Religion scores at Reliance Mobile Application Contest

Shashwat Chaturvedi

MUMBAI: It has been well over a century since Karl Marx remarked that religion is the opium of the masses. Strangely, it still holds true even today, at least that is what one feels at the Reliance Developer Programme Mobile Application Contest 2005, where religion based applications won in both the categories.

From the scores of submission, the first prize worth Rs. 2 lakhs went to Astute Systems from Indore for the Hanuman Chalisa application in the general category. Whereas the first prize in the student category went to Aditya Sharma, Siddharth Shah, Vasundhara Kantroo from DAIICT, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, for their Prashnavali application, the prize was worth Rs 50,000.

In the first application, Hanuman Chalisa music is played on the mobile, while the 'dohas' are displayed in Hindi or English. The graphical application provides 'dohas' in detailed or in-brief format. The first prizewinner in the student category, Prashnavali is based on the religious idea on Ram Charit Manas of Sant Tulsidas. To use the application, the user needs to think of a question and then scroll the blinking dot the location of choice. The answer to the question is presented in the form of a 'doha' with English translation of the same.

The second prize worth Rs. 1 lakh in the general category went to Tinfo Mobile, Kerala for Teach Me Hindi application. The second prize in the student category worth Rs. 30,000 was shared by two applications, Snake Catcher game developed by Sheetal Chauhan, Swapnil Nikhade, Kalpana Khandare and Amit Pol, Isquare IT, Pune and Karaoke application developed by Sirish Vemuganti, Hyderabad.

Finally, the third prize worth Rs. 50,000 in the general category was won by Limited Edition Mobile, Delhi's Mobile Blogger Application. The third prize in the student category worth Rs. 20,000 was shared by two applications, namely, PixO application developed by D. Sribabu, Shah & Anchor Engineering College, Mumbai and Pongball game developed by Abhishek Srivastava, Rohailkhand University, Bairely, UP.

The contest was adjudged by IT educationist Vijay Mukhi, Datta Subrahmanya, vice president (Customer Advocacy), Cisco, and Prashant Dogra, technology marketing specialist, Nokia.

Expressing his satisfaction, Mahesh Prasad, president (Applications Solutions & content Group), Reliance Infocomm, said, “The major change has been in the quality of applications. Last time round, many of the applications were amateurish and not very inventive. But this time, the applications were truly amazing, very professional and very innovative.” According to him, the biggest surprise was the overwhelming response from the student community, with over 60 per cent of the total submissions.

Reliance Developer Programme currently has a member base of over 19,000 registered developers including about 900 small and medium companies. Reliance also provided tech support to the developers. The applications will be launched on the Reliance network, and revenues will be shared between the company and the developer.