Sustainability hackathon · Undergraduate teams
Six weeks to build something that works
Water, energy, waste or biomimicry. Teams of two to four, ₹1,600 to enter, and 30% of entry fees after GST goes back out as prize money. Build it wherever you are; the top fifteen come to the finals.
- Format
- Remote build
- Duration
- 6–8 weeks
- Team size
- 2–4
- Entry
- ₹1,600 / team
- Prize pool
- 30% of net entry fees
- Dates
- To be announced
Pick a track
Four problems, and it has to work somewhere real
No concept decks and no proposed solutions. If it hasn't been built and measured, it isn't judged.
Water
Reduce measured water use, or improve measured water quality, somewhere real.
Energy
Cut measured energy consumption, or improve a conversion efficiency you can show.
Waste
Divert a measured quantity from a real waste stream, and account for where it went.
Biomimicry
Solve a stated engineering problem with a bio-inspired mechanism, and test it.
Prizes
30% of entry fees after GST comes back as prize money
Not a number we hope a sponsor will cover — a fixed share of what teams pay, net of GST, published on the registration page before anyone enters and updated as teams join. At our target of 300 teams that is around ₹1.2 lakh; more teams means a bigger pool, which is a real reason to tell other teams to enter.
If a sponsor comes in, they add to the pool. They never replace it, and they have no say in who wins.
Your work stays yours
We claim nothing
Teams keep every right to what they build. Not a licence, not a share, not an option on it later.
What you do get to keep is the record: the evidence, the measurements and the result, whether or not you place.
How it runs
Long enough to actually build it
A one-night sprint produces demos. This runs remote and long, so what you submit is a thing that ran for weeks rather than a thing that compiled at 4am.
What you submit
Four things, and none of them is a deck
The problem, measured
Show it exists with a number, not an assertion. If you never measured the problem, you can't measure the improvement either.
What you built, as you built it
Evidence across the weeks, not one photo at the end.
The outcome
Before and after, with your method written down clearly enough that someone else could repeat it.
What you couldn't prove
Written honestly — and scored. A team that says “we couldn't measure the second claim” places above one that quietly asserts it.
How it's scored
The rubric, before you enter
Published here on purpose — it should change what you build.
Questions
Before you enter
Who can enter?
Undergraduate students, in teams of two to four. Members can be from different departments or different colleges. Everyone on the team must be able to show they're currently enrolled.
Do we have to travel anywhere?
Not to build. The whole six to eight weeks is done wherever you are. Only the top fifteen teams come to the finals.
What if we can't finish?
Submit what you built and what you measured. A partial build with honest measurements scores better than a complete-sounding one with none.
Do you take any rights over what we build?
No. None. Not a licence, not a share, not an option. It's yours, and it stays yours.
Why is there an entry fee?
It funds the prize pool and the judging. 30% of what we receive after GST goes back to teams as prizes, and we publish the running total as registrations come in.
Can our college enter as a group?
Colleges don't enter — teams do. But your institution gets a free report at the end showing how its teams scored against the national spread.
If you run a department or a cell
There's nothing for you to organise
Registration, screening and judging all run through us; your students enter directly. At the end your institution gets a free report — how many teams entered, and how they scored against the national spread — which is participation evidence you can use wherever you're asked for it.
One thing we won't say
We run this competition, so we don't describe its results as independently verified. Evidence is checked automatically and judged by faculty from outside our team. Where an independent verifier reviews a finalist, we say so specifically.