Smart India Hackathon 2022 ????

“It seems like it was yesterday when we thought about whether we should even take part in this National level hackathon with a team we don’t know much about, with a domain of idea we literally knew nothing about ( Research Grants), well long story short with just 2 days of preparation for a college-level hackathon we created the perfect workflow and presentation which helped us land in the Grand Finale of Smart India Hackathon and we were invited to Chandigarh University for the Finals.?

There were so many tasks and just a few days in our hands, thanks to our spirits and dedicated team leader Naman Verma , we managed to do every possible formality on time and then came the day when we reached Chandigarh and were gonna experience our first ever offline Hackathon, the vibe was so different, everyone was highly motivated but it wasn’t for long…

In our first round of evaluation, our judges pointed out so many flaws in the product which included a lack of data set, not-so-good-looking UI, platform not being dynamic, lack of confidence in the team and whatnot. We were literally all confused about what to do next as we thought that we will be provided with a dataset from the SIH but to our surprise, it was supposed to be our homework. Now, what do you do if you haven’t done your homework? Yes, you are thinking exactly right, start doing that homework in the class with 100x effort and that’s what we did.

After hours of searching, I found a dataset which could be worthwhile and then Aaditya Saini with the help of Naman Verma managed to Web Scrap that data and put it into our backend to test whether we could show the data on our platform dynamically or not and guess what after 22hrs we could see that data set problem being solved, we had a bit of hope after that but that too wasn’t for long.

Now after the second round of evaluation, our Judges appreciated us for solving the data set issue and suggested 3 more changes including a better-looking UI. Now here comes the role of Sujal Sahu , Anupravi Garg & Chinmay Nagda who seriously implemented what we wanted on the frontend but just before 3rd round, there were some merge conflicts which instead of making our product look better, broke our entire code and we couldn’t even show what we showed them earlier.

Now in the last second round (since our platform was not working due to those conflicts) I convinced the jury somehow that there were some conflicts and we’ll show them the portal in perfect condition in the final evaluation round and there won’t be any conflicts then. They gave us that one chance but told us?“You have almost done exactly what we told you to do but what’s the innovation from your side, what are you doing differently from your competitors?”

Right hand to god at that point of time I literally was shocked like anything on what to answer now but I put all my thoughts together and said it with an unshakable voice and top-notch confidence that we have thought of 2-3 innovations which are a surprise for them and that too we’ll show them in the final round of evaluation. Well with some good convincing tone or luck I was able to indulge some suspense in them and they gave us one final chance for the final round of evaluation.

Now we had just 3 hrs so 3 team members got themselves involved in the hideous task of finding that bug and solving the merge conflicts and running the platform back to how it was. Now I was thinking about the innovation part which I had promised to the jury so we got to thinking and Sujal Sahu and Aaditya Saini created a dynamic “latest news box” on the website to show news headlines of the latest Research grants and for the second innovation idea I created a Chatbot for better customer support and we integrated both of them before final evaluation (I still don’t know how we came up with those ideas).

The time was 5 PM, and we were called first, I was to give the final presentation in a room with 3 Jury members. I had already created a Powerpoint Presentation and we also had our product on hand so, in 6 minutes, I presented them with one of the most sorted pitch me or my team have heard in the past 2 days. Judges seemed very surprised at how we pulled it out in the last hour. We were happy that we didn’t give up until the end, we gave our 100% and when the results were announced, we couldn’t believe our ears. Yes, we won.?

From thinking of taking part in 1st round of a college-level hackathon to winning the final round in Chandigarh, we realised that we had really come a long way home.

Not to mention the amazing friends and connections we made in the hackathon who made us realise we live in a world full of talented and sweet people who are ready to give their all if you just ask for small help. I still remember how much we danced in our recreational activities keeping aside all the differences of who was competing with who. Really grateful to have experienced one of the most amazing and biggest hackathons in India with infinite learnings and lots and lots of memories.

We couldn’t be more grateful and thankful to each and every one who helped us in completing this amazing journey and a very special thanks to CHANDIGARH UNIVERSITY for their hospitality and management. What we learned most in this hackathon was how a "Great team" and a "Never give up attitude" can take you to places in life."

Well, that’s what a typical LinkedIn Article looks like and also you can go give your two cents below and read this article if you are not already tired enough after reading this post forthe last 4 hours??