SIH26090/Heritage & Culture

Artisan AI cataloging and market app

A cross-platform mobile app that acts as a virtual business manager, letting marginalized artisans use AI voice notes and camera tools to easily create professional product listings and access digital markets.

Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MoSJE) · Department of Social Justice and Empowerment · Software

Teams already in: 1/500almost everyone who enters · read 1 hour ago
Buildable in 36 hours: HighOur estimate, from their wording
Hard blockers: NoneNothing you must source first
Submissions close: 15 Sept9 days left

Make this one of our two Compare with others

Signing in saves it for your whole team — everyone on your invite link sees the same two entries. Anything you shortlisted while signed out comes with you.

Submit on sih.gov.in

Whether this suits your team

Why this fits you

This organisation declared winners on 16 problem statement(s) in SIH 2025 and on 11 in SIH 2024. It has awarded 8 joint winner(s), so it sometimes splits a prize between two teams.

What you would have to build

Decomposed from what the description asks for. Nothing added.

01
AI Image Enhancer
A camera module that uses AI to remove backgrounds, fix lighting, and format product photos to e-commerce standards.
02
Multilingual Auto-Cataloger
An NLP engine that takes voice notes in regional languages and generates SEO-friendly product descriptions in English and Hindi.
03
Dynamic Pricing Assistant
An algorithm that analyzes product details to suggest competitive selling prices based on market trends and material costs.
04
Backend and Storage
A scalable backend architecture to manage user profiles, product catalogs, and buyer connections.

What they ask for, and what they leave open

Both columns are read off the brief's own wording. Nothing here is inferred from the ministry's name.

They state

The jury will check if the mobile app has a minimalist UI/UX suitable for low-literacy users, works with regional voice notes, and successfully enhances product images and pricing using AI.

They never say

Specific government e-marketplaces or B2B platforms the app needs to integrate with
Exact raw material cost data sources for the pricing assistant

A jury can still ask about these. Decide them deliberately rather than by accident.

What they'll ask you

Generated from the brief's own wording and the competition's published rules — never from a guess about what this ministry prefers.

Specific government e-marketplaces or B2B platforms the app needs to integrate with?
The brief never answers this, so a panel will. Whatever you decide, say it the same way twice.
Exact raw material cost data sources for the pricing assistant?
The brief never answers this, so a panel will. Whatever you decide, say it the same way twice.
Has any part of this been shown at a previous event, hackathon or college project?
The guidelines are explicit: your solution must not have appeared in any previous event or programme, of any sort. A recycled project is what a team under time pressure reaches for.

8 more— the ones a panel gets to if there is time

The brief asks for ai image enhancer. How would you build that?
Decoded from SIH26090 itself — A camera module that uses AI to remove backgrounds, fix lighting, and format product photos to e-commerce standards. The brief asks for it by name.

The data

What the organisers attached, and what the brief assumes you can get.

Dataset from the organisers: None attached
Does the brief need data?: Nothing in the text says it depends on a dataset we would have to find.

Also from Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MoSJE)

Same organisation, same year. Reading two of theirs tells you more about what they care about than reading one.

Take this to an AI

Pick what you are about to do and copy the prompt. It carries the organisers' own wording, the constraints they never spell out, and an instruction not to invent requirements they never set.

Who has this problem, what already exists, and what you would have to find out.

# Context: India's Smart India Hackathon 2026

I am on a student team entering SIH 2026. Problem statement SIH26090, set by Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MoSJE).
Its official title, word for word: "AI-Driven Market Linkage and Smart Cataloging Mobile Application for Marginalized Artisans"
Theme: Heritage & Culture. Category: software.

In plain terms: A cross-platform mobile app that acts as a virtual business manager, letting marginalized artisans use AI voice notes and camera tools to easily create professional product listings and access digital markets.

## The organisers' full description, verbatim

• Background The government actively supports the socio-economic upliftment of marginalized communities,particularly micro-entrepreneurs, artisans, and weavers. Financial assistance is provided to establish small-scale manufacturing and handicraft units. To help these beneficiaries sell their goods, market exposure is facilitated through periodic physical exhibitions, cluster development programs, and trade fairs (such as Shilp Samagam, Surajkund Mela, and Dilli Haat).While physical exhibitions provide a temporary boost in sales, these micro-entrepreneurs lack continuous, year-round access to broader digital markets. Transitioning to the digital economy is hindered by low digital literacy, language barriers, and a lack of technical skills required to professionally photograph, price, and catalog products for modern e-commerce. • Challenge There is a critical need to bridge the gap between traditional craftsmanship and modern digital commerce. Beneficiaries struggle to present their products competitively online. They often fail to capture high-quality images, write compelling product descriptions, or understand dynamic market pricing.The challenge is to build an intuitive, AI-driven mobile application that acts as a 'virtual business manager' for these artisans. The app must empower them to seamlessly digitize their inventory, optimize their listings using AI, and connect directly with larger B2B buyers or government e-marketplaces without requiring advanced technical knowledge. • Expected Solution Participants are expected to develop an AI-powered, cross-platform mobile application supported by a robust, scalable backend architecture. To ensure high adoption among low-literacy users, the application must feature a highly responsive, minimalist UI/UX design (incorporating modern, clean visual hierarchies and accessible layouts). Key features should include: 1. AI Image Enhancer & Studio: A built-in camera module that utilizes AI to automatically remove cluttered backgrounds, correct lighting, and format product photos (e.g., textiles,handicrafts) to professional e-commerce standards. 2. Multilingual Auto-Cataloger: An NLP-based engine that allows artisans to describe their product via voice notes in regional languages. The AI should translate and generate SEO-friendly, professional product descriptions in English and Hindi. 3. Dynamic Pricing Assistant: A machine learning algorithm that analyzes the uploaded product image and description to suggest an optimal, competitive selling price based on current market trends and raw material costs. • Impact Goals • Provide marginalized micro-entrepreneurs with a continuous, year-round digital sales channel,reducing their dependency on periodic physical fairs. • Drastically lower the barrier to entry for digital commerce through intuitive AI automation. • Improve digital literacy and financial independence, ultimately increasing the average annual income of the target demographic.

## What the brief never says

- Specific government e-marketplaces or B2B platforms the app needs to integrate with
- Exact raw material cost data sources for the pricing assistant
## Constraints that are not negotiable

- The judged build is a prototype demonstrated in roughly 36 hours by students, not a product.
- A jury evaluates it against this problem statement's own wording, not against general merit.
- We submit on sih.gov.in; the problem statement number and title above must match exactly.
- Your solution must not have appeared in any previous event or programme, of any sort.

## What I want from you

1. Who actually has this problem in India, and what they do about it today.
2. What already exists — government systems, open-source projects, published research — that we should not rebuild.
3. For each item under 'what the brief never says', what the realistic answer is likely to be and how I could verify it.
4. The two or three things about this domain that a student team would get wrong without local knowledge.
## How to answer

- Everything above between quotation marks is the organisers' own wording. Treat it as the requirement.
- Do NOT invent requirements the brief does not state. If something matters and is not stated, say so and ask me, rather than assuming.
- Where you are inferring rather than reading, mark it as your inference.
- Do not guess what this ministry wants from its name. Its wording above is the only evidence.

---
Problem statement facts assembled by Wynit from Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MoSJE)'s published brief for SIH 2026.
The plain-English summary, the list of parts and the evaluator read are our interpretation of that text; the quoted title and the full description are theirs.

The government's original description (391 words)

• Background The government actively supports the socio-economic upliftment of marginalized communities,particularly micro-entrepreneurs, artisans, and weavers. Financial assistance is provided to establish small-scale manufacturing and handicraft units. To help these beneficiaries sell their goods, market exposure is facilitated through periodic physical exhibitions, cluster development programs, and trade fairs (such as Shilp Samagam, Surajkund Mela, and Dilli Haat).While physical exhibitions provide a temporary boost in sales, these micro-entrepreneurs lack continuous, year-round access to broader digital markets. Transitioning to the digital economy is hindered by low digital literacy, language barriers, and a lack of technical skills required to professionally photograph, price, and catalog products for modern e-commerce. • Challenge There is a critical need to bridge the gap between traditional craftsmanship and modern digital commerce. Beneficiaries struggle to present their products competitively online. They often fail to capture high-quality images, write compelling product descriptions, or understand dynamic market pricing.The challenge is to build an intuitive, AI-driven mobile application that acts as a 'virtual business manager' for these artisans. The app must empower them to seamlessly digitize their inventory, optimize their listings using AI, and connect directly with larger B2B buyers or government e-marketplaces without requiring advanced technical knowledge. • Expected Solution Participants are expected to develop an AI-powered, cross-platform mobile application supported by a robust, scalable backend architecture. To ensure high adoption among low-literacy users, the application must feature a highly responsive, minimalist UI/UX design (incorporating modern, clean visual hierarchies and accessible layouts). Key features should include: 1. AI Image Enhancer & Studio: A built-in camera module that utilizes AI to automatically remove cluttered backgrounds, correct lighting, and format product photos (e.g., textiles,handicrafts) to professional e-commerce standards. 2. Multilingual Auto-Cataloger: An NLP-based engine that allows artisans to describe their product via voice notes in regional languages. The AI should translate and generate SEO-friendly, professional product descriptions in English and Hindi. 3. Dynamic Pricing Assistant: A machine learning algorithm that analyzes the uploaded product image and description to suggest an optimal, competitive selling price based on current market trends and raw material costs. • Impact Goals • Provide marginalized micro-entrepreneurs with a continuous, year-round digital sales channel,reducing their dependency on periodic physical fairs. • Drastically lower the barrier to entry for digital commerce through intuitive AI automation. • Improve digital literacy and financial independence, ultimately increasing the average annual income of the target demographic.