Build the market research company India's diversity hasn't produced yet.
Open to anyone: a single builder or a full team, student or working professional. Pick a real industry problem, ship a working solution over seven months, and walk away with something that could become a company rather than a slide deck.
We're not looking for a good hackathon demo. We're looking for a company.
Every problem statement here is a real, unsolved gap in how India is researched, the kind of gap that, solved properly, doesn't stay a side project.
Solve for India's complexity. Sell it to the world.
India's diversity, 22 official languages, hundreds of dialects, wildly different literacy and connectivity levels, is usually treated as a localisation problem to work around. We're treating it as the hard problem worth solving outright.
A team that genuinely cracks vernacular, code-switched, low-bandwidth research isn't just building a tool for India. They're building the reference solution for every other linguistically diverse market on earth, Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America.
Take the Vernacular Voice & Dialect Engine track: an AI system that reads Hinglish, Tanglish, or Benglish speech without flattening it into generic English translation. Solve that well and you haven't just built an India feature. You've built exportable infrastructure for any market where people don't speak in one clean, standard language.
- i.Pick a real problemNot a hypothetical, a named, structural gap in Indian market research.
- ii.Ship a working PoCJudged on whether it functions on real, messy Indian data, not a polished demo script.
- iii.Prove the businessA monetisation model and a path to enterprise deployment, defended in front of the jury.
- iv.Walk out with more than a certificateA pilot contract, funding, and a credible case that this could be spun out as its own venture.
Open to anyone who can ship, not just any one background.
No mandated pairings, no prerequisite degree, no minimum team size. Enter alone or bring whatever team already works for you.
One person, one idea
If you can carry a problem statement end-to-end yourself, researcher, engineer, and pitcher in one, you're welcome to enter alone.
Startups & project teams
Already working on something adjacent? Bring your existing team and adapt your build to one of the three tracks.
Formed for this hackathon
Meet a co-builder through our team-formation workshops in November and enter as a freshly assembled team.
A phased funnel, not a weekend hackathon.
Seven checkpoints between grand announcement and Demo Day ensure entries build something that survives contact with real enterprise data.
Pick one structural challenge. Ship a PoC that solves it.
Every track is a real, named gap in how India is currently researched, not a generic prompt.
Judged on rigor and readiness, in equal measure.
Three weighted pillars every entry defends together, whatever their background.
Statistical soundness, sampling bias mitigation, algorithm transparency, and DPDP Act compliance.
Data-pipeline stability, UI/UX, latency, and resilience against messy low-bandwidth Indian data feeds.
A clear monetization model, unit economics, and a credible path to standing alone as a company.
- 01The Industry VeteranActive or retired C-level leader from a tier-1 MR agency.
- 02The Brand CustodianVP of Consumer Insights at a major FMCG spender.
- 03The Academic EliteSenior professor or statistician from a premier institution.
- 04The Deep-Tech InvestorPartner at an early-stage VC firm focused on Indian B2B SaaS and AI infrastructure.
- 05The Data Governance ExpertLegal/policy specialist advising on Indian data privacy and DPDP alignment.
Three awards. Cash is the smallest part of the prize.
Enterprise access and mentorship do the heavy lifting toward an actual company.
Deployment Track
$ equity-free
- Guaranteed paid corporate pilot with an anchor sponsor + fast-track vendor listing
- 3 monthly 1-on-1 strategy sessions with an MR agency CEO on enterprise B2B sales
Acceleration Track
$ equity-free
- Cloud credits (AWS Activate / GCP), worth $1,000–$5,000, to host and scale infrastructure
- 2 architecture review sessions with a lead data scientist from the jury panel
Foundation Track
$ equity-free
- Fast-track interview for leading university / corporate startup incubation cells
- 1 intensive masterclass with a deep-tech VC on IP protection and fundraising
Grand Announcement: August 2026.
Registration opens with the launch of the sanitized dataset portal. Get on the list now to be notified the day it goes live, and to receive the full problem-statement brief before applications close on 15 October 2026.