Over the weekend, Twilio participated in our first-ever developer event in India, supporting around 300 developers in the Business of API hackathon. 37 hacks were demoed, and we were very impressed with the results. As always, Twilio DOers led the way with 25 of the 37 teams incorporating voice, SMS and VoIP in some capacity.
One Twilio hack connected a user to a contact with custom deceptive background noise, from traffic horns to a crying baby, to justify being late for dinner or canceling an appointment. We saw a feature phone-only social network that connected users to one another based on common interests. Twilio customer Freshdesk prototyped in-context soft phones for support agents in their browser-based support system.
13 winners were chosen as the dust settled, with the grand prize going to team muHack for their Twilio-powered travel and translation app “Please Do the Needful”. The demo video of their winning hack featured a hopelessly bewildered South Asia traveller sending an SMS to their service, which was translated and spoken back to a local resident using Twilio:
We are thrilled to see an increasingly sophisticated technology community growing in Bangalore. The hackathon participants travelled in some cases for hours on end to participate in this weekend event. The diverse crowd included students, developers from large corporations, and everything in between. There’s a growing surge of talent, investment, and opportunity for tech communities in India, and we can’t wait to help them build the future of communications in their local communities and beyond.
