News Broadcasting
Moneycontrol hosts its first ever hackathon – ‘Budget Hackabot Challenge’
MUMBAI: Moneycontrol, India’s business news, markets and financial content, successfully hosted its first ever hackathon – ‘Budget Hackabot Challenge’ in Mumbai on 16-17 December 2017. With the primary objective of bringing together the larger developer community to co-create useful solutions for consumers, the one-of-a-kind event specifically focused on simplifying financial queries as a run up to the upcoming Union Budget.
The hackathon achieved this in two ways, first of which was by encouraging participants to create a bot which could answer user queries. Secondly, the hackathon challenged participants to create a tool which enables users to learn about investing options and take decisions on personal finance.
The overwhelming participation at moneycontrol’s ‘Budget Hackabot Challenge’ brought in tremendous zeal from the sharpest technological minds across the country, contributing to the creation of a highly immersive environment. An eclectic mix of working professionals as well as students from renowned educational institutions in the country took part in the event. Going a step further in redefining how news and financial information is disseminated in the digital age, the hackathon identified unchartered areas of technology, thereby unlocking immense value for digital consumers. The winning team comprised working professionals from various firms, all of whom are graduates of IIT, Mumbai.
Moneycontrol, business head Gautam Shelar comments, “We at moneycontrol are always looking at ways to push the envelope of innovation in order to derive useful solutions for our readers. With an aim to explore new technological spheres and develop disruptive solutions using the intensive data bank provided by us, we are proud of the way the participants worked in collaboration to come up with practical solutions. We look forward to hosting more such relevant hackathons based on definite and real-world use cases in the future, thereby providing value to every cog of our stakeholder wheel.”
HDFC Life SVP E-commerce & Digital Marketing Analytics and Business Insights at Vishal Subharwal said, “The Hackathon provides a platform for talent to come up with innovative solutions to resolve genuine customer problems around goal based financial planning. Any financial plan typically includes elements of life insurance & health insurance as well as wealth creation at its core.”
Customer centricity is an important value for us at HDFC Life and we are hugely committed to digitization and automation of the life insurance value chain to help deliver this. This is reflected in our investments over the years in building simple & easy to use consumer facing technology & products be it term plans, health plans or ULIPs. As more customers start buying life insurance & health insurance online, HDFC Life’s association with Moneycontrol provides us another opportunity to analyse reception of technology led customer solutions.”
Network18 Digital chief product officer Avinash Mudaliar, “A significant focus of this event was to unlock the true potential of India’s young and astute developer community by encouraging them to create disruptive solutions based on real world problem statements. Over the course of two days, we discovered a new approach on how content, products and services can be seamlessly presented to our consumers by churning out useful solutions. moneycontrol will now work with the winning teams to put together a solution that can be deployed and showcased to their audiences for upcoming Union Budget.”
Team Findians, with an approach focused specifically on extracting context from queries put in by users, were adjudicated winners and bagged a prize money of INR 4 lakhs. Team Hackaneurs on the other hand focused closely on user interactions and the maximum value that could be created in the process, leading to them being adjudged runners up with a prize money of INR 2 lakhs.
As the winning team will closely be working with moneycontrol team for 45 days, they will be guided by the experts from the financial and technological domain to improvise and build up their final product which will be available across moneycontrol platforms.
News Broadcasting
Times Network to air JVC Exit Poll across 5 regions on April 29
Four-hour broadcast spans states and Puducherry with data-led analysis
MUMBAI: Times Network is set to roll out what it calls one of its most expansive election programming efforts yet, culminating in the JVC Exit Poll on 29 April, with a multi-hour broadcast spanning key poll-bound regions.
The exit poll will air across Times Now and Times Now Navbharat, beginning at 5pm and 4pm respectively. Co-powered by Vedanta and Jindal Stainless, the programming aims to combine on-ground reportage with data-driven projections across West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry.
The network has deployed over 50 journalists across these regions, gathering voter sentiment and local insights in the run-up to polling. The effort builds on its ongoing election formats such as Election Yatra and Election Premier League, which have tracked campaign narratives and community-level issues.
In parallel, Times Now Navbharat has focused on constituency-level reporting in West Bengal through its Jan Gan ka Mann series, capturing voter opinions across diverse segments.
The coverage has also featured interviews with prominent political leaders. Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Congress leaders Ramesh Chennithala and V D Satheesan have appeared on the network’s election specials. From Tamil Nadu, voices including deputy chief minister Udhayanidhi Stalin, DMK MP Dayanidhi Maran, BJP leader K Annamalai and NTK’s Seeman have also featured in discussions.
On the day of the exit poll, the network’s primetime anchors, including Navika Kumar, Zakka Jacob and Sumit Awasthi, will lead the coverage. They will be joined by a panel of political analysts, psephologists and senior journalists offering real-time insights and interpretation of trends.
The programming will integrate grassroots reportage with analytics from the JVC Exit Poll, aiming to give viewers an early sense of electoral outcomes ahead of the official results on 4 May.
With its combined English and Hindi broadcast reach, Times Network is positioning this effort as a comprehensive look at voter sentiment, blending field reporting, data and debate to decode what could lie ahead when the final mandate is revealed.
