New Delhi, India - 29 Aug 2018: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced Persistent Systems, Invest India, Wipro Limited, Capgemini and NASSCOM have joined the multi-year Call for Code Global Initiative to create a better future. Call for Code, announced in May 2018, is the largest and most ambitious effort to bring startup, academic and enterprise developers together to solve one of the most pressing societal issues of our time: preventing, responding to and recovering from natural disasters. Through Call for Code, IBM and David Clark Cause are joining forces to benefit their Charitable Partners: United Nations Human Rights and The American Red Cross. 

IBM will provide access to cloud, data, AI and blockchain technologies, along with training and code to the developers. Since inception, over 35 organizations and 20+ IBM clients have ‘answered the call’ to help improve the world. In India, IBM garnered the support of technology industry leaders like Persistent Systems, Wipro Limited and Capgemini to host hackathons within their organizations to inspire their workforce to grow into problem solvers. NASSCOM and Invest India extended support in reaching out to startups and encouraging young entrepreneurs to be a part of the social change in India.

There have been over 300 events in 50 cities around the world in addition to Call for Code days across 13 IBM Development Labs in eight different countries to engage developers. India has held 40 similar events across all major cities in the Country including Hyderabad, Bangalore, Goa, Mumbai, Nagpur, Gurgaon and Chennai.

“2017 has been the costliest year ever for natural disasters in the Indian sub-continent. At the same time, India has the second largest developer community with 3.5 million developers – a community with great potential to create innovative solutions. IBM intends to harness this potential by giving developers access to tools, technologies, free code, and training with experts that will strengthen our efforts towards mitigating disasters,” said Seema Kumar, Country Leader, Developer Ecosystem & Startups at IBM. “We thank our partners who have played a crucial role in this year’s Call for Code by validating our shared vision of helping humanity tackle natural disasters,” she added. 

The winning team will receive the first ever Call for Code Global Prize, a financial award of 200,000 USD. They will have access to longer-term support through IBM’s partnership with the Linux Foundation, as well as the opportunity to present their solution to to venture capitalist firm New Enterprises Associates (NEA) for evaluation and feedback. The winning solution also will quickly transition from the development lab to the real world through the deployment of their technology via IBM’s Corporate Service Corps.

Additional details, a full schedule of in-person and virtual events, and training and enablement for Call for Code are available at http://www.developer.ibm.com/callforcode.