Saudi Arabia to host the largest hackathon in the Middle East focused towards Hajj

Over two million people from across the world journey to Saudi Arabia each year to perform the muslim pilgrimage known as Hajj. That's a very large number of people to manage and in order to streamline the process of Hajj and improve the overall experience of pilgrims, the Kingdom is hosting a hackathon this year.

The 36-hour hackathon is expected to be the largest event of its kind in the Middle East and attract 3000 developers. It’s open to all tech entrepreneurs, innovators, developers and designers from all across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

The Hajj Hackathon will take place in the International Exhibition and Convention Centre, Jeddah from August 1st to 3rd.

What’s a Hackathon?

Hackathons are ways to pool human resources to tackle difficult challenges and come up with solutions by producing usable software. By having multiple teams with diverse backgrounds competing, the organizing entity has access to a range of high quality potential solutions.

The participants compete against each other to come up with the most effective solution utilizing technology, creativity, and innovation. Hackathons usually offer prizes to the top innovations including incubation or accelerator opportunities, hiring.

Hajj Hackathon - 36 hours, 3,000 entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs taking part in the 36 hour Hajj Hackathon will have to find and build solutions that help streamline the process of Hajj and improve the overall experience of pilgrims. The areas of focus are:

Food & Beverage
Transportation
Crowd control & traffic management
Travel & accommodations arrangement
Public health
Waste management
Housing
Communications solutions
Financial solutions

Hajj Hackathon is open to all tech entrepreneurs, innovators, developers and designers from all across MENA. Participants will be judged based on creativity, design, simplicity, and impact.

Over 2 Million SAR worth of prizes

The challenge will be well worth for entrepreneurs with the total prize money of over two million Saudi Arabian Riyals (SAR) which is the equivalent of over half a million US dollars.

The first place winner of the Hajj Hackathon will get to walk away with a grand prize of 1,000,000 SAR for 15% equity investment. Runner-up gets 500,000 SAR for 10% equity investment, and the 2nd runner-up will get 350,000 SAR for 7% equity investment. Needless to say that if you’re in any of these positions, your business is off to a flying start.

Besides the top three prizes for equity and investments, there are other prizes such as Google Home Mini devices and Google Cloud credits.

How will be winners be picked?

Submissions will be judged on the following four areas, each of which holds upto five points:

Design - Was the UX/UI intuitive and appealing?

Simplicity - Is the application simple to use and can the team explain it clearly in three sentences or less?

Creativity - How creative was the team in developing an innovative solution for the challenge?

Impact - Did the team create an application that can have a real and valuable impact?

This will allow each judge to give a total score between 0 and 20 points based on the above criteria. The final score of each participant will be the average of all the judges’ scores.