ICICI Bank launches ‘ICICI Appathon’ Season II, its mobile app development challenge

It is India’s largest mobile app development initiative by a bank in the FinTech and InsurTech space which offers access of over 250 diverse APIs to the participants.

The programme aims to create the next generation of banking applications on mobile and web space by attracting developers, technology companies, startups, technopreneurs and students across the globe.

Last year, the ‘ICICI Appathon’ challenge witnessed an overwhelming response from over 2,000 participants including a large number of entries from international developers and startups.

As a testimony towards nurturing young developers, the bank incorporated the winning mobile innovation of enabling payments using digital keyboard into its mobile banking app within 100 days of the completion of ‘ICICI Appathon’. Christened, ‘iMobile Smartkeys’, it is the first payment service in Asia that allows payments and banking from a smartphone keyboard.

Speaking about the initiative, Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO, ICICI Bank said, “At ICICI Bank, technology has been at the core of our strategy. In line with this, we introduced a global mobile app development challenge, 'ICICI Appathon', last year. It allowed us to foster innovation and tap into the minds of the most innovative developers across the world. Post the event, the winning entry that enabled payments using digital keyboards was incorporated into the Bank’s mobile banking application and named ‘iMobile SmartKeys’. As a testimony towards nurturing young developers, ICICI Bank incorporated this innovative solution within a quarter of completion of ‘ICICI Appathon’.

Through 'ICICI Appathon' season II, we intend to collaborate with more such innovative technopreneurs. We believe that programmes like these will encourage young developers to create world class banking applications on mobile and will strengthen the Government's 'Digital India' mission.”

TR Ramachandran, Visa Group Country Manager, India and South Asia, said: “Visa is proud to support the ICICI Appathon, a mobile app development challenge. There’s never been a more important time for the development of innovative payment solutions in India, so we’re excited to see what apps the best and brightest minds can create using Visa’s APIs. Good luck to all the competitors and we’re looking forward to the judging process.”

Chetan Naik, Vice President, Sales, IBM India/South Asia, said, “IBM is committed to be the technology partner for the ICICI Appathon for the second year in a row. Developers and start-ups will tap into the power of IBM's open cloud platform, Bluemix to build next generation mobile apps quickly and easily. In addition to providing technical guidance and mentorship to participants, IBM will also award startup winners with IBM Cloud credits as a part of the IBM Global Entrepreneur program.  This collaboration brings together IBM's technology strength with the exceptional talent of developers and start-ups to foster innovation and growth for India.”