Bangladeshi innovators among top 12 at Microsoft Imagine Cup

Microsoft has announced the top teams from the 2022 Southeast Asia (SEA) New Market Competition of Imagine Cup, the company’s flagship technology challenge for students and young innovators.

The 2022 SEA New Markets regional competition saw over 100 team entries from student innovators across the region competing to solve global challenges across four categories: earth, education, health, and lifestyle.

From the Bangladeshi teams, ‘Code_Cracker19’ from Daffodil International University and ‘TeamHeimerdinger’ from Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) were among the top 12 performers.

Imagine Cup is Microsoft’s global student technology competition designed to empower students to apply cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics to solve some of the world’s most critical social and sustainability problems. This year, participants from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Laos, Sri Lanka were eligible to apply for the SEA New Markets Regional Finals.

“Microsoft’s Imagine Cup aims to empower student developers around the globe to develop the next great technology solutions,” said Yousup Faruqu, managing director of Microsoft Bangladesh.

“We understand that today’s students are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs. We want to invest in whatever we can to help them improve their future. Congratulations to all our regional finalists for their incredible projects and hard work.”

The team will take home $ 1,000 cash prize and $ 1,000 azure grant to continue developing their projects, receive judge feedback, and automatically advance to the Imagine Cup world finals.

Top 12 teams from the Southeast Asia New Markets Regional Competition will receive access to a pool of mentors to develop their solution further to increase the marketability of their products supporting it to enter to respective industries as a start-up.