SINGAPORE — VML has announced the winner of the first-ever Asia Pacific MACHathon – a creative hackathon competition that invited innovators, big thinkers, and technology enthusiasts to prove the power of MACH technology (Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless).
Kicking off the coding on April 23, developers, designers, and creatives came together across six days to create and code products for a real-world brief: “The Next One Billion: Tech & Commerce for Good.” The brief focused on ideas for the coming generation in the diverse region of APAC, with solutions covering a wide range of categories such as sustainability, elder care, air pollution, education, and women-owned businesses.
The Asia Pacific MACHathon 2024 winners
Rhino Partners presented the “Fraud Detection App,” winning the MACHnificent Award, presented by the MACH Alliance, as well as The Relevance Champion, presented by Voucherify. This is an AI-driven solution to help elderly citizens identify potential scam calls.
Winning The Viability Champion, presented by Maker.Tech, and The Ambition Champion, presented by BigCommerce, was VML Australia with “Toko,” a world-first commerce solution that makes digitalization simple, intuitive, and fast for women-owned micro-businesses.
Mirum India also won big with The Maturity Champion, presented by Stripe. This is for its “Lost & Found” pitch that provides an online marketplace by the artisan community for the artisan community, which builds on the insight that handicrafts is the second highest area of employment for villages throughout India.
Meanwhile, The Usability Champion award, presented by Vercel, was won by VML Thailand with its “Airfresh” project. This is a solution that mobilizes the Thai community with eco-missions and rewards to help the critical pollution problem in Thailand.
Valtech scored The Integration Champion award, presented by Contentful with “Repurpose,” an ecommerce solution that allows the selling of pre-loved clothes online in a fast-fashion world.
Lastly, VML Hong Kong‘s “EcoInvesta” won “The People’s Choice,” presented by VML. The crowd investing platform aims to help accelerate clean energy transition by linking shoppers with clean energy project investments.
The VML Asia Pacific MACHathon is organized by leading creative company VML, in partnership with MACH Alliance. Entries were judged by a panel of APAC’s top brand and technology leaders, including:
- Holly Hall, Managing Director at MACH Alliance
- Umesh Phadke, Chief Transformation Officer at L’Oreal
- Michael Garcia, Group General Manager of Technology at The Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels
- Jamie Gagliardi, Head of Marketing for Growth & NZ MILKRUN
- Satirpan Sakkawatra, CMO at SCBx
- Shawn Lim, Editor for Media and Technology, Campaign Asia
On May 09, the award ceremony was streamed live on LinkedIn and across six in-person hubs across the region. The event was supported by a lineup of top technology partners including BigCommerce, Contentful, Vercel, Voucherify, Stripe and MakerTech.
Though MACH architectures are new to many, VML has been building customer experiences based on these flexible and open MACH technologies for over a decade for clients such as KFC, Woolworths, T-Mobile, DFS, PVH, and Ted Baker.
Hasan Hasnie, Chief Technology Officer at VML APAC, said: “It was amazing what the teams across Asia Pacific came up with in just six days. The level of innovation and creativity in the solutions produced goes to show that by having flexibility in the technology we choose, the possibilities are endless.”
Holly Hall, Managing Director of MACH Alliance, added: “Power of MACH events like VML’s Asia Pacific MACHathon not only showcase technological innovation that MACH can bring but also inspire collaboration and drive positive change in the industry and beyond.”
The MACH Alliance was formed in June 2020 to help enterprise organizations navigate the complex modern technology landscape. It aims to guide and show the business advantage of open tech ecosystems that are Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless.
To see the full list of winners: https://www.vml.com/campaign/machathon-apac-2024/winners-2024
