During November 29-30 Karachaganak Petroleum Operating B.V. (KPO) together with Astana Hub held a Hackathon «Digital Future of Energy» for young IT professionals, SME and Start-ups.

There were more than 160 applications received and following a thorough selection process 37 teams from different parts of Kazakhstan made it to the final stage of the Hackathon on 29-30 November in Astana Hub.

Technical tasks were presented in three areas, i.e. Safety, Business Process optimization and Efficiency improvement. Within two days, participants had an opportunity to generate ideas for projects of their choice, request the additional information from KPO experts, work with professional mentors and coaches on their product and present the results at the finals. On top of that KPO organised a special session on how to become a KPO vendor for local IT companies and start-ups.

KPO nominated three Jury members for this event and two more were provided by Astana Hub. The main criteria that the jury were guided by were the relevance of the solution for KPO, availability of a prototype, complexity, maturity and user experience. The best teams will be invited to incubation programs, and will potentially have the opportunity to deploy their solutions in KPO.

Three winner teams were selected by the jury: HomeLabs.ai, Meris and Zerek. Each of them received a prize from KPO. «I am pleased and honoured to be here today with you and to present an award at the very first Hackathon related to Oil and Gas hosted by the Astana Hub. KPO has proudly initiated the process and I am sure, that after the success of this tournament, other members of the energy industry and the national business community at large would follow the example and carry on with this wonderful initiative.» — Giancarlo Ruiu, KPO General Director said.

Digitalization and CI team