"Hackday" of Flipkart is more than just a hackathon

The third edition of the hackday Flipkart concluded last Friday, in their Office in Bangalore. We were told that almost all from their 400 engineering team members had opted to join the 24-hour marathon-long hacking fest.

Here in Bangalore, there's no shortage of Hackathons. It has become a conventional practice to attract great talent and get them all under one roof to build something in the constraint of time. Even within an organization, it is an effective way to put their best minds in building something that can be quickly implemented in its products over time.

So my thought that leads up to the hackday was something great; until I saw the first hack, by their SVP engineering. Amodh Malviya, along with a young engineer, had built an interaction based on gesture to the site using the movement Flipkart del salto. And, as if that weren't enough, they broke an old cellphone, ripped the engine off it and put it in a glove to provide haptic whenever you click something using gestures.

The hack jumping movement

Now that's not something you see everyday, especially from a senior manager at a giant such as Flipkart. But one of the employees told me, "you know, that is the best thing about Alex. If I believe that there is a feature that can add value to your site, I can just walk up to him and reflect on the idea. And always has time for us; not once has he said that he occupied, when we want to talk to him. "

Alex says: "we wanted to have a day where people can only build what they want. There has been talk that the hack should have some importance and everything else, but this time around, we have removed all bars and restrictions. Just go ahead and build what you want. The only constraint is that it must be around Flipkart ".

A statement like this, the top engineer in the company is certain to attract people in large numbers. We were greeted by 400 containing caffeine, tired but satisfied engineers, who all had build some really interesting projects. Kiran Jonnalagadda, founder of Hasgeek, was one of the judges at the Hackday, and said: "this is crazy! I believe there are at least a 100 hacks to judge ".

I did a little looking around as well, and here are some hacks that I thought were interesting-

1) Web Login – this was a plugin that Flipkart will tell you a user all sources that he or she is logged in from. The tool will tell you that all browsers that you have from Flipkart and can be accessed from those sources as well.

Flipkart Butler 2) – this was an interesting tool, which would give you information produced by Flipkart on Gtalk and SMS. You will need to add the Butler on Gtalk and IM the product you are looking for. You respond with information as an IM chat. In the case of SMS, you can request information by sending an SMS to a particular number.

Flipkart will reach you 3) – another interesting mobile application, which suggests offline shops in your area, based on the type of products you have been browsing Flipkart platform.

4) bid for products – this was an interesting addition to the purchase page on Flipkart, where you can choose to purchase a product, when its price fell at one point. The tool will automatically purchase the product for you, using the money in the characteristic in pay Zippy wallet.

5) Run flipkart – this was another cool game built for freshmen at Flipkart. The game would require to make a series of decisions of e-commerce, as products you're selling, how you can manage the supply chain, logistics, and publicity. Based on your decisions, it will tell you how many products you've sold, how much profit you made etc. The aim of the game was to get people to understand what it takes to run an e-commerce company.

There were 95 other hacks, which were just as innovative as others, and unfortunately there might only be 5 winners. The engravings were competing to be effectively implemented in the main site of Flipkart. Apparently, three of last years winning hacks are already implemented on the site. It's the same this year.

But to me, winning the hack was not the biggest result of the event. The fact that most people in the engineering team up and came up with the hack that did it was the greatest victory of the day. It was also a show of the company's culture, where most of the top management was present and led by example.

Flipkart culture was apparent to us, as an outsider, that day. It was friendly, open, creative and above all, collaboration. It was great to see people come together under one roof and proceed with the hackthon out of interest. It was a testament to everything nicely with modern technology, and hope that this remains true for the time to come to Flipkart.

Read more about hackday on blogs by Flipkart