Thiruvananthapuram, May 26 (IANS) A Kerala-based IT firm, MobME Wireless, Thursday  announced an online contest called CodeJAM to find the smartest computer hackers from the state’s colleges, an official said.

 
 The company, incubated at Technopark here, said the contest was a unique way to reward the best programmers and was open to all regardless of their degree or educational merit. The contest will be hosted at codejam.mobme.in.
 
 MobME CEO Sanjay Vijayakumar said that Silicon Valley in the US was created because of path-breaking solutions. The smartest of the hackers, coders and geeks who built world-class solutions in the valley were not the highest scoring students.
 
 “With this contest, we want to find this rare breed from Kerala: the talented people who are super passionate about the code that they write and who can make a huge difference by creating path-breaking innovations for us,” said Vijayakumar.
 
 Launching June 16, the online contest will run for a fortnight and a programming puzzle would be hosted in a specially crafted web portal at 11 p.m. for 14 consecutive nights.
 
 Daily winners will be given a cash prize of Rs.1,000 each during this period. On the 15th day, MobME will conduct a live coding contest at their Kochi office and the winner would walk away with a grand prize of Rs.1 lakh.
 
 The contest is open to any student from Kerala’s colleges who have a passion for programming puzzles. Apart from cash prizes, the winners will also be presented offer letters to join MobME.
 
 Students interested to participate in the contest may watch out for the daily question starting June 16 at www.codejam.mobme.in.
 
 MobME Wireless focuses on value-added services for mobile phone users and carrier-grade solutions for mobile network operators. It is the only technology company to have won the Nasscom Innovation Award twice.