New Delhi, April 28, 2022: The team of students from Plaksha University, one of India’s largest collective philanthropy efforts to build a tech university for the future, bagged significant laurels in Yale’s largest annual hackathon by securing second position. The competition gave hackers across universities the opportunity to tackle global issues and helped them in exploring diverse perspectives using technology.

Over 200+ participants from leading universities like MIT, Yale, Northeastern participated in the competition, which was organised between April 8-10, 2022, online.

The student members of the winning team – Quantum Gurus comprised: Shreevardhan Shah from Plaksha University, Saumya Choudhary from Plaksha University, and Rohitashwa Parikh from another top engineering college.

There has been endless progress and technical advancements in how the world deals with day to day financial transactions be it through various digital payment platforms, or now cryptocurrencies and also financial instruments like stocks, bonds, etc that are crucial to cultivate one’s wealth. But all of these amazing tools cater to a very small demographic of people. To enable these high-end technologies to help reach a larger audience there is a need to work on the ground level and attack the fundamental blocks surrounding financial literacy in people’s mindset. The team solved this problem in the Fintech track. In Fintech track, hackers were given the opportunity to develop projects that work to integrate finance with technology.

They team came up with self-developed app- FinSchool, a financial literacy app that teaches A-Z about managing and creating wealth in a layman's language and gamified manner. An individual starts as a player who earns $1000 dollars monthly. After completing each module, one gets to answer a set of questions which makes him ponder upon how different situations can be dealt with. He is then rewarded with some bonus money which can be used in stock exchange simulator. A player complete courses, earn money, and build virtual wealth. Each quiz captures different data as to how the overview towards finance is. Is it inclining towards savings or more towards spending.

The team was judged by the Senior Director at Bain and Company, Software Developer at Five Rings Capital LLC, VP of engineering at JP Morgan Chase & Co, and the Senior Software Engineer at Uber. Commenting about his students winning the competition, Prof. Rudra Pratap, the Founding Vice Chancellor of Plaksha University (former Deputy Director of Indian Institute of Science) said, Commenting about his students winning the competition, Prof. Rudra Pratap, the Founding Vice Chancellor of Plaksha University (former Deputy Director of Indian Institute of Science) said, “Putting together a great team is crucial for the success of any product. We are glad that our students proved their mettle in this international-level competition demonstrating their skills and their ability to analyse real-world challenges. We congratulate our students for achieving this feat. We are confident that the experience they gained while participating in the competition will be valuable to them in future.”

About Plaksha University

Founded by a global community of 100+ technology and business leaders, Plaksha envisions to reimagine technology education and research for India and the world. With strong partnerships with UC Berkeley, Purdue, UC San Diego, IIT Kanpur, and IISc Bangalore, Plaksha aims to nurture and empower a generation of catalytic leaders and create an ecosystem of research and innovation. The university collapses the traditional boundaries of engineering and promotes interdisciplinary learning by combining technology, design and entrepreneurship.

Plaksha is guided by an eminent academic board including Dr. Vijay Kumar, Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering, University of Pennsylvania; Venkatesh Narayanamurthi, former Dean of Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Sriram Rajamani, Managing Director, Microsoft Research India Julia Ross, Dean of Engineering, Virginia Tech; Krishna Palepu, Ross Graham Walker Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; Sanjay Sarma, Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering, MIT; and business leaders such as Neeraj Aggarwal, Chairman – Asia Pacific, BCG; Hitesh Oberoi, Co-promoter & CEO, Info Edge (Naukri.com); Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder, Fractal Analytics; Manas Fuloria, Co- Founder, Nagarro; Rakesh Bharti Mittal, Vice Chairman, Bharti Enterprises; Navin Chaddha, Managing Director, Mayfield Fund; Sujeet Kumar, Co-founder, Udaan.com; Dalip Pathak, Special Limited Partner, Warburg Pincus LLC; CP Gurnani, MD & CEO, Tech Mahindra; Pramod Bhasin, Chairman, Clix Capital among others. Corporate donors include companies like Bharti Foundation, Havells, HT Parekh Foundation, Mphasis, Axis Bank and Motilal Oswal. The global community of business leaders who founded Plaksha can be seen here.