Nanded Maha-Ideathon 2026:
Problem Statements & Domain Guidelines 

Organized under the Seva Sankalp Abhiyan (17th September – 17th October 2026) 

Executive Program Overview & State Framework

Welcome to the “Nanded Maha-Ideathon 2026”! Hosted through the joint coordination of the Department of Skills, Employment, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Higher & Technical Education, Industry, and Electronics, IT & Artificial Intelligence and Collector Office Nanded, this initiative aims to connect youth, students, startups, corporate innovators, and rural problem-solvers with real-world district challenges.

Statewide operations, technical evaluation platforms, digital portals, and participant mentoring are executed through the Maharashtra State Innovation Society (MSInS) in collaboration with Ratan Tata Maharashtra State Skill University (RTMSSU), Mumbai, supported by a dedicated Professional Programme Implementation Agency (PPIA).

This document details the key problem statements across our five primary focus domains. Participants are invited to build scalable, high-impact, and technology-driven solutions that directly benefit our community and state.

Following are the list of primary five focus domains:

1. Agricultural Tech
2. Healthcare
3. Education
4. Environment
5. Digital Governance – Public Service Delivery

Advisory Note for Applicants: While specific problem statements are provided, participants are encouraged to submit alternative innovative solutions outside these listed prompts, subject to the following criteria:

• Domain Scope: All submissions must strictly fall within one of the 5 designated focus domains.
• Technical Foundation: Proposed solutions must be backed by a clear technical framework, architectural feasibility, or working proof-of-concept.
• Technology & AI Integration: Leveraged use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, automation, or modern tech stacks is strongly encouraged and will receive priority evaluation.

Problem Statements:

1. Domain: Agricultural Tech

• Focus Area / Problem Statement: AI-Powered Real-time Agricultural Pest & Crop Disease Early Warning System:
• Challenge: Build a low-bandwidth mobile solution or WhatsApp-integrated tool using computer vision or simple diagnostic workflows that allows farmers to upload photos of affected crops, instantly diagnose crop diseases, receive localized organic/chemical treatment plans in the local language, and automatically flag outbreak clusters on a district agricultural officer dashboard.
• Context: Smallholder farmers lack immediate expert guidance during pest or disease outbreaks, leading to crop losses, delay in intervention, and overuse of expensive chemical pesticides.
• Expected Impact: Minimizes crop yield loss, cuts unnecessary pesticide expenses for smallholder farmers, and provides District Agriculture Officers with real-time pest outbreak heatmaps.

2. Domain: Healthcare

• Focus Area / Problem Statement: Automated High-Risk Maternal & Child Health Follow-Up System
• Context: High rates of maternal anemia and delayed infant immunizations persist due to missed follow-up visits and scattered health records across Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) worker registers.
• Challenge: Create a unified digital tracking system for ASHA workers that generates automated daily task lists, sends voice/SMS reminders to expectant mothers in regional dialects, and flags high-risk pregnancies directly to the nearest Medical Officer.
• Expected Impact: Ensures zero missed immunizations, enables early detection and referral of high-risk pregnancies, and eliminates paper reporting burdens for ASHA workers. 

3. Domain: Education

• Focus Area / Problem Statement: Multilingual AI Remedial Tutor for Regional Language Schools. Create a light AI learning platform that evaluates student test responses in regional languages, pinpoints individual learning gaps, and auto-generates customized practice exercises for teachers.
• Expected Impact: Improves Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) scores in rural government schools and reduces administrative burden on teachers.

4. Domain: Environment – Rural Water & Waste Management

Environment — Solid Waste Management

• Focus Area: Low-Cost Decentralized Urban-Rural Solid Waste Management & Segregation.
• Context: Rapidly growing cities like Nanded, along with nearby villages, face severe challenges with unsegregated waste, illegal dumping, and lack of processing facilities. Gram Panchayats and municipal bodies lack heavy capital budgets for complex waste processing systems.
• Challenge: Build an affordable, community-driven or low-cost IoT/digital solution or environment friendly process for waste segregation, collection optimization, or localized organic waste conversion. The solution must work in low-resource urban-rural transition zones and incentivize households to segregate at the source.
• Expected Impact: Reduces landfill waste volume, cuts municipal transport costs, and provides Gram Panchayats with a self-sustaining waste management model.

Environment — Rural Water Management

• Focus Area / Problem Statement: Low-Cost IoT & AI Water Quality Monitoring System.
• Challenge: Design an affordable sensor module paired with an AI anomaly dashboard to continuously monitor rural drinking water tanks for contamination, turbidity, and supply pipeline leaks.
• Context: Overhead drinking water tanks and Gram Panchayat pipelines lack continuous water quality testing, leading to undetected contamination outbreaks and unmonitored pipeline leaks.
• Expected Impact: Prevents waterborne disease outbreaks in villages, optimizes Gram Panchayat water maintenance schedules, and ensures safe drinking water access.

5. Domain: Digital Governance – Public Service Delivery

• Problem Statement 1: Voice-Enabled AI Assistant for Citizen Scheme Eligibility & Onboarding
  
• Challenge: Build a voice-based conversational AI agent (supporting regional dialects) that guides citizens through scheme eligibility checks, required document checklists, and application status tracking for public services.
• Context: Rural citizens face barriers due to complex scheme rules, fragmented document requirements, and language hurdles when applying for government welfare programs.
• Expected Impact: Accelerates citizen application processing during Sewa Setu camps, drastically reduces footfall at Tehsil offices, and increases public scheme adoption.
• Problem Statement 2: Operational Transparency & Bottleneck Elimination in Public Certificate Issuance
• Context: Existing digital service delivery portals (e.g., Aaple Sarkar) were built to streamline access to essential certificates (Income, Caste, Domicile, etc.). However, ground-level delivery remains plagued by delays, high rejection rates, and opacity. Citizens face a two-sided communication gap:1. Front-End Information Deficit: Citizens rely heavily on Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) or local centers who often upload incorrect, incomplete, or illegible documents due to unclear requirements.
  2.Back-End Operational Opacity: Submitted applications frequently stall or get rejected at administrative desks (Talathi, Revenue Inspector, Tahsildar offices) without clear, actionable feedback reaching the citizen or VLE.
  Because neither party understands the exact status or reason for delays, citizens are forced into repeated office visits and fall prey to unauthorized middlemen charging heavy fees to “expedite” approvals.
• Challenge: Design a lightweight, interoperable, and scalable solution (mobile, web, or messaging-based) that integrates with public e-governance portals to:
  1. Prevent faulty or incomplete document submissions at the entry stage.
  2. Establish real-time, two-way communication between revenue officers, VLEs, and citizens regarding desk-level delays and specific rejection reasons.

• Expected Impact: Drastically reduces application rejection rates caused by faulty document uploads. Cuts average certificate processing and delivery turnaround times. Eliminates middleman dependency and unauthorized fee extractions by creating complete process transparency. Provides district leadership with actionable insights.

Submission Guidelines

1. Participant Eligibility: Open to youth, university/college students, registered startups, corporate innovators, and rural problem-solvers. Teams may consist of 1 to 5 members.
2. Domain Alignment: Every submission must strictly map to one of the 5 primary domains (Agricultural Tech, Healthcare, Education, Environment, or Digital Governance). Custom problem statements outside the document’s list are acceptable only if they fall under these 5 focus areas.
3. Technical & AI Baseline: Solutions must be backed by technical feasibility, software/hardware architecture, or a functional proof-of-concept. Prioritization and higher weightage will be awarded to solutions leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, automation, or IoT.
4. Submission & Schedule: All submissions must be completed between September 17 and October 5, 2026, and must include an Idea Deck (PPT), working prototype/code, and a 2-minute video demonstration. Routing is categorized by participant type:
   Student Applicants: Submit directly through the Training & Placement Office (TPO), Incubation Cell, or R&D Desk of your own institution (Engineering, Polytechnic, ITI, Agricultural) within Nanded district.
   Non-Student Applicants (Startups, Corporate Innovators & Rural Problem-Solvers): Submit directly through the Centre for Agro Bio Innovation and Incubation Foundation (CABIIF) at Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University (SRTMU), Nanded.
5. IP & Originality: All work must be original. Participants retain full ownership of their intellectual property.

Expected Deliverables

Ideation & Implementation Deck Format (Slide Template)

• Slide 1: Title & Team Overview — Project title, domain selection, team members, contact details, and institutional or startup affiliation.
• Slide 2: Problem Statement & Local Context — Specific problem being addressed (listed prompt or approved custom prompt) and its relevance to Nanded district.
• Slide 3: Technical Solution & AI Integration — Overview of the solution, explaining explicit roles played by AI, ML, automation, or modern tech stacks.
• Slide 4: System Architecture & Workflow — Visual flow diagram showcasing data movement, user interfaces (e.g., WhatsApp bot, web application, mobile app), and backend infrastructure.
• Slide 5: Ground-Level Execution Strategy — Operational rollout plan detailing integration with local administrative channels (Gram Panchayats, Tehsil offices, ASHA networks, or Sewa Setu camps).
• Slide 6: Impact & Quantifiable Metrics — Expected outcomes (e.g., reduction in certificate delays, early disease detection rates, cost savings).
• Slide 7: Scalability & Resource Requirements — Deployment cost estimates, low-resource environment sustainability, and potential for state-wide adoption.