The problem Simpli Map solves

We have created a solution that helps to search for routes and nearby locations without any internet in offline mode. We use an SMS service which is easily available on any mobile devices to get directions/routes from a location ABC to a location XYZ

Challenges we ran into

As we're told to focus on open source technologies so we decided not to use Google Map API's which use credit card info for API requests instead use an Open source Map(Directions API) APIs. Using Open Source API was quiet of a challenge as they didn't have any proper documentation of use as compared to Google APIs. Another challenge faced by us was extracting relevant tokens from the SMS message using Natural Language Processing to process the incoming SMS queries and categorize them properly. Working with Natural Language Tool kit in python was a bit difficult as a beginner but we got a hold of it soon after some lines of code. Last but not least since that hackathon is from remote locations collaborating as a team as also a bit of a challenge, we had properly manage our code file using Version Control/ GitHub.