Winners of First NIS Hackathon The winners were announced on Sunday, 4 March, after a two-day contest. The positive feedback from the panel of judges with representation from NIS, ICT Hub and IT company 30 Hills suggests that the digital ideas winning this hackathon could soon become reality at NIS. After the 48-hour “Hacking a petrol station” with 10 teams competing in the finals, three best solutions were selected and awarded as offering the customer more benefits under the NIS Agro Programme, better user experience through advanced loyalty programme “With Us on the Road” and faster service delivery for those who are always in a hurry. The winners of the first NIS Hackathon were more than thrilled and unanimous in saying that they had been secretly hoping for the award, but they were even more pleased by the prospect of furthering their cooperation with NIS: “We believe that we should develop innovative solutions here first, to help improve the business environment in Serbia principally and then expand abroad as well,” said the winning team called “Voodoomen”. “These two work-intensive days of “Hacking a petrol station” by these talented people spawned a host of innovative ideas surpassing our high expectations. NIS invests heavily into innovation, which is why this time again we were seeking something outstanding and I think that is exactly what we got. In terms of the business, the solutions that were offered are targeting various segments of operation of a petrol station, from better sales performance through sale process improvement and advanced user experience. In terms of technology and digital transformation, we saw rather diverse solutions from blockchain, big data, to artificial intelligence,” NIS IT Director Olivera Vujnović said after the winners were announced. NIS have provided a €5,000 prize fund for the winning teams and jointly with ICT Hub ensured that all teams working intensively through the two days of the first NIS Hackathon get excellent workspace for software development along with substantial mentorship from company and ICT Hub representatives. “It took us a lot of time to plan this first-rate event. Thanks to our NIS partners for the support and for being open to all suggestions in organisation. It is a pleasure to see major corporations today turning increasingly to the start-up community, to young, innovative, talented people with a capacity to help their businesses grow even more successful in future. This Hackathon is a prime example of that,” Dušan Vukanović of ICT Hub concludes. Attracting great interest from over 50 teams with top 10 shortlisted for the contest, NIS Hackathon is one of the initial steps of collaboration between NIS and ICT Hub, and NIS will continue to work closely on digital transformation with the start-up community in line with its strategic forward-looking commitments.
