Microsoft Imagine Cup 2021: Two Indian teams proceed to the finals

Two Indian teams have advanced to Microsoft’s 2021 Imagine Cup Finals, an annual innovation contest for students and technology enthusiasts, the company announced on Wednesday. The winners of the challenge will be mentored by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and win a $75,000 prize.

Team ‘Detectd’ from GH Raisoni College of Engineering in Nagpur, and Team ‘Intelli-Sense’ from the Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), are now headed for the world finals of Imagine Cup. Microsoft said that the teams had chosen cybersecurity accessibility technology solutions as their topics - Detectd worked on a solution to counter deepfakes, while Intelli-Sense focused on assistive solutions for persons with low vision.

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The Intelli-Sense team members were Venkat Ragavan, Tarun Hariharan, Yogeeshwar S, and Vishwath Kumar B S, whose solution involved using AI and cloud technology to build a multi-lingual mobile app to help a visually impaired person click a photo of an object in their environment, which would use Microsoft’s Azure cloud API and App Services to help them perceive their surroundings.

Meanwhile, the Detectd team was comprised of Atharva Peshkar, Rishita Mishra, Atharva Khedkar, and Yash Moharir, whose project involved to combat disinformation and fake news, using a website to detect forgeries with the help of AI to verify if an image was a deepfake or not, with 96 percent accuracy.

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According to Microsoft, the country’s 2021 edition of the Imagine Cup had 353 entries from teams, while over 10 thousand individual entries were received from students. The company partnered with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) for this year’s edition of the Imagine Cup, which was the first virtual edition of the competition. Microsoft also stated that the four finalists from India also received a Surface Go, while the top four teams at the World Finals will be awarded $10,000 each.