Webchutney wins Yahoo! Agency Hack

Team Digitas and Sapient Nitro clinched silver and bronze at the event, which was organised in the country for the first time. Seven agencies participated in it.

Digital agency Webchutney won gold in the maiden Agency Hack event organised by Yahoo! in Gurgaon. The other winners of the 24-hour hackathon were Team Digitas and Sapient Nitro, who received silver and bronze, respectively. Around seven advertising agencies including Ogilvy, Webchutney, Sapient Nitro, ad2c, Digitas, Indiatimes and Reprise Media attended the event from Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai. The teams created digital prototypes of ad campaigns that were product or campaign-driven.

The Webchutney team comprising developer, designer, user-experience specialist, copy-writer, media planner and digital strategist created Y! Loo, a hardware-operated hack that utilises Yahoo! Messenger and enables people to remotely check if restrooms and conference rooms are free. The users can also knock on the door to check if it's engaged and the system will notify if and when it gets vacant.

Sattvik Mishra, group head, copy, Webchutney, says, "It feels awesome to have won at the first ever Agency Hack in India. For this event, we wanted to solve a problem that we ourselves face and that's how we came up with the Y! Loo. There are five people in our team (Mishra, Mandeep Singh, Gurbaksh Singh, Abhishek Saxena and Akshay Raheja) and only one has been to the US. So a trip to participate in the international hack event is thrilling. We are so kicked about it!"

Team Digitas, consisting of Akshat Bhardwaj, Prosenjit Som, Sidharth K Dhanda and Vivek R Sharma, which took silver, created Twinority Report, a Twitter-based application that anticipates criminal intentions of users including substance abuse and suicide by picking up certain keyword patterns. Bronze winning Sapient Nitro team - Sayed Suffiyan and Parag Gajjar - came up with Lens, a movie viewing companion experience medium.

A prequel to Yahoo! Big Idea Chair award, Agency Hack events have been organised in New York, USA, prior to its Indian leg, where agencies like WPP and Publicis took part. The Yahoo! Big Idea Chair has received 383 entries across eight advertising categories this year. The winners will be announced in Mumbai on November 9.