Malaysian teams make it tops in MasterCard Masters of Code hackathon in Singapore.The competition organized by MasterCard and AngelHack, brings together top developers and entrepreneurs from the region to create the best commerce experience. The third of ten hackathons in the year-long series, the Singapore installment got developers to create the best commerce experience but with also a special focus on women in technology. The winning team was chosen based on their innovation’s impact, design, creativity, simplicity and best usage of MasterCard’s APIs
The winning idea was to develop an app, called ‘One Small Step’, which encourages girls and women to better understand the technology around them by engaging them with coding-centric games. The games take users through a series of programming logic of everyday apps. In each subsequent level, the game would increase in difficulty to keep users excited. As a testament to the focus MasterCard places on women empowerment through commerce, users purchasing the app will have the option to donate money to a scholarship fund for women through a non-governmental organisation (NGO).
“What inspired us to come up with this idea is the realisation that women are still severely under-represented in the technology field. With that in mind, we decided to create an app which we believe would be useful for women and anyone else regardless of age and gender who has a genuine interest in understanding technology,” said Gwen Yi Wong, leader of the team behind the winning idea.
The Malaysian team of five participants aged between 20 and 27 will be flown to Silicon Valley and hosted by MasterCard at the Grand Finale later this year. They will be competing for a grand prize of US$100,000 and be in the running to further develop their app with mentoring and support from MasterCard. During their stay, they will also receive a special MasterCard Priceless Experience in Napa Valley and San Francisco.
The runner-up team, also from Malaysia, had the idea to develop a meal sharing app, ‘Meal to Me’, that allows users to see what people within their vicinity are cooking using real time maps. Apart from allowing users to share their love of cooking with neighbours, they have the option to buy and sell meals to one another, and rate each other’s cooking through reviews. Each team member in the runner-up team received a $500 MasterCard gift card.
“We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the winning team for being creative and innovative with MasterCard’s APIs. This hackathon underscored MasterCard’s commitment to women advancement and successfully highlighted the level of awareness in furthering women empowerment through the hard work of these developers. MasterCard is fully supportive of developers, designers and entrepreneurs to further innovate and contribute positively to the future of commerce locally and globally,” Safdar Khan, group country manager, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei; group head, Islamic Payments Southeast Asia, MasterCard.
For more information about the MasterCard Masters of Code competition including rules, judging criteria, and prizes, you can visit www.MastersofCode.com.
