This is part four in our Pega Community Hackathon profile series. In this series we profile 2021 Hackathon participants and ask them about their process for creating top-performing applications.
Small businesses around the world have been significantly impacted by COVID-19 and India is no exception. According to The Times of India, a recent survey conducted by Dun and Bradstreet estimated that over 82 percent of small businesses in India have experienced negative consequences as a result of the pandemic.
For an Inspiration Award-winning Pega Community Hackathon team from Aaseya, helping their fellow countrymen apply for and receive small business loans became a mission as they saw business owners in their local communities struggle to survive during the height of COVID.
“We all saw neighborhood stores around us that were struggling to secure any type of funding,” recalled Aaseya’s Pandu Kuruvella. “Not having the ability to connect on a personal level with banks and lenders was making these conversations very difficult and we wanted to use technology to help bridge that gap.”
After extensive brainstorming sessions, this five person team of developers decided to create “Hyper Localized Crowd Funding,” a Pega application that would allow investors and community members to help support small businesses through crowdfunding. If you’re unfamiliar with crowdfunding, it’s a process where a number of individuals contribute small donations to help fund a business or project.
While the “Hyper Localized Crowd Funding” team ran into a few challenges throughout the creation of the application, there was one that proved to be particularly difficult.
“One of the most challenging elements of building this application was researching how lenders can be identified based on their postal code,” said Madan Mohan Kallakonda. “We had to go through multiple databases on Google before uncovering a REST service that helped us find borrowers in a given postal code by their location.”
Using the Pega Express™ delivery approach allowed the team to quickly create an MVP that won rave reviews from the Pega Community Hackathon judging panel. Not only did the “Hyper Localized Crowd Funding” team win a prestigious award, they also created a solution that could have an enormous impact on their home country.
“It’s one thing to have an innovative idea, but what really makes this award so special is the fact that we build an application that was both user friendly and useful for many people,” concluded Phani Bhushan Karri.
You can find additional posts in the Pega Community Hackathon 2021 profile series below:
Recommended resources:
- Read more about our Community Hackathon here, or read our press release.
- Check out the Hyper Localized Crowd Funding submission.
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