AyTech Championed IDEAHACK by Dattel 2019

Published on 18 February 2020 in Press Releases

UTP final-year student announced as the winner of first innovation initiative by Dattel

Left to right: Erna Otoh, Dr Aliza Binti Sarlan, Mr Saipunidzam B Mahamad, Ayu Shahirah Binti Salem representing AyTech from the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Faculty of Science & Information Technology, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Ashran Dato’ Ghazi, CEO of Dattel, Kenny Chin Wai Kit and Syamsul Amry Bin Mahmud, representing Freceipts, and Muhamad Asyraf bin Muhamad Adnan.

18 Feb 2020, PETALING JAYA: A final-year student of Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) announced as the winner of the inaugural innovation initiative by Dattel. Known as IDEHACK by Dattel 2019, the competition aimed to harvest brilliant ideas from inter-disciplinary talents across the globe to find new perspectives, ideas and innovative technology-based solutions that help to discover more hidden truths about ASEAN consumers.

Representing AyTech is a one-woman-show talent Ayu Shahirah Binti Salem, a UTP Bachelor in Technology (Hons.) – Information and Communication Technology student in her early 20s who majors in Software Engineering and Business Management as a minor to her degree. “It feels incredible to be chosen as the winner as it is a global competition. PITEH is an app that I developed fully by myself, and it’s very fulfilling to be recognised for the hard work that I’ve done so far. My vision is to build an equitable financial system that works for everyone while my mission is to meet the needs of those lacking access to credit, loans and basic financial resources.”

Left to right: Ashran Dato’ Ghazi, CEO of Dattel, Ayu Shahirah Binti Salem and her lecturer-cum-supervisor, Mr Saipunidzam Bin Mahamad from the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Faculty of Science & Information Technology, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS.

When further asked what would be her next move, she added: “I would like to have access to mentors as well as advisors and some consumer data across ten verticals to develop PITEH.” She continued, “I would like to say thank you for organising a marvellous competition like IDEAHACK. Throughout the competition, I learned a lot and managed to improve PITEH as well as myself. I hope Dattel will organise competitions like this again in the future so more people can get their chance to share their incredible ideas.” PITEH is a mobile lending application that builds credit scores for its users using mobile activities and data. Powered by advanced data science, it builds a modern credit infrastructure from scratch. With users’ explicit permission, key pieces of data from users’ Android devices are collected solely for underwriting loan applicants who have no documented financial history.

Emerged as the 1^st-runner up of the competition is Freceipt, a digital receipt platform solutions that are led by two gentlemen, Kenny Chin Wai Kit and Syamsul Amry bin Mahmud, which allows customers to receive the receipt in digital form every time they make a purchase at a shop by scanning a QR code. They said: “We worked hard to achieve it and we felt great when we were chosen as one of the Top 3 as it pushed us to work for more. This success has propelled us to achieve even greater ones soon. We are on a mission to help the retail industry in digitising receipts and increase customer engagement capabilities; which could lead up repeat-purchasing and overall engagement. We hope to build a new solution for users, where they will be able to receive their e-receipt automatically with financial planning when paying without requiring additional steps.”

Left to right: Ashran Dato’ Ghazi, CEO of Dattel, presenting the prize to Kenny Chin Wai Kit and Syamsul Amry Bin Mahmud, the team members representing Freceipts.

Musthofa Syarifudin, a student from Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS), represented ISMAYA in the competition and announced as the 2^nd-runner up. Entering the competition with the proposal of using reinforcement learning to build better Personalised Advertisement Recommendation (PAR), he mentioned that he did not expect to be chosen as one of the winners, stating that the other contenders were very competitive with their astounding ideas. “This competition has opened up opportunities for me to improve myself and be better as this experience has allowed me to learn and discover new things, gaining valuable experiences by trying to invent something new. I hope there will be a chance to collaborate further with Dattel in the future.”

Received over more than 60 submissions across the globe from countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Canada and Lebanon, the competition was further deliberated into Top 11 in December 2019, seeing a healthy but close competition from the participants of Malaysia and Indonesia. For more information about Dattel, visit https://www.dattel.asia and learn more about our newest product, the new Dattel Voyager, an AI-powered Consumer Intelligence console that provides consumer data, analytics and insights.