Eurobank’s 2nd “Beyond Hackathon” Competition was successfully concluded last weekend, at Eurobank Premises in Nea Ionia in partnership with Found.ation & The Cube.
The Competition was supported and promoted by Eurobank Group Banks, Bancpost S.A., Eurobank Bulgaria A.D. and Eurobank Serbia in Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia, respectively. More than 170 Software Developers, Marketers, Designers & Business Developers from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and United Kingdom submitted their interest.
The Competition opened on Friday, March 17th, with the Keynote speech of Mrs Efi Pilarinou, awarded in Women in Fintech 2016 Power List, under the theme «On the Fintech Runway» who shared insights on Global FinTech trends and gave valuable advice to the participants. Right after that, five representatives from the Bank’s business units (Retail, Corporate & Digital Banking) came on stage, presenting their work and setting specific challenges managing to attract the participants’ interest.
The first day was concluded with the presentation of 30 ideas covering a wide range of products and services related to P2P lending, loyalty programs, gamification, personal financial management but also AR (Augmented Reality) use and applications based on blockchain technologies.
The second day began with a detailed presentation of Eurobank’s API (Application programming Interface) which was created by the Bank’s IT team especially for the Competition’s purposes with enhanced functionalities compared to last year’s API. A numerous IT team was present throughout the event actively supporting the participants. The 35 teams, including four from Romania, three from Bulgaria and one from Serbia worked intensively until Sunday to present their ideas to the judging committee.
On Sunday afternoon, March 19th, Beyond Hackathon culminated with presentations from the 35 teams before the judging committee, consisting of Messrs Sotiris Sirmakezis, Eurobank’s General Manager & Group Chief Digital Officer, Konstantinos Vassiliou, Eurobank’s General Manager, Head of Group Corporate & Investment Banking, Iakovos Giannaklis, Eurobank’s General Manager Retail Banking for Eurobank, Vassilis Trapezanoglou for VIVA Wallet S.A., George Saliaris - Fasseas for IPG MediaBrands and Gregoire Michel for Startupbootcamp FinTech.
The prizes provided by Eurobank to the 3 winners of the Competition were accompanied by
grants of 5.000€, 3.000€ and 2,000€ respectively and were awarded as follows:
1st prize to the team of students ”Block17” with Dionysis Zindros, Themistoklis Papameletiou &
Kostis Karantias for their idea about an application for interbank money transfers based on
Blockchain technology.
2nd prize to the team of students “Hacking Squad” with Željko Šević, Marko Jovanovic, Luka
Živanović and Vladimir Simonovski from Serbia for their idea about using voice commands to
simplify banking transactions based on Amazon Alexa platform.
3rd prize to the team “Wire Buzz” with Danai Sotiropoulou, George Aggelopoulos, Dimitris
Polissiou and Apostolis Mpostanis for their idea about an e-commerce supporting system featuring
push notification for consumers.
A special prize will be awarded to a team of 17 year old students Evolve who although did not
compete as they did not meet all Terms and Conditions of the Competition, fascinated both the
audience and the judges with their presentation and their mature way of thinking. Their idea was
about a mobile application which splits easily any bill amongst team members and automatically
recognizes all sorts of e-payments and mobile wallets.
Mr. S. Sirmakezis said that
“Beyond Hackathon, at its second year, brought new ideas,
collaboration spirit and innovative approaches. We thank all the teams for their participation
because they validated our optimism for the future of our countries. This year we had more
participations, of higher quality, that bring forward the hidden talents in our countries. We hope for
more events of that kind that will create opportunities for young people to stay with us. This year we
join forces with the “egg” as we believe that through synthesis we add value, bringing together
capable people with different backgrounds but with common goals for innovative approaches to real
issues that concern all of us. We shall stand by the teams that share our vision for a continuous
improvement of the services offered to our customers and the simplification of their everyday life. .
It’s now clear that with our efforts, a FinTech ecosystem is created in Greece as well. Eurobank will
support the teams, so that we see their ideas become products useful for us and with an international
outlook”.
Beyond Hackathon was actively supported by global industry leaders in technology and financial
services, regional startup ecosystem stakeholders & academic institutions that provided mentoring to
participants throughout the weekend. Leading companies contributed to the Competition with inkind
sponsorships ensuring that the proper conditions were created to enable participants work
undistracted on their ideas.
For more details please visit our website www.beyondhackathon.com and Facebook
www.facebook.com/BeyondHackathon page.
About Found.ation M.P.
Found.ation is a leading startup enabling platform for tech-oriented products & services in SE Europe. We operate our own proprietary company launchpad, designed to defeat toxic startup environments and to build scalable businesses, by providing end-to-end support & guidance to ambitious teams for the first 12 to 18 months. The truth is, great ideas cannot wait. We understand that each startup company is unique and that there is no “one size fits all” paradigm in innovation. We identify the crème de la crème of founders, through a process based on scouting and intelligence, education and continuous community building efforts. Our founders are skilled and experience professionals with deep understanding of their target-market and a genuine sense of urgency. We then work with the teams and help them create innovative products and services that solve real-life problems by giving them access to education, talent, networking and unfair advantages. Our ad hoc, tailor made acceleration programs are carefully crafted for the unique challenges and needs each team faces. We embrace an execution-oriented culture and program based on the following triangle [Build = Ship = Revise].
About THE CUBE WORKSPACE Μ.Ι.Κ.Ε.
A new startup cluster and innovation space in the heart of the city, hosting the best of Athens’ innovators in the technology and making space. Bolstered by its core management team, its partnerships with technology training institutes, an investment fund, technology user groups and the maker movement, The Cube stands out as a hub of innovation and ‘the place’ to be or hang out for the doers of our city. The aim of the Cube is to provide high quality facilities and tools to work with. It is a very active community where you could build your network and find diffrent ways to turn your ideas into reality.
Beyond hackathon was supported by
Accenture, AgentRisk, Bancpost, AUEB/ ELTRUN, Eurobank Serbia, Google, Isobar, MasterCard, Microsoft, Norbloc, Postbank, SAP, SIG, Startupbootcamp Fintech London, Technical University of Crete, VIVA Wallet S.A., Warply, Wedia.
Community Partners
egg - enter•grow•go, Ethelon, Startup Safari
Media Partners
Huffington Post, EPIXEIRO.GR, STARTUPPER
Enablers
Vikos, Soft Drinks Vikos, Gregory's, Heineken light
