Skoda Auto Digilab India and VWITS announce second ‘i-mobilothon’

Skoda Auto DigiLab India, one of the three agile business innovation hubs for Skoda Auto globally, today announced the second edition of ‘i-mobilothon’, in collaboration with Volkswagen Group Technology Solutions India (formerly Volkswagen IT Services).

This contest offers an inclusive, agile, and multi-disciplinary launch pad for creative minds and code developers of India to leverage their skills in building prototypes that drive real business impact at scale.

The contest is open to start-ups, university students across India, as well as, employees of Volkswagen Group companies in India. Contestants can develop and design prototypes that echo future car connectivity, enhance customer experience, business digitization, pre-sales and post-sales solutions driven by artificial intelligence, augmented reality and data analytics. 

Piyush Arora, Managing Director, Skoda Auto Volkswagen India said, “Innovation is at the very core of our Group. We consistently strive to foster this spirit within the company, as well as recognise and promote breakthrough thinking that emerges from the larger Indian eco-system across start-ups and universities. We received some great ideas in the inaugural edition of i-mobilothon last year that led to innovative mobility solutions. We are anticipating that the second edition of i-mobilothon will attract excellent participation and out-of-the-box ideas from some of India’s sharpest minds. It is this spirit of innovation that will take the Indian automobile industry to greater heights and will also contribute to the nation’s vision of being self-reliant.”

Sidharth Yadav, Managing Director, Volkswagen Group Technology Solutions India (VWITS) said, “VWITS, being the Group's Strategic Internal IT Solutions partner is keenly focused on creating additional business value for the VW Group with its Technology Solutions. We are currently developing several solutions in various technologies like AI/ML, Web 3.0 and Metaverse etc. and we are very excited to collaborate with innovative startups and strong technology talent available in Indian universities along with our employees and partners towards our mission of Innovation with Technology. We hope to see strong participation from all in the i-mobilothon 2022.”

The hackathon begins on September 13, 2022 and the last date for submission of entries is 14 October, 2022. This year’s edition will conclude in November 2022 after two evaluation levels and the final prototype demo. The eleven-week long hackathon will be held in hybrid mode in two stages – the Inauguration, the final POC (Proof of Concept) presentations and the grand event announcing the winners will be held onsite. Participant registration, mentoring, and shortlisting of the final participants will be held online.