Meesho announces internal hackathon to build GenAI talent pool and drive innovation and collaboration

Meesho, India’s only true e-commerce marketplace, is excited to announce its 30 hours GenAI Hackathon, scheduled to take place from Thursday, July 13, to Friday, July 14, 2023. This hackathon aims to fuel creativity, expedite innovation, and drive impactful solutions that can be swiftly implemented within the organisation. It serves as a platform to foster innovation, critical thinking skills, analytical skills, and talent development among Meesho employees.

With a focus on Generative AI, the hackathon will center around achieving Meesho’s Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) and enhancing internal efficiency. Participants will have 30 hours, starting on Thursday, to collaborate, ideate, and develop their projects. Winners of the hackathon will have the chance to win exciting rewards provided by three tech giants who have been onboarded as sponsors.

“We are delighted to host Meesho’s GenAI Hackathon,” expressed Mr. Debdoot Mukherjee, Chief Data Scientist and Head of AI at Meesho. “This event provides our employees an excellent opportunity to showcase their abilities and foster innovation. We anticipate innovative solutions utilising GenAI, addressing specific business goals set by Meesho and benefitting the e-commerce industry as a whole.”

The hackathon will emphasise technological proficiency and promote departmental cross-collaboration. To create holistic problem-solving approaches, teams will be encouraged to include people from different departments, including business, technology, product, and design.

The hackathon will have a minimum team size of three people and a maximum of six people to ensure fairness and effectiveness. Teams will present their concepts and minimum viable products (MVPs) in a 10-minute pitch session after the projects are finished. Given that the conference is centred on creativity, innovation, and problem-solving, even unfinished projects or broken hacks will be encouraged to be presented.

The judging criteria for the hackathon will consider creativity, impact, technical excellence, practicality, scalability, and presentation quality. Meesho’s use cases and their connection to the projects will be evaluated. Projects that demonstrate the ability to increase user growth, conversion rates, and revenue, as well as address pain points faced by Meesho’s buyers, sellers, and employees, will be given special consideration.

“The Indian e-commerce industry is at a crossroads and technology is the great enabler. At Meesho, AI is the key driver of innovation and this hackathon will provide our employees the opportunity to think of solutions and come up with out of box ideas that will set us apart in the industry. We look forward to the collaborative energy and the impact that this hackathon will bring.”, said Mr Sanjeev Barnwal, Co-Founder & CTO, Meesho.