Lankan students emerge as top finalists at Imagine Cup SEA New Markets Competition

Microsoft yesterday announced the top teams from the 2022 Southeast Asia (SEA) New Market Competition of Imagine Cup, the company’s flagship technology challenge for students and young innovators. 

Imagine Cup is Microsoft’s global student technology competition designed to empower students to apply cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics to solve some of the world’s most critical social and sustainability problems. This competition year, participants from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Laos, Sri Lanka were eligible to apply for the SEA New Markets Regional Finals. 

The 2022 SEA New Markets Regional Competition saw over 100 team entries from student innovators across the region competing to solve global challenges across four categories: Earth, Education, Health and Lifestyle. From the teams that submitted projects, four teams from Sri Lanka were chosen to advance to the Imagine Cup World Finals in March 2022. 

“Microsoft’s Imagine Cup aims to empower student developers around the globe to develop the next great technology solutions,” said Microsoft Sri Lanka and the Maldives Country Manager Harsha Randeny. 
“We understand that today’s students are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs. They will also become technology decision makers. We want to invest in whatever we can to help them improve their future. Congratulations to all our regional finalists for their incredible projects and hard work.”

The top four teams are as follows: 
1. Team name: The Alter; Country: Sri Lanka; University/higher education institute: Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT); Category: Education
2. Team name: Nana Shilpa; Country: Sri Lanka, University/higher education institute: Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT); Category: Health
3. Team name: ELSE; Country: Sri Lanka; University/higher education institute: University of Peradeniya; Category: Lifestyle
4. Team name: Alpha Squad LK; Country: Sri Lanka; University/higher education institute: Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT); Category: Earth

These teams will each take home US $ 1,000 cash prize and US $ 1,000 Azure Grant to continue developing their projects, receive judge feedback and automatically advance to the Imagine Cup World Finals. 

Top 12 teams from the Southeast Asia New Markets Regional Finals will receive access to a pool of mentors to develop their solution further to increase the marketability of their products supporting it to enter to respective industries as a startup.

More than two million competitors from 163 countries have signed up for Microsoft’s global student technology competition to build something that matters to them, make a difference in their communities and innovate for impact over the past 20 years.