Appstars 2014: Inspiring the Next Generation Mobile App Developers Date:   Wednesday , August 06, 2014 Mobile has come a long way from being a mere communication device. Statistics shows that nearly 200 million mobile apps are downloaded per year for various operating systems serving myriad of purposes and yet, there is an ocean of demand from users and a plethora of opportunities for app developers. Appstars 2014, a maiden contest for talented mobile app developers was held on 5th July at Vivanta by Taj, Bangalore under the co-sponsorship of Trelleborg Sealing Solutions and siliconindia. Trelleborg identifies the need for pioneering solutions that eases human life and has consequently embarked on the mission to define the future of industrial engineering, recognize and acknowledge such talents. Appstars was thus born with the aims to discover developers and encourage them to craft creative apps for iOS and Android platforms. Since its inception in 1905, Trelleborg Sealing Solutions has been constantly striving to provide high quality service. Keeping in mind the mantra of customer satisfaction, Trelleborg has now grown into a large enterprise with 24 manufacturing units worldwide, 9 R&D centers in Europe and America and 56 marketing companies that offer high quality sealing solutions. Entries poured in from all corners of the country for the two categories of contest - Student and Professional; crossing a total of 900. Two winners from each category were selected by a jury panel who evaluated the submitted engineering apps from which nine were shortlisted. The jury comprised of 7 members; Vineet Gupta, Head of Digital Business from Mindtree, Sanjay Prasad, VP-BPO & Head - Tech Engagement at TCS; Srinidhi Rao, VP Engineering from Robosoft, Vaideeswaran Sethuraman, Founder & CEO of Divum and Altaf Rehmani, Founder and Director of Redbytes Software. There were also two internal judges from Trelleborg: Sinanudin Omerhodzic, Global IT Director and Wolfgang Heinrich, Project Manager Web & Mobile, Global Marketing & Communications. \"I love to code, but I also believe in making applications which make people’s lives easy,\" says Abhishek Kumar who bagged the first prize for the Formula Handbook app, a cash award of Rs.1, 00,000 in the student category. The ‘Eureka moment’ for him to develop the app was when he saw his friend’s room with formulas scribbled all over the walls. \"I knew what I wanted to make\". He continues, \"The real challenge for me was to make a fluid UI which is very important in providing rich user experience\". The runner up for the same category to receive a cash award of Rs.75,000 was the duo, Senthil kumar and Eshwaran Pragasam for their innovative android app called SmartTaxi. \"The difference between our apps and others is-this is just one app suitable for both drivers and customers,\" explains Senthil. This app connects passengers with a registered driver without intermediaries, calculates fares and distance accurately with the help of Google maps. The future plans include integration with Google Wallet and ecommerce sites for providing offers to regular customers. The rock star app to bag the first place and a cash award of Rs.1,50,000 in the professional category was MIDIevel, an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface developed by the trio Hrishik Mishra, Ayushman Dash and Bhupen Chauhan. \"It allows a musician to harness a device’s features ­ touch response, Universal Serial Bus (USB), host and sensors and its computing power to control his music gear which is enabled with MIDI capability,\" explains Hrishik, satellite engineering student in Technical University of Munich. \"The biggest challenge was obviously building the driver from scratch, android has no API\'s exposed that allow MIDI data transfer unlike other players, The next challenge was building a UI that does justice to the motive of making this application,\" says Bhupen Chauhan, Software Engineer, Reverie Language Technologies. \"The final presentations were competitive and it is gratifying to win the prize,\" notes guitarist and co-developer Ayushman. \"Coming back from our jobs, working late nights till 4 AM in the morning, the application deserved a platform. The runners up of the student category came up to us and said that it was inspiring for them to see our presentation, it was a moment to remember,\" adds Bhupen. The Appstars runner-up for the professional category was the team behind iOS app Simplyfy and received Rs.1,00,000 as prize money. Praveen Kumar S and Chaitanya Rathi, both hailing from Bangalore make people’s life easier by letting them control their electrical equipments like TVs, bulbs, music systems and others from anywhere. The team has their future all chalked out. \"We want to provide this platform as a Backend as a Service(BaaS) where people can integrate to our APIs and we take care of their software issues\". People say an idea without opportunity is nothing. With Appstars Contest, Trelleborg has given developers that opportunity and motivation to conquer the world. Designed to be an annual event, Appstars is committed to continue identifying and endorse talent in a market that continues to be in flux.