Technology today has become a way of life, making coding an extremely important skill to possess in order to thrive in this competitive era. Hindustan Times Codeathon platform enabled students to learn coding and showcase their talent thereby putting them on an accelerated path to success by enabling them to learn, participate and then win.
The platform witnessed participation from more than 10,000 schools with over 61,000 registrations.
While India has a lot of coders, coding for kids is novel and nascent. Institutional coding is not yet developed for kids while coding remains premium and aspirational for parents and cool for kids. HT Codeathon presented an opportunity to build the next generation of coders.
Talking about this novel initiative, Samudra Bhattacharya, CEO-Print, HT Media, said, “This has been a long journey of over a year in developing the right platform which solves a need-gap in the education space for our partner schools as well as our sponsors. This is precisely the balance we wanted to achieve when we started this journey. I wish to thank our esteemed partners in Cuemath, IBM & Delhi Government who helped us get 61,000 registrations from 10,000 schools in Hindustan Times Codeathon 2020.”
Rajan Bhalla, Group CMO, HT Media, added, “This is a first-of-its-kind initiative and solidifies our continued focus towards the Millennial & GenZ audiences and the hugely positive response from our trusted readers & partner schools acts as the perfect endorsement. This is just the first step in creating a big movement around engaging the younger audiences with platforms that speak to them.”
Hindustan Times Codeathon provided the perfect opportunity amidst the lockdown to enhance coding skills and make children ready for a tech-enabled future. A student just had to pay a one-time registration fee of Rs 499/- + GST to complete their registration process at www.htcodeathon.com.
Eligibility: Students of Classes VI to IX
Online Preparation Modules were provided to the student post-registration. Online qualifiers and then Finale were conducted in December. HT Codeathon also provides various incentives to the students to participate by providing various gift hampers such as Laptops & Smart Watches. Certificate of Participation has also been provided to all the participating students.