Teams to Hack it Out in Inaugural CIMB 3D Conquest Finals

By Ahmed Wafi

The finals to take place on the 18th of January at the Le Meridien, Putrajaya

The inaugural CIMB 3D Conquest Grand Finals will take stage in the Le Meridien Hotel in Putrajaya on the 18th of January. The top five teams from the three tracks that are Data Science, Fintech and Coding from the In-Country Competition held in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore will battle it out for superiority and take home the grand prize of USD 8,000 and a trip to Silicon Valley. The three Ds in the 3D Conquest stand for Data, Digital and Disruption.

The Malaysian In-Country Competition took place on the 30th of November to the 1st of December in a 24-hour-challenge that saw 92 teams consisting of three to four members from universities across Malaysia, Thailand and Brunei test themselves to see which team would make it to the Grand Finals.

The Asia Pacific University (APU) played hosts to the In-Country Competition where the winner from each track took home USD 3,000 while the runners-up take home USD 2,000, the third-place team will win a cash prize of USD 1,000 while the fourth and fifth placed teams will bring home USD 500 and USD 300 respectively.

The audience was left pleasantly surprised when Dato’ Hamidah Naziadin, Group Chief People Office of CIMB Foundation announced that each member of the top five teams would be given employment opportunities with the bank.

Dato’ Hamidah proudly announced that “Today, the fourth industrial revolution is transforming our future and will change how we work and operate so it is essentially a revolution of all these technological breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence, blockchains, big data and internet of things.”

“So, to thrive in this new world, our youth, each and every one of you, the future makers must be equipped with the right skills and knowledge to be able to face the challenges presented by IR 4.0” Dato’ Hamidah exclaimed.

For the coding track, third place went to the Krazy Koding Klub of APU while Team O-One from Monash University took home the second place honours and Team Mamadei of Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman were crowned champions.

The Fintech Heroes, a team consisting of students from Universiti Teknologi Petronas and Universiti Teknologi Mara were the third placed team in the Fintech track while Team Vest Your Time from Thailand took home second. The first place honours went to Team Jake from the University of Reading.

Lastly in the Data Science track, we witnessed another mixed team from Universiti Malaya and Nottingham University snatch third place honours while another team from Monash University took home second place. A second first place finish from another APU team was witnessed as The Datanians were crowned champions.

Speaking exclusively to GRADUAN, Sam Tan of The Datanians revealed how they had won a Fintech challenge earlier in 2018 and this was their second title of that year. “We never really thought of winning, we just wanted to do what we normally do.” The winner gushed with joy.

It seemed that the idea of just having fun was shared with his teammate Sailalitah who says they joined the challenge to simply “get an idea of how the industry implements data science”.

CIMB have held similar local and regional challenges such as the CIMB ASEAN Stock challenge launched in 2010 which gave contestants the opportunity to trade stocks using virtual cash. Following that, CIMB then introduced the Talent Trail in 2014, established to help university students discover the skills needed to be employable. Before the 3D Conquest was launched, there was the CIMB Data Science challenge, a competition revolving around data analytics.

With the success of the previous challenges, the CIMB 3D Conquest promises to unravel world class computer wizards within the ASEAN region.

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