Microsoft AppFest draws 10,000 student developers across India

Over 10,000 students across India joined forces Tuesday to unleash their creativity at the Microsoft Student AppFest, a unique coding event enabling students from colleges to develop their 'dream app' ideas alongside professionals using the latest Microsoft technologies.

The AppFest, an initiative by Microsoft India, was a platform for college students to design applications for Windows 8 operating system. For the students it was an opportunity to apprise themselves of the know-how of applications designing and also find a place to share their ideas with others.

The students landed in 54 key hubs in 45 major cities across 18 states of India, and the reverberations of the day-long coding fest were felt across the country with each state hosting a hands-on workshop run by a total of 150 Microsoft Student Partners on-call to give students a first-hand app development experience.

"An average of 250 students from each college contributed to the total number of 10,000 participating students. The tremendous response amounts to over 60,000 collective hours of coding. An estimated total number of 3,000 full apps were imagined and created during the one-day code-a-thon," a Microsoft statement said.

"The goal of the event was to ignite the imagination of students from colleges representing the full spectra of Indian academia by offering the chance to design the perfect app with guidance from professional developers."

Microsoft International president Jean-Philippe Courtois inaugurated the Appfest at Saroj Sadan, University of Mumbai, Kalina.

AICTE chairman S.S. Mantha said on the occasion: "Opportunities like these are the game changers in today's world. These are the skills that the future generations need to understand and learn in a globally collaborative world."

In Delhi and NCR, the fest was held at Delhi Technological University and G.L. Bajaj Institute of Technology, Greater Noida.

"This fest gives us hands-on experience to develop applications for Windows," said 20-year-old Vijay Prakash, a first-year student of B. Tech (IT) in DTU. He is designing an application for news feeds titled NewsApp.

Another student, Arpit Aggarwal of IIT Jodhpur says he wants to make an application on Poker, a popular game. His application, if approved, will enable people sitting at different places to play the game online.

The selected applications will be filtered by a rigorous process after which they will be uploaded on the Windows 8 Store Applications for public usage and downloads.

Pallavi Dwivedi, 20, is a student whose application was approved by the Microsoft panel two years ago.

Currently in her final year of B.E., this Mumbai University student designed an application that calculates the current network speed of service providers.

"Many service providers fool customers bragging about their network speed. However, what people get in return is far from what they promise. Though many websites offer this service of calculating the network speed, Windows Phone was devoid of the same. Hence I decided to make an application for Windows Phone," an exultant Dwivedi told IANS.

Her application has 30,000 plus downloads so far. She is also a part of Microsoft's Student Partner Programme since three years.

To boost the efforts of the students, Microsoft has developed AppLabs where students can walk-in with their designed apps and get them vetted for quality and design checks. The AppLabs has centres in Mumbai and Bangalore. For students residing in other places, Microsoft provides remote support as well, wherein students can submit their applications online.