Innovation winners crowned at Isobar Create 32 Singapore hackathon after a 32-hour challenge

The winners of Isobar’s Create 32 event in Singapore were announced on Sunday night, following a 32-hour challenge. Asia’s first hackathon brought together some of the best talent from around the region at Microsoft’s offices in Singapore. Isobar, a digital marketing agency, aims to promote new technologies to shape and encourage more creative interactions between brands and consumers.

The event challenged participants to devise and develop Near Field Communication (NFC) applications in just 32 hours. Teams then had to pitch their app to a panel of prestigious judges from Samsung, OCBC, iDA and Isobar.

The winning entries were picked from 18 innovative applications created during the NFC developer event. The top three teams were each awarded a Galaxy Note II, Galaxy SIII and Galaxy camera from headline sponsor Samsung. Isobar Create Singapore saw nearly 50 tech enthusiasts from Singapore, Indonesia and Australia come together to develop innovative new NFC applications.

“The first Isobar Create 32 in Asia was a phenomenal success, and I’m proud that Isobar is able to provide a platform that brings talented young developers and progressive brands together. With the initiative launching in Australia and China within the next few months, we can look forward to even more innovative solutions being produced,” said Jean Lin, CEO of Isobar APAC and Global Chief Strategy Officer.    

“With the largest range of NFC-enabled Android devices in Singapore and the wide availability of TecTiles, Samsung is improving the way mobile devices are used for everyday tasks. We are excited to be part of Create32, the first NFC themed hackathon, to support the incubation of new and creative ideas leveraging NFC technology. Samsung believes that developer community events such as Create32 will play a big part is realizing the potential of NFC adoption,” said Irene Ng, Vice President of Marketing, Samsung Asia Pte Ltd.

“NFC has the potential to greatly impact proximity-based commerce and payments going forward. We were pleased to partner with Isobar on Create 32 Singapore to bring together some of the best developers in Asia, to showcase their creativity in developing new NFC services that will significantly benefit customers within the business payments space,” said Pranav Seth, Head, E-Business & Business Transformation, OCBC Bank.