Inspiring Story at Wells Fargo Hackathon 2023 at IIT-MADRAS

Being the Runner Up at?Wells Fargo?Hackathon at Shaastra 2023 -? Indian Institute of Technology, Madras , was one of the happiest parts of my life and I feel this 2023 era is to achieve more and more. when I got to know about the wells fargo hackathon I don't even know about what is wells fargo, I just saw IIT-M is organizing and it's my golden chance to participate and I badly want to compete with IIT teams so I can get to know what is the level of students who are studying in IIT as I am from Sri Sri University and I was eagerly looking for the good and dedicated team partners then I called Aradhya Majumder , and I convinced him to took part in the hackathon as he never participated in the hackathon. For round 1 we were Up against a problem statement of Fraud Detection Using AL/ML and I was really want to explore the doors of how fraud detection works at a large scale.

we don't have anything to lose

we don't need to be great to start something we need to start something to be great

This quote inspired me a lot and after understanding this I consistently started participating in hackathons to improve my SQL logical skills for the last 3 months I participated in more than 5+ hackathons back to back without resting and in all hackathons, I have participated with different teammates and I lead the team and we make it to finalist but as my team doesn't have much better skills to compete at government and national level we always ended learning something new things I worked on those things like presentations, videos, simplicity, functionality, user-friendly portals and every time I was improving by 10 times than previous as in hackathons we all know that we hardly get 30 to 36 hours only to build everything. I started building my backend and DBMS skills and while developing the fraud detection I build the craziest system with all the necessary features that we use in our daily life I got to know about my intensive SQL skills and I took the main role in round 1 while he contributed to program architecture and technical + design support. It is now that we realize 896+ teams registered for the event and the fact that we got selected for being one of the 24 teams heading to Round 2, I am really blessed to have aradhya as my teammate because of his creativity and beautifully designed Presentation and logo helped us a lot to make an impression on the judges and we made it to finalist and it is a pretty big achievement for both of us.

Dedication and challenges

1. Aradhya was suffering from a high fever and had a throat infection he was barely able to speak to anyone, but when I was calling him he was responding only to my calls and I was blessed to have aradhya who was too much dedicated to supporting me and to his first ever hackathon.
2. 13th was the last date to submit the solution and by 6 Pm all the functions were working really great I thought let's have a trial run to check the software we build within 4 days. I got to know that the transfer money function has been crashed and it was not working correctly. I started to panic and had a lot of stress about what to do now I don't have enough time to fix the code and to debug the code as itself it has 10000 lines of self-coded and I took my notebook and created the design of if else loop to check due to which loop I was getting error and all the loops, brackets were correct and after rechecking the code multiple time I wasn't able to find the errors and time was 9 Pm. So I went for dinner and I came back I deleted the whole file and I started creating logic again by writing the whole code again from scratch it took me 2 hours roughly the time was 11:40 Pm and I have a trial run and now its works fine and i called aradhya dude program is working fine don't take stress your team partner is here just believe me.

ritwik don't give up you can make it you still have time to fix this don't lose hope, believe in yourself you worked restlessly for the last 3 - 4 days don't go this hard work useless otherwise you will regret not attempting once more time.

A failure tag is better than a coward tag.

These quotes helped me a lot during the round 1 phase

Round 2

On the 23rd of January, we received mail around 9:18 Pm and I checked the mail at 1 Am on the 24th of January and we were really happy to be finalists. But we were having another event on the 24th and 25th of January Anveshan Central zone student research convention organized by the Association of Indian Universities and we presented our research in front of a panelist of judges we had 2 rounds. After completing the event and winning the central zone we came back to our university and immediately started working on the problem statement given by Wells Fargo for the final round and literally, we don't have any idea what to do or how to solve the problem statement we didn't study and worked anything like that before and we need to do the packing and all that stuff and we had a connecting flight at 8 am Next morning and we literally didn't sleep that night as we were busy at collecting research papers, related kinds of stuff, contents, etc...

After having basic knowledge of Time Series Forecasting we were heading towards IIT Madras for round 2, against IITian teams and others as capable as us. After visiting the IIT-M campus dude this is the college we dreamed of and a positive environment made us totally positive "we are here to win the competition we will give a tough fight to other teams, doesn't matter whether we will win this competition or not, we should be proud that we made it to here"

Now there was back to back event and I was traveling for the first time in my life on a flight and I lost 70 % of efficiency and productivity as I didn't get the rest properly and handover the leadership for round 2 to Aradhya and I was assisting him by my brilliant EDA and data cleaning skills and I supported him with creating a brilliant and beautiful presentation to be given on 27th 9:00 Am, he took the responsibility to deliver a winning result with his ML skills and I was supporting him to find the solution for the errors we were getting. In a 6-hour code rush, extended to 15 hours, our solution was finally ready.

Dedication and challenges

On the 26th aradhya had a mild fever he took medicine and had 1-hour sleep and I was working with code he left as we were running out of time and he was feeling better he started working again and on 27th i got the fever and my efficiency reduces to 0% i was barely able to open my eyes i took the medicines and had a 2 hours sleep and as soon as i was feeling better i again started working on the problem statement and finally at 5:00 Am we completed the problem statement and we had 3 hours sleep again as we need to give the presentation at 9 Am to all the judges and team of wells Fargo.

That the more good years you have you are that much closer to a failure because it's life you don't have a good days every time and now when I have a bad time since last few months I didn't do well and I always remind my self when we have more bad days we are much more closer to success and process is important and life doesn't see same?haar din khush bhi nhi rahoge dost aur haar din dukhi bhi nhi rahoge dost but lage rehna hai but do not quit lage rehna hai time change hoga when you have success then bas aaj nhi haarna bas kar haar maiden fateh kal haar lunga?lekin aaj nhi

This keeps me motivated all time

Next Day

On presentation day, when? Arjun Beri, Ph.D. ?asked how had the entire experience been, 'sleepless nights' was a response aradhya gave with wholehearted honesty. But fun, very fun. The presentation round was absolutely learning strong competitors introduced and I got to learn new techniques or new approaching methods to solve the problem statement

The award ceremony after lunch marked a pivotal moment in my experience as it featured a Q&A session with executives from Wells Fargo India. The session was incredibly informative and provided insight into Wells Fargo's ideology, future plans, current innovations, and past experiences. We learned about their commitment to technology and the development of innovative solutions within the company. I was grateful for the opportunity to talk with Saisreedhar Padegela , Arjun Beri, Ph.D. , Ram Kadambi , Ganesh Gowtham ?? , Senthil Nathan Natarajan , and Shishir Mishra . I was so impressed with the enthusiasm of the Wells Fargo team and how they were motivating the youth and students that I wasn't even concerned about winning a prize because I need to know more about the company, and the opportunities I can get as I want to learn the skills. However, I was overjoyed when my team's name was called. The event ended with a photo session, and I continued to ask questions and learn from the Wells Fargo team. The prize was secondary to the knowledge I gained.

To achieve something we need to lose something.

Few things I learned

1. Perseverance
2. dedication
3. self-believe
4. hard working
5. consistency

it's not an overnight success it needs constant efforts and dedication

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I am ritwik dalmia pursuing BSc(Hons) data science 3rd year from sri sri university