Govt announces contest, seemingly to fill gap left by banned Chinese apps

05th July 2020
Govt announces contest,  seemingly to fill gap left by banned Chinese apps

India touts self sufficiency mantra in mobile apps
 July 5 2020: Hard on the heels of the order banning 59 apps, predominantly of Chinese origin, the Indian government has launched a contest open to established enterprises as well as startups, to stimulate indigenous development of apps across the spectrum of application areas from e-learning and healthcare to entertainment and office productivity.
It is to be called the Digital India AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge  and will run in 2 tracks: Promotion of Existing Apps and Development of New Apps.
Track 1 launched yesterday will  identify the best Indian Apps that are already being used by citizens and have the potential to scale and become world class Apps in their respective categories.  Cash awards of Rs 20, 15 and 10 lakhs  have been announced in each of  8 categories.The Mantra is to Make in India for India and the World. The whole process  from application to evaluation and  selection is  slated to be completed in a month.
Track 2will seek to identify Indian start ups /,entrepreneurs  and companies  who can identify, incubate, prototype and roll out neew applications. No timetable has been announced for Track 2.
The categories for Track 1:

  1. Office Productivity & Work from Home
  2. Social Networking
  3. E-Learning
  4. Entertainment
  5. Health & Wellness
  6. Business including Agritech and Fin-tech
  7. News
  8. Games.

   There may be several sub categories within each category like:

  • A mobile application harnessing the most accurate facial and / or body mapping technology to allow for a true-to-life virtual try out of products like spectacles, clothes, etc.
  • Mobile application for real-time speech-to-speech translation and camera translation of multiple languages.
  • An automated web-based application that handles business-to-business lead generation and cold emailing and is completely manageable from a mobile device itself.
  • Application to use mobile devices as image scanners with features like on the fly image correction, image editing, text recognition, etc.
  • Application to provide cloud storage integration, cross-platform file transfer via FTP or LAN, and a root browser on mobile device
  • A robust indigenous anti-virus software for mobile devices.
  • Application to optimize mobile device's performance by cleaning junk/cache files, optimizing device memory and optimizing battery usage.
  • A mobile based live streaming platform for hosting webinars, lectures, etc.
  • A mobile based messaging and video calling application
  • A mobile based microblogging application
  • A mobile based news application that uses cutting-edge technology to recommend the most relevant and interesting news individually to each use.
  • A mobile application offering satellite imagery and street maps, as well as functions such as a route planner for traveling by foot, car, or with public transportation.
  • A mobile based online gaming platform which also functions as a social hub for gamers
  • A mobile based photo-editing application with all standard image editing features