and Quantum; putting them in the hands of the world’s 24 million developers, data scientists, and problem solvers to help address some of the biggest issues of our time.
IBM recently announced a net zero pledge by 2030. As IBM works towards that goal, it will reduce emissions by 65% by 2025 (compared 2010 emissions) and use 75% of renewable energy by 2025 and 90% by 2030. IBM also intends to use technologies like carbon capture to remove emissions equal to our residual emissions. Over the last couple of years, multiple teams from India has achieved success in the Call for Code.
Said Sandip Patel, MD, IBM ISA, “As the leading Hybrid Cloud & AI company, it is our responsibility to leverage our technology expertise and strong ecosystem collaborations to help tackle some of the most pressing concerns faced by the world today. At IBM we not only solve business problems, but also put the power of tech to work for good. Being a responsible steward of technology is core to IBM’s culture and GoodTech is at the heart of it. The Call for Code Global Challenge 2021 reiterates this commitment to sustainability and to drive technology innovation in India, for India and the world.”
Bob Lord, SVP, WW Ecosystems & Blockchain, said, “As we launch our fourth year of Call for Code today, I am blown away by the response of the developer community and their passion to lean in and make a difference. To date, 400,000 developers and problem solvers across 179 nations have answered the call. In our first three years of Call for Code, we’ve consistently had more people participate from India than anywhere else. We’ve helped harness the enthusiasm of innovators from around the world to turn their ideas into real solutions and are thrilled to leverage the strength of a diverse and like-minded ecosystem of global partners in tackling issues like climate change and water conservation.”
Ajinkya Datalkar, CTO and co-founder, Agrolly, said, “Agrolly is the winning solution from 2020 Call for Code that IBM is helping to further develop and implement. It is an app to help small farmers make smarter decisions on what to grow as they face challenges due to climate change. Agrolly fills information gaps and provides personalized recommendations so farmers can learn from one another, make more informed decisions, obtain financing, and improve their economic outcomes. By combining weather forecasts with crop requirements published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the platform provides tailored information for each farmer by location, crop type, and the stage of growth. Agrolly is currently testing their app with farmers in India. We began this testing in February and are receiving feedback that we can incorporate as we continue to enhance the solution. Through this testing, we’re focusing on crops that are specific to India.”
Deepal Goyal, AVP, Altran – a part of Capgemini, said, “Altran was selected as the Top 3 contenders having the Potential to mitigate the devastating impact of COVID-19 last year for Call for Code 2020. The application “Are You Well” is an end-to-end solution that helps citizens as registered user, medical infrastructure/service provider and medical practitioner. It enables the user register to a health assistance system with ease and be assured of medical help whenever needed. The user is able to communicate with the right medical assistance system as per the risk level and ask for immediate help whenever needed.
