At long last, the winners of the Ideation Phase of the DiGi Challenge for Change v5.0 was finally announced. After sifting through over 2500 promising ideas, which was whittled down to 60 top ideas for the #IdeaJam accelerator programme where the best 20 participants entered the final judging phase, the country’s best ideas have finally been chosen for the ideation phase.
A CSR programme by DiGi, Challenge for Change engages Malaysians to work on Internet-based social innovations that benefit society. This year’s theme is “Bringing Malaysians Together, One App at a Time”, with the aim of inspiring Malaysians to develop new ideas for mobile apps to help bring Malaysians together and make life better for local communities.
This year proved the most successful DiGi Challenge for Change 5 (DiGiCFC5) campaign, with more than 2,500 ideas submitted across the four categories. As part of the Ideation Phase, DiGi also established two development events as part of the programme. The first was #IdeaJam, an “idea hackathon”; and the second was #HACK!@DiGiCFC, a “mobile app hackathon”. These events served to help participants refine their ideas and apps, giving them access to valuable inputs from industry experts and partners they’d otherwise struggle to find.
The four categories for DiGi Challenge for Change v5.0 this year were:
- Discovering Culture: to generate exposure to encourage Malaysians to share and showcase local culture
- Learning and Edutainment: to enhance learning both inside and outside the classroom
- Health and Wellness: to manage and improve health and wellness through better tracking, monitoring and sharing
- Connected Citizens: to bring the government and people closer together via the use of innovative mobile technology
The winners from each category, according to DiGi, stood out from the rest for “having real potential for commercialization, adoption and relevance” to Malaysians’ use of mobile apps.
The winning ideas were:
Connected Citizens: Alex Wong Kek Liang, 27
Application Idea: Tag A Price – enables consumers to contribute and compare grocery prices across selected shopping outlets and locations.
Learning and Edutainment: Asharudin Abdul Buhari, 23
Application Idea: 1Auto – enables the sharing of tips for easy car maintenance, allows users to identify and offer solutions to troubleshoot car problems and track mileage and car service reminders.
Discovering Culture: Lim Fern Yit, 27
Application Idea: Jalan Jalan – an interactive travel idea that enables the sharing of releveant information to simplify and enrich travel experiences in local cities across Malaysia.
Health and Wellness: Kum Peng Han, 27
Application Idea: Running Paws – a gamification app idea that makes running more enjoyable with virtual running buddies, allowing users to improve their own running performance, and compete against others.
In addition to the four winning ideas, DiGi also sprung a surprise with its own “DiGizens’ Choice” idea: MyBanjr, an application idea to help better prepare communities and ease the effects of floods across the country.
With the Ideation Phase now over, the DiGi Challenge for Change v5.0 will now enter the App Development Phase, which will engage another set of Malaysians: local developers to build mobile apps from the five winning ideas from the Ideation Phase. To accelerate the app development process, developers will be invited to the 36-hour hackathon weekend called HACK!@DiGiCFC. This phase starts now, and will end on April 23, where the Commercialization Phase begins.
At the Commercialization Phase, DiGi will market the winning apps on its online store, as well as the Google Play Store, Apple App Store and also the Windows Store. For more information about the DiGi Challenge for Change v.5.0, head on to the official website here.
