We Succeed Together and Team Thrive emerged as the winners of the Sustainable Finance Live 2023 hackathon, held from October 2 to 13, 2023, in collaboration with NayaOne.
The competition featured two categories, ’emerging’ and ‘established,’ allowing smaller groups to compete separately from larger corporations. We Succeed Together claimed victory in the emerging category with their proposal for impact-oriented financial instruments. Team members Ikechukwu Okoli, co-founder of Capsule Technology, and Arun Krishnankutty, managing consultant at Wipro, impressed the judges with their logical architecture and open KPI approach.
In the established category, Team Thrive, comprising members from NatWest, won for their ‘Thrive Hub’ platform, designed to transform impact investments for SMEs. The team included Zeyno Yurddas, Kristina Gosheva, Rohan Dikshit, Asad Ateeque, Manish Bhutani, Jonathan Boden, and Jon Mcinerney from NatWest. The judges recognized this solution as the most “ready to go.”
In the emerging category, SEEM secured the runner-up position with their concept of mandating standardized net-zero transition plans across the economy through management consultancy, facilitating universal ESG measurements and widespread innovation. The team, led by co-founder Seema Sutradhar, garnered praise for shifting focus from pure profit to sustainable profit.
Another runner-up in the emerging category was First Derivative, which presented their capabilities in integrating geospatial and related data with financial data for physical properties. The team included Sanjyot Mestry, Taylor Cavendish, Johnny Mattimore, Thangaprakash Rajendran, Shravani Navghare, Nomanur Rashid, and Joao Pedro Afonso Cerqueira. The judges appreciated their drive to automate the integration of non-financial data with financial data.
The panel of judges included industry leaders such as Andy Bennet from Innovate UK KTN, Dr. Sadia Ahmed from Deloitte, Chirine BenZaied-Bourgerie from Finastra, and others. Mentors who provided guidance included David Gristwood from Elastacloud, Richard Peers from ResponsibleRisk, and Amrit Satpathy from NayaOne.
During the event, members of Team Thrive shared insights from their experience. Gosheva and Yurddas emphasized that this was their first hackathon, coming from an ESG background. They found the event enriching, while Dikshit noted its unique focus on business models rather than pure coding.
Yurddas remarked on the relevance of the hackathon’s theme, stating that it allowed them to explore solutions to real problems faced by tech and business teams. The freedom to develop a variety of ideas proved beneficial, as highlighted by Gosheva’s positive take on the collaborative environment.
Dikshit appreciated the additional time to think through their ideas, and the group collaboration was seen as vital for encouraging different perspectives. Gosheva summed up the experience by noting how working across teams helped expand their thinking beyond their usual confines.