Zoom Challenge: Government Of India Hosting ‘Make In India’ Video Conferencing App Challenge

While Microsoft Teams is still garnering the attention of consumers, Zoom has been grabbing the headlines for all the wrong reasons; specifically for privacy-related concerns.

 

Warning Issued By Government Of India

Recently, an advisory was shared by the Cyber Coordination Center (CyCord) of the Ministry of Home Affairs that warned the officials to avoid using Zoom for the security concerns. There have also been some strict guidelines that were shared by CERT-In to keep the privacy intact.

But, with the lockdown in India being extended to May 3, companies have no option than to allow their employees to work from home which eventually brings in the need to use the platforms like Zoom.

Stepping up, the government has announced an initiative where it is hosting a challenge seeking developers from all over India to create an Indian video conferencing platform. As a word of surprise, the winner of the challenge will be rewarded with a huge sum of money. Details are as follows:

The Challenge And Prize Money

The Ministry of Electronics And Information technology is hosting ‘Make In India' video-conferencing application competition. The initiative is to rope in the experts in software development from India who can design our very own video conferencing platform.

As a part of the competition's first step, a total of 10 best teams will be shortlisted for sharing the best idea or prototype for the video conferencing app. All the selected teams will be given prize money of Rs. 5 lakhs which will primarily the fund for the development of the prototype.

In the later stage, three out of the 10 participating teams will be selected. The government plans to fund Rs. 20 lakh to each of the teams to make a platform that will serve the purpose of video conferencing.

Lastly, a final model will be selected and the winning team will be awarded Rs. 1 crore. The video conferencing app will then be made available for the masses and will be the first in-house video conferencing application in India.

Important Guidelines

The registration for this contest closes on 30th April, while the ideas' submission date has been finalized for May 7, 2020. On 29th July 2020, the winner of this contest will be announced who will be taking home the prize money of Rs. 1 crore.

As for the key pointers, the app should come with support for various screen resolution and audio formats and should be fully functional on the devices with low configuration as well. Its performance shouldn't be affected by the fluctuating internet.

Also, the video conferencing application should have a provision of transferring files and screen-sharing. The application must be encrypted with a network solution offering an app-based interface and a browser on the cloud.

It should also allow multiple users to connect at a time for conferencing. Most importantly, the participants should be from any startup company defined as per the government of India.