Sun Life Asia Service Centre India organised First Remote Data Hackathon- Ignite 2020
125+ participants from India & Canada competed to deliver solutions to real life data challenges on AWS Cloud
Event mentored by leaders from across India & Canada with a panel of elite Data and Analytic leaders
Sun Life Asia Service Centre India (ASCI) is the Global In-house Center (GIC) of Sun Life Financial. Located at Gurugram, ASCI employs more than 1900 people. In collaboration with its Sun Life Canada Enterprise services partners, ASC India organized its first remote Data Hackathon, Ignite 2020.
Organized in October, Ignite 2020 had 125+ participants from 24 teams from across India & Canada. The interdisciplinary teams worked on AWS cloud to hack data challenges on Sun Life AWS Lab environment. The teams worked on solving real business problems aimed to simplify user experience, optimize cloud platform cost and build automation accelerators to reduce time to market for data deliveries. In addition, the teams conducted new Proof of Technology on AWS Neptune Service (Graph Database) to build a smart visual interface for business to monitor batch processing. The hackathon was also a venue for participants to upskill and accelerate learning on AWS skills such as AWS Glue, Python, AWS Sagemaker & Graph Database.
Ignite 2020 was a 24 hours Data Hackathon over Zoom with 24 breakout rooms. The event was mentored by 10 leaders from across India & Canada with a panel of elite Data and Analytic leaders. Gurveen Singh Rekhi, Director -Data & Analytics, Sun Life ASC India who organized the hackathon says, “Since its inception in 2006, ASC India has been organizing hackathons quite frequently. But this was the first time (due to the pandemic) we conducted a remote Data Hackathon without any physical centers. Ignite 2020 also gave participants the opportunity to interact with world-class mentors from India & Canada to meet challenge objectives and successfully deliver solutions.”
Mitashi Kumari who led the winning team “Loud N’ Cloud” said, “It was the first AWS Data Hackathon for our team which was quite challenging as we were also the youngest team amongst all the participants. We worked on our strengths and with the help of our mentors we showcased the working demo for python accelerator.”
Shiv Ranjan, Head-Application Development, Sun Life ASC India says, “At ASCI, innovation through collaboration is always celebrated. Data Hackathons prove to be a meaningful tool to solve real problems, build new capabilities and even upskill talent.”