Solving issues, one app at a time

Sample this dichotomy. College students are hooked to the apps on their mobilephones. But when it comes to paying their college fees, marking their attendance or using canteen services, they fill out challans, sign in registers and hand out cash. There are no cool apps that ease their daily grind in college.

This is set to change soon, all thanks to students themselves. An initiative by the Centre, called I-MADE (Innovations in Mobile Application Development Ecosystem), provides a platform and support to students across India to develop mobile apps to solve simple problems. I-MADE is a joint initiative of TCOE India (Telecom Centres of Excellence) and EVC Ventures.

The programme currently has over 50 colleges, and 16 colleges are live on the platform. For instance, students at Indira Gandhi Delhi Technological University for Women created an app that provides information on syllabus, timetable, notices and faculty. An app from IIIT-Bhubaneswar help share information on internship opportunities.

“Students contact us with their ideas. We train them on Kryptos mobile platform, and how to create the user interface and integrate with the backend systems,” says Aashutosh Bhardvaj, CEO of Kryptos Mobile and I-MADE. In some cases, the solution may be simplified by re-using and modifying an existing code.

These apps not just solve the immediate problems students face, but may have a larger pay-off. The experience of developing an app helps the students with hand-on experience in building on a concept, validating it and getting feedback from other students to improve it. The apps are introduced to all colleges in the programme, taking it beyond the smaller reach. There is also a sense of ownership, which encourages them to do bigger stuff, says Bhardvaj.

There are also tie-ups with mentors and venture capitalists. This enables extending the idea to a larger scale. One such example is BigDeal, a student discount aggregator that was developed on I-MADE platform. The company recently raised pre-Series A round funding from EVC Ventures.

I-MADE’s mission is to help fill the current digital gap in colleges by introducing applications and services such as attendance marking. These have the added benefit of gathering useful data. For instance, GPS-based attendance marking can collect real-time data on students, which can help decision-makers at various levels, says Bhardvaj.

The programme is planning to launch a mobile wallet. It also plans to introduce an anti-ragging campaign through mobile apps.

I-MADE also wants to pay students for being ambassadors and spreading the word about the apps. The programme has a mandate to reach 35,000 colleges, and plans to reach 2-3 million college students by the end of 2017. While there are corporate tie-ups, companies come in more as long-term partners, says Bhardvaj.

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