Cantaloupa Wins IBM's Code and Response: Cairo Hackathon, Goes Home With A $2,000 Cash Prize

The winning team behind the project "Cantaloupa,"  won IBM's Call and Response Hackathon, brought by Rise Up Summit, judged by a committee that had Michelle Peluso, SVP, Digital Sales & Chief Marketing Officer of IBM and Wael Abdoush, General Manager of IBM Egypt, in addition to esteemed representatives from Egypt’s Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, the Red Crescent, RiseUp Summit, UNICEF, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Environmental consultants. 

“Our mobile app concept is a rewards and points that inspires people to decrease their water usage consumption, by calculating the average percentage of a person’s water consumption and create a target for them and once they start using less than this number, they get 10 point for each 100 litres they save," Rana Ezzat, one of the team members behind Cantaloupa, tells Startup Scene. "Moreover, they can exchange the points for promo codes for Uber, shopping discounts or even get discounts for public sector services such as gas and water bills."

Over the two days (July 22nd and 23rd) IBM’s hackathon drew some of Egypt's top developers to the AUC Centre of Entrepreneurship for a team-based contest to create applications and tech solutions around water topics. The challenge brought startups, academic and enterprise developers together to create solutions that can help mitigate the effects of natural disasters related to flooding, drought and water scarcity in Egypt, with a focus on community health and well-being. 

All the hackathon participants were able to submit their solutions to the Call for Code 2019 Global Challenge, with the opportunity to receive mentorship from IBM experts and potential company funding through the Code and Response global effort.  With the climate conditions expected to get drier and the rapidly growing population, Egypt is facing significant water-related challenges such as water scarcity, inefficient irrigation and water pollution; while learning new IBM technologies. “We really hope that this initiative helps and inspires people to decrease their water consumption levels in Egypt.”