Tharika writes at the crossroads of AI, ethics, and the future of hiring. With a background in both engineering and philosophy, they challenge assumptions in how we assess and select talent.
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Everyone wants to be a winner. However, in both life and hackathons, victory comes to those who want it the most. With limited time to solve problems and submit prototypes, a hackathon is the ultimate test of skills and endurance. Here is what you can do to win your next hackathon:
1) Plan to win
Be clear on your motive for attending the hackathon. Be hungry to win. Plan and prepare in advance. Set up templates, GitHub repositories, and components to accelerate prototype development. Research, study APIs, and explore sample apps. If the theme is available early, brainstorm with your team and be ready with practical, implementable ideas.
Conduct a mock hackathon a week before the competition. Work together, understand team strengths and weaknesses, and finalize communication channels.
2) Form a good team
Success depends on execution. Build a team with good chemistry to work efficiently under pressure. Team up with friends or previous hackathon teammates. Pitch your idea clearly and concisely if given the opportunity to form your team on-site.
Include members with diverse skills—design, frontend/backend development, business development, etc. Assign clear roles and choose a decisive leader.
3) Think through your ideas
Not all hackathon ideas are great or feasible. Filter ideas based on value and feasibility. Think like a product owner. Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and focus on the problem statement: Who is the end user? What problem are you solving?
Estimate time and effort realistically. Sketch a prototype and assign tasks accordingly.
4) Validate concepts
Don’t assume—research. Understand what you’re building and why. Define dependencies, priorities, and checkpoints. Talk to potential users, gather feedback, and include these insights in your presentation. Validate before and after building.
5) Focus on building an MVP
To win a hackathon, focus on building a strong MVP with a clear value proposition. Avoid feature overload. Focus on 2–3 core components.
6) Set up a repository on GitHub
Create a repository for your product. Use feature branches for parallel development.
7) Know your audience
Research judges, vendors, and sponsors. Understand their criteria and tailor your project accordingly. Introduce yourself and share your vision. If mentors are assigned, use their input to refine your solution.
8) Choose the right approach
Prioritize a fully functional frontend experience. Backend development can be time-consuming and may not be necessary for demo purposes.
9) Take short breaks
Breaks help refresh the mind and improve collaboration. Use them to check progress and spark new ideas.
10) Invest time for the presentation
A good presentation is key to winning. Start early. Envision the perfect demo and work backward. Keep the message simple and highlight key features. Show how your product solves a problem and how it's different from competitors. Back claims with data. Be prepared for questions. Share your team journey and make the pitch interactive.
A great idea alone isn’t enough to win. It takes strategy, teamwork, and execution to win a hackathon.
Preparation is the key to success at hackathons. With the right strategy and preparation, your team can win any hackathon. Here are 5 things you can do before the hackathon to stay ahead of the competition:
1) Get the right people onboard
Start by forming the right team. Attract talent with a strong pitch. Clearly state the product you plan to build and the problem it solves. Mention the skills and domain knowledge you are looking for. Keep a written version of your pitch and rehearse it for clarity. Once the team is formed, assign roles based on each member's strengths.
2) Do extensive research
Prepare thoroughly before the hackathon. Research your audience, get to know the judges and sponsors, and study the APIs you’ll be using. Explore open source libraries, packages, and examples to help build your prototype faster. Useful resources include Python and Django package indexes.
3) Do a mock hackathon
If possible, run a mock hackathon with your team a week in advance. Identify and resolve potential issues early. Use this sprint to finalize your communication strategy and teamwork processes.
4) Build templates
If permitted, prepare reusable wireframes and components in advance. Use the pre-hackathon time to develop templates and standard features like login forms. These proposal templates can speed up your prototype development.
5) Brainstorm
If the hackathon theme is announced early, brainstorm potential product ideas. Generate a variety of solutions and select the most feasible ones. Finalize a product vision that can be realistically executed during the hackathon.
With these simple tips, you’ll stay one step ahead of your competition—even before the hackathon begins.
Welcome to the HackerEarth guide to hackathons for hackathon participants!
HackerEarth is a global community of 1.5 million+ developers who compete and innovate through various online coding challenges and hackathons hosted on our platform.HackerEarth encourages programmers to take part in hackathons, work on real-world problems, network, code, learn, and build incredible hacks.
Follow these steps to get started with your first hackathon at HackerEarth:
1) Create your HackerEarth profile
To log in, visit https://www.hackerearth.com/. Update your skills and complete the profile to find relevant hackathons and join the right teams.
Once you select the hackathon, you will get the registration details. Go through the overview, themes, submission guidelines, and requirements carefully before registering. All registrations at HackerEarth are free of cost.
Register for hackathons on HackerEarth
4) Complete your registration form
Submit your details in the registration form. You can participate only after successfully submitting this form.
Complete your Hackathon registration form
5) Add your skills
Add skills, tools, and frameworks that you are familiar with in the submission form.
Add your skill set in hackathon form
6) Form a team
On registering, you will be able to form your team by clicking, ‘Form Team’. You can either invite people to join your team or you can join an existing team. You can find team information under the section, ‘View Your Team’.
View your team on HackerEarth
You can see all participating teams. You can join any of these teams. There is also an option to update your profile to make it easy for others to find and add you. Once you join a team, you cannot build a team of your own.
Alternatively, you can build your own team by inviting other participants. You can invite team members via email.
Form your team on HackerEarth
7) Submit your hack
Go through the submission guidelines carefully before you submit the final entry or prototype. Incomplete or incorrect submissions will not be evaluated.
Submissions on HackerEarth
8) Evaluation
Your submission will be evaluated by a team of mentors and experts. Shortlisted teams will be notified by email. The final results will be announced on the hackathon page.
By participating in HackerEarth Hackathons, you can build your professional network, learn new programming skills, get recognized for your hacks, and make a measurable impact.
The IT landscape as we know it is getting redefined every day. Change is constant. The need of the hour for tech companies, big and small, is to innovate fast and keep up with the change. Innovation was the main focus ofIndiaHacks 2017, HackerEarth’s country-wide hackathon, aimed atbuilding software products to transform the world.
Thousands of submissions were received from developers across the country.The hackathon had three tracks – Internet of Things, Fintech, and AI. Based on the first offline session conducted in three regional zones – Delhi, Pune, and Bangalore, 10 finalists were chosen for each track. Thirty finalists participated in the offline hackathon conducted on the 8th and 9th of September in Bangalore.
Meet the winners of IndiaHacks 2017
In the final round, teams built some incredible apps and prototypes.We are happy to present the winning hacks of IndiaHacks 2017:
Winners in Internet of Things (IOT)
1) License Integrated Safety Device
The License Integrated Safety Device is a UUID-based vehicle tracking system that addresses the growing need for delivering effective safety, traffic control, and pollution control. The technology can act as a first responder management service in smart cities.
Application:
The system comes with hardware that mimics access control system for automobiles. This prevents any unauthorized access.
The device tracks the user’s coordinates when on the move. This information can be aggregated to a cloud- based system, allowing companies to gain insights and provide value-added services for smart city management.
The data can also be consolidated into a city surveillance system to manage traffic by prioritizing user’s needs and routing optimally.
1ST Prize winners:
Team Name:Team_Anonymous
Submission Theme: Smart Driving Experience
Team Members: Sohail Chamadia, Kunal sharma
2) Real-time assistant for badminton players
The real-time assistant is a wearable device that enables players to know their fitness level and match readiness by analyzing their “smash” profiles. This profile has fitness details such as calorie intake, fluid intake, workout before sessions, and performance level of players. The device comes with an Arduino Nano, GY521 accelerometer, a sound sensor, and a Bluetooth HC-05. The device can help badminton players in the following ways:
It calculates the player’s fitness level including the power generated by hand, the jump intensity, and the smash speed.
It helps players to know their physical strength before a match.
It provides insights players can use to adjust their fitness routine and improve their performance.
2nd Prize winners
Team Name: Smashlytics
Submission Theme: Smart Wearables
Team Members: Dey Subhankar
3) GPS and IoT-based soldier tracking and health indication system
The low-cost, wearable device based on IoT is equipped with biosensors. The device offers a reliable system to guard the lives of soldiers. The system can help locate and monitor the health of soldiers in combat. The main applications of the software are as follows:
WithIoT, armed forces can know the location of their soldiers directly on a smart phone.
The technology can help monitor the health and ammunition of the soldiers in combat.
GSM module can be used for effective high-speed transmission, short-range, and soldier-to-soldier wireless communications.
3rd Prize winners
Team Name: Tech_Monsters
Submission Theme: Smart Wearables
Team Members: Jasvinder Singh Chhabra, Ritesh Agarwal
Winners in Fintech
1)TechnoFin – A simple solution to financial problems
With time-series modelling, and predictive analysis, TechnoFin serves as a full-fledged financial recommendation engine. It addresses all the problems related to investing in stock market, real-estate, gold, and banking. The model can be used to predict the following:
Stock prices with high accuracy and help in the comparison of stocks.
Real-estate prices, and gold prices.
1ST Prize winners:
Team Name: FIN_ishers
Submission Theme: Financial Advisory
Team Members: Avinash G Kori, Akhil Poojary
2)MoneyMultiplier
Money Multiplier, an app integrated with Watson Conversation, aims to educate the financially illiterate. The app helps in the analysis of monthly account statement, and the monthly limit for savings. It also helps in understanding the Net Asset Value (NAV) of mutual funds.
Details of 2nd Prize winners
Team Name: ENSPIRE
Submission Theme: Financial Inclusion
Team Members: Suhit Kalubarme, Harish Shridhar Khot
3) Security for financial transactions
The ML-based security software aims to make transactions safer by identifying and tracking user behavior. Using Apache Lucene-based Elastic search or Solr engine, the software stores transactional data and identifies user pattern.
Details of 3rd Prize winners
Team Name: Secure_You
Submission Theme: Security
Team Members: Yadu Mathur, Sandhya SG
Winners in ArtificialIntelligence (AI )
1) Smart Courses
The smart online learning software uses smart image recognition recommendation system to evaluate facial expressions of students and then operates accordingly. The system can also be equipped with a smart assistant or chatbot to answer user queries.
1ST Prize winners:
Team Name: Zodiac
Submission Theme: Recommendation system
Team Members: Rishabh Malik, Aniket Sharma
2) Genre-switching music recommendation system
The recommendation software specializes in giving a good mix of genres based on the correlation established between the tapped genres using reinforcement learning.
2nd Prize winners
Team Name: Mad_Men
Submission Theme: Recommendation system
Team Members: Abhinav Anurag, Nitikesh Bhad
3)Bot104
BOT 104 tracks the number of beds available in nearby hospitals and helps users to book hospital beds easily. The software also has a feature to generate auto bills using QR codes.
3rd Prize winners
Team Name: Krypton
Submission Theme: Chatbots
Team Members: Jayesh Bidani, simran kaur
Winners of Online Challenge:
The programming and machine learning challenges were conducted online. Participants had to solve challenges online within a limited time frame. We are happy to present the winners of the online challenges of IndiaHacks 2017:
A hackathon is a great platform for developersto network, showcase their talent, and learn new skills. It is one of the best ways tobuild your portfolio, grow your professional network, and become a better programmer.
It's a common notion that technology is a field dominated by men, but the truth is that technology and programming are not bound by gender—they're for everyone. A quick look online reveals countless women who have made remarkable contributions to the field of technology.
Here are some inspiring women who have made it big in tech:
1) Ada Lovelace (1815 – 1852)
Ada Lovelace, born in 1815 in London, is considered a pioneer of programming. She is best known for her work interpreting Charles Babbage's analytical engine, a foundational concept in the evolution of computers. The Ada programming language was named in her honor.
2) Grace Hopper (1906 – 1992)
Grace Hopper was a trailblazing computer scientist and US Navy officer. She developed the first compiler for a programming language and played a key role in creating COBOL, one of the first high-level programming languages.
3) The ENIAC Programmers
Six women—Kathleen McNulty, Jean Jennings, Frances Snyder, Marlyn Meltzer, Frances Spence, and Ruth Teitelbaum—were the first programmers of the fully electronic ENIAC computer. Despite their groundbreaking work, they initially received little credit.
4) Edith Clarke (1883 – 1959)
The first female electrical engineer and professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She developed the Clarke calculator, which solved complex equations involving hyperbolic functions significantly faster than previous methods.
5) Evelyn Boyd Granville (1924 – )
One of the first African-American women to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. She contributed to NASA’s space missions by computing rocket trajectories and orbit paths, later becoming a dedicated educator and advocate for women in tech.
6) Sister Mary Kenneth Keller (1913 – 1985)
Among the first Americans to receive a Ph.D. in computer science. She worked on the BASIC programming language and helped found the computer science department at Clarke College to promote accessible tech education.
7) Carol Shaw (1955 – )
Regarded as the first female video game designer. She created popular games like River Raid and 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe for Atari Inc., shaping the early days of video gaming.
8) Janese Swanson (1958 – )
Founder of Girl Tech, a company that aims to make technology more accessible and appealing to girls. She started her career in tech sales, later earning advanced degrees before launching Girl Tech to support girls in STEM.
9) Radia Perlman (1958 – )
Known as the "Mother of the Internet," Radia invented the Spanning-Tree Protocol (STP), a critical part of network infrastructure. She holds over 100 patents and made significant contributions to routing and network protocols.
10) Parisa Tabriz (1983 – )
Known as Google's "Security Princess," Parisa leads global security for Google Chrome. Inspired by her own website being hacked in college, she now works on cybersecurity, advocating for safer, privacy-respecting internet technologies. In today’s era of connected devices from smartphones to smart TVs her efforts remind us of the importance of securing our digital lives, whether it's browsing safely or using a VPN for smart TV to protect streaming data from prying eyes.
“There is no demand for women engineers, as such, as there are for women doctors; but there is always a demand for anyone who can do a good piece of work.” – Edith Clarke
These remarkable women show that determination, intelligence, and innovation transcend gender. Their stories continue to inspire a new generation of engineers, coders, and creators.
Innovation was the focal point of IndiaHacks 2017, the fourth edition of HackerEarth’s country-wide event, conducted in partnership with IBM and Honeywell. The two-day event dedicated to programming was conducted on the 8th and 9th of September 2017 in Bangalore.The two-day event included a hackathon, two online programming challenges, and a tech conference. The event had over 55,000+ registrations with tech talks from some of the most prominent leaders in the IT sector.
Highlights of IndiaHacks 2017
The best hacks of the event
45 teams of programmers, designers, and project managers came together to build epic products at the offline hackathon event which had 3 main tracks – Internet of Things, Fintech, and AI. Submissions were received in areas including smart wearables, smart medical devices, smart driving experience, financial advisory, security, personal finance, blockchain, document life cycle management, recommendation systems, chatbots, and language processing systems.
Here are some of the best hacks of the event:
1) License integrated safety device
The license integrated safety device is a UUID-based vehicle tracking system which addresses the growing need for delivering effective safety, traffic control, and pollution control on roads. The technology can serve as a first responder management service in smart cities.
2) Real-time assistant for badminton players
The real-time assistant is a wearable device that enables players to know their fitness level, and match readiness by analyzing their “smash” profile. This profile has fitness details such as calorie intake, fluid intake, workout before sessions, and performance levels.
3) GPS- and IoT-based soldier tracking and health indication system
The low cost, IoT-based wearable device is equipped with biosensors. The device offers a reliable system to guard the lives of soldiers. The system can help locate and monitor the health of soldiers in combat.
4) TechnoFin: a simpler solution for managing financial problems
With time-series modelling and predictive analysis, TechnoFin serves as a full-fledged financial recommendation engine. It addresses all the problems related to investing in stock market, real-estate, gold, and banking.
5) Money multiplier
Money multiplier, an app integrated with Watson Conversation, aims to educate the financially illiterate. The app helps in the analysis of monthly account statements, monthly limit for savings, and helps users understand the Net Asset Value(NAV) of mutual funds.
6) Security for financial transactions
The ML-based security software aims to make transactions safer by identifying and tracking user behavior. Using Apache Lucene-based Elastic search or Solr engine, the software stores transactional data and identifies user pattern.
7) Smart Courses
The smart online learning software uses an image recognition recommendation system to evaluate facial expressions of students and operates accordingly. The system can be equipped with a smart assistant or chatbot to answer user queries.
8) Genre-switching music recommendation system
The recommendation software specializes in giving a good mix of genres based on the correlation established between the tapped genres using reinforcement learning.
9) Bot104
BOT 104 tracks the number of beds available in nearby hospitals and allows users to book hospital beds easily. The software also has a feature to auto-generate bills using custom QR codes.
IndiaHacks Tech Conference 2017
The IndiaHacks tech conference had many insightful sessions by some amazing tech leaders. The conference had 9 tech talks, 2 panel discussions, and 16 tech huddles on topics related to various tech domains like machine learning , artificial intelligence, APIs, and cloud computing. Speakers from IBM, ThoughtWorks, Honeywell, RBS, Credit Suisse, and other sponsoring companies shared their insights on various topics such as blockchain, chatbots, big data, and fintech.
IndiaHacks Conference 2017
With the increasing dominance of technology in every aspect of our life from banking to healthcare, there is greater pressure on software makers to meet commercial and consumer expectations. The tech conference featured discussions on industry trends, research, and latest innovation to build and maintain revolutionary, scalable software. The event also had an exhibition area, where sponsoring companies showcased their latest software products and services. The exhibition area was abuzz with interactive activities that included insightful demos, creative games, and contests.
With an outreach of over 2 Million, IndiaHacks 2017 was one of biggest nationwide tech events of the year. The event provided a platform for industry leaders, investors, and some of the most talented programmers of the country to come together, and share their knowledge to tackle some of the biggest challenges in the software industry.
