Hackathon Chronicles: MVJ College of Engineering

-My first ever Hackathon experience

So, we decided to give Vikasana a fresh start, and what better way than jumping into a hackathon? That’s how we ended up at MVJ College of Engineering in Whitefield for an on-the-spot-themed hackathon—Disaster Management.

Our team? Me, along with three insanely smart people: Dinesh, Mihir, and Falisha—of course, all from Vikasana. They named our squad Homi Baba (because why not).

The Pre-Hackathon Hype

A day before the hackathon, we had a strategy meeting—what to do, how to plan, and all that jazz. Mihir was on full motivational mode: “Bruh, yess! Let’s go! We’re gonna win this thing!” Gotta love that mindset.

Date: 19th Dec 2024.

The Journey to MVJ

First challenge? Getting there. Dinesh offered to bring his car, but for the sake of adventure, I took the metro. Rode my bike to the station, switched metro lines, then finally reached my stop and walked to the college. Three hours of travel—uff!

The Arrival: Hackathon Begins

We got our hackathon passes and stepped into a basement with AC (big relief). While setting up our repos, forking, and getting things ready, they announced the problem statement. Mihir, our experienced (but "first proper hackathon" participant), was super reliable. Meanwhile, I was just like, woah…

Food Struggles & Brainstorming

I hadn’t eaten since 5:45 AM, and by the time we got our problem statement, I was starving. The cafeteria only had snacks, but Adithya sir had generously given us 6k for expenses (including petrol), so I went all out. Got snacks and coffee for everyone.

After refueling, we got down to brainstorming. We landed on Mesh Networking—an offline SOS app using Bluetooth to connect nearby people in danger. No internet? No problem.

The Tech Stack & Work Begins

Tech stack decisions: Mihir knew some backend; the rest of us were solid at frontend. So, I designed the layout, assigned tasks (which got me the CTO title 😂), and we forked Mihir’s repo. I made sure to push even the tiniest changes because one of the conditions was continuous GitHub updates—and subconsciously, I just did it.

By 1-2 PM, Falisha and I had wrapped up the frontend. Dragged Dinesh for lunch—mid-tier tomato rice, nothing fancy. Mihir, meanwhile, just survived on coffee.

Exploring, Errors & The Final Stretch

Since lunch didn’t satisfy me, I explored the college (which was surprisingly peaceful despite being in the middle of Whitefield traffic). Picked up sweet corn, rolls, and lemon soda. Bought rolls for Mihir—he took a bite and went, “Bitter.” Well, even I didn’t like it 😂.

Meanwhile, Mihir was deep in backend struggles, figuring out API calls. I met an old school friend also participating, but when I roamed too much, my team was like, “Umm… you shouldn’t be roaming.” Oops. Back to work.

Frontend was all about color analysis—we locked in orange as the primary color. Also, shoutout to Claude AI for helping out.

With two hours left, it was integration time. And guess what?

💥 Boom—nothing worked. 💥

Errors on errors. Each feature ran on a different laptop. The app was a PWA (Progressive Web App), so technically, you could install it via a link. Backend finally went live, and in the last one hour, I realized—I had no clue how to call APIs. Copilot was throwing random suggestions, and everything was a mess.

With five minutes left, Mihir just sighed, “Let’s escape. No way we’re winning.” And then he turned to me—the so-called CTO— “Your call. Leave or stay?”

It was already 6 PM, and my parents were probably wondering where I was. But something in me said, we’re one step away. Let’s not run from it now.

So we stayed.

The Presentation & The Aftermath

We gave the demo—not through our app (which was broken) but through our presentation skills. Each of us showed our part from different laptops, explained the idea, and wrapped it up. Then we ran to the car, hyped from the experience.

Honestly, the hackathon was amazing. This team? The best. The Vikasana batch? Legendary. We planned to finish this project post-hackathon, but well… March 31st, and it’s still incomplete. One day. One day.

On our way home, they announced the top 2 winners—my school friend’s team was one of them! But the next day, they revealed the Top 12 teams.

And guess what? Homi Baba ranked 6th out of 30.

Unbelievable. But looking back, we followed the guidelines, explained our idea well, and that’s what mattered. Hackathons aren’t just about what you build—if you can’t explain your solution, it doesn’t exist.

Lessons Learned

• Presentation is everything. If people don’t understand your idea, your work goes to waste.

• I lack everywhere. There’s so much competition, and this lit a fire in me to specialize in at least two solid skills. Hackathons are no joke.

• This experience was worth it. I had my job secured, so I could actually enjoy this and reflect on it.

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Thanks for reading! Hope you can learn from my mistakes and experiences.

For more technical details, check out my LinkedIn!