Media Release
Udupi, Oct 14: A team of students from SMVITM has won first place at the national-level Nitte Hackathon for developing “Suraksha Kavach”, an AI tool that protects people from online scams in regional languages like Kannada and Tulu.
The project was developed in a 27-hour coding sprint and addresses a challenge highlighted by a superintendent of police about the rise of digital fraud in local communities. Unlike most security tools that work only in English, Suraksha Kavach can detect scam messages in both English and Kannada and even read text from screenshots to catch scams.
The team plans to make the tool widely available through a free WhatsApp bot and later as a commercial security API for businesses. S Swathanath, Nikita C Hegde, Vijay Netekal and Anshika were commended by the management, principal, deans, HoDs, and faculty members.