Bring the AI future to your campus, in a weekend.
Industry now hires for judgement, communication and the ability to work with AI. Build for Bharat lets your students show all three, and gives your college a direct line to the people hiring for them.
of students say they lack the AI skills employers want
do not feel ready for an AI-driven workplace
entry-level IT roles cut by AI automation at major employers
Student figures: Adaptiv research. Hiring figure: CMIE, NASSCOM and EY research cited in Adaptiv's market analysis.
We bring the briefs, scorecards, starter kits and mentors on call. Your HODs and deans run the day.
Your shortlisted teams build at our AI Studio, and one winner earns a route to a guaranteed placement or startup funding.
HODs and deans host the campus round, judge it, and pick the teams that go to the Studio.
Every team maps who is affected and what changes, not just what to build.
Demo videos, a winners' showcase and a story for every top team.
The hackathon is the first step to sending a full cohort to our campuses.
You don't need to know AI. You need to know how to think.
Most of you have never built with AI before. Good: that is what we teach. Build for Bharat is about the things no course can fake, and a coding agent is allowed on your team. 1st to 3rd years take on problems; 4th years take on themes.
Curiosity, ownership, and keeping your cool when the plan breaks halfway through.
Listening to a real person, then explaining your idea in three minutes flat.
The angle nobody else in the room saw coming.
Seeing who wins, who loses and what else changes when you fix something.
A spot that leads to a guaranteed placement or startup funding in 90 days.
Shortlisted teams come to The Adaptiv School for day two.
Your faculty and our studio engineers question your thinking.
Use Claude or any coding agent to build your prototype, even if you have never written code. We look at how well you direct it, question it and know when it is wrong.
From your campus to our AI Studio.
Teams get a problem or a theme and cue card, talk to at least three real people, and commit to one problem by midday.
System map, then a prototype, often built with Claude. Mentor check-ins, and a twist may drop.
Three minutes each to a jury of your HODs, deans and faculty. The best teams are picked for the Studio.
Shortlisted teams from every campus bring their day-one work into the Studio.
Brainstorm, ideate, build, repeat, with studio mentors on every floor.
Pitch on the third floor to our studio engineers and industry guests.
One kit. Eight ways to play.
One sentence, from a real conversation: who struggles, with what, and what it costs them.
Who and what is connected, and what else changes if you fix it.
A paper sketch, a clickable mock-up or a working app built with Claude.
Tell the story, show the prototype, take the jury's questions.
Get a theme, not a problem. Go out and find the problem worth solving.
Make a small working tool for one real person, with Claude as your coder.
Map a messy system, like your city's garbage, and find the one lever that moves it.
Take a frustrating service, like a railway refund, and redesign the whole journey.
It is 2030 and AI agents run customer service. Who loses out, and what new job appears?
Explain UPI fraud to your grandmother, and test it on her.
Two teams argue: should AI grade board exams? Then face the judges.
Any brief, plus a new curveball every few hours.
Problems or themes? Your call.
Each college decides how its campus round starts. Both options use the same kit, the same judging and the same route to day two at the AI Studio. Which option a student takes depends on their year.
Run both on the same day: 1st to 3rd years take problems, 4th years take themes. Every year group gets a way in, and your college gets both kinds of story.
A, B, or both, by year.
Together with us, adapted to your city.
We bring the rest.
One hall. Your faculty. One shortlist.
Day one runs on your ground, hosted by your HODs and deans with our kit and mentors on call. Teams go out, find a problem worth solving, build an answer, and pitch it by evening.
3 floors. 50 teams. One winner.
Day one happens on your campus. Day two happens on ours. The teams shortlisted by each college come to The Adaptiv School for one high-energy day of building, with mentors on every floor.
38 real problems. Pick one, own it.
Each names a real person and the big question your team must answer. The thinking is what wins — and every problem can be adapted to your city.
A kirana owner tracks credit for 200 customers in a notebook.
How does he get paid back without losing goodwill?
A first-time borrower faces a 12-page loan agreement in English.
What does she need to know before signing?
A retired teacher gets daily 'KYC expiry' calls and fake prize SMS.
Who in his life could protect him, and how?
A delivery rider earns a different amount every day.
How do you plan money with no idea of next week's income?
A small-town family files a health insurance claim.
Where do families give up, and what keeps them going?
A tomato farmer sees spots on leaves; the expert is 40 km away.
How does trusted advice reach him fast?
A farmer must decide today: sell onions, or wait?
What information would change his decision?
80 families in a Rajasthan village share one borewell.
What would a fair system look like, and who would resist it?
Outdoor workers in Delhi in a 46°C week.
Who can actually change a worker's day?
A college canteen wants to show the footprint of each meal.
Would it change what students eat?
An ASHA worker visits 30 homes a week with paper forms.
Which part of her week, made easier, most improves care?
An elderly patient with five medicines and a handwritten prescription.
Where do mistakes happen between doctor and dose?
A student in a coaching hub, anxious before board exams.
What should a tool never do here?
Patients wait four hours with no idea when they will be seen.
How do patients get their time back?
A Class 9 student in a Hindi-medium school stuck on algebra.
How do you know she learned, not just copied?
A teacher with 60 students and one hour to plan the week.
What gives her the most time back?
A tier-3 graduate preparing for a first tech interview.
Knowledge, confidence or language: what holds them back?
A placement officer unsure what local employers now want.
Which three skills would change placements most?
A widow who may qualify for three schemes and does not know it.
Why do eligible people miss out?
A resident reporting the same broken road for the third time.
Why do complaints die?
A woman travelling home at night from a metro station.
What makes a journey feel safe?
A citizen who wants to file an RTI request but does not know how.
What stops people using their right to information?
A first-time visitor on the Pushkar ghats.
How do you tell a place's story without flattening it?
A Bagru block-print artisan who sells only at fairs.
Where does she lose value, and how could she keep it?
A Marwari-speaking grandmother and her English-medium grandchild.
What is worth saving first?
A village elder who knows songs no one has recorded.
Who should own a community's recorded culture?
A tailor who dreads monthly GST filing.
Which part costs him most: money, time or stress?
A two-person phone repair shop drowning in WhatsApp enquiries.
What should be automated, and what needs a human?
A supervisor whose workers speak four languages.
How do you know everyone understood a safety rule?
A sweet shop with no online presence weeks before Diwali.
What is the smallest step that brings real orders?
A viral political video lands in a family WhatsApp group.
How would ordinary people check?
An AI shortlists job applicants from CVs.
Test it with made-up CVs: where is it unfair?
A bank's support chatbot, just by chatting.
Find five ways to mislead it, and what the bank should change.
A shop owner choosing between three AI assistants.
Design a fair test any shop owner could run.
1,500 students, one canteen, a 40-minute lunch break.
Is it the queue, the menu or the timing?
Students digging through years of scanned past papers.
What do they need the night before an exam?
Water and Wi-Fi complaints that go nowhere.
Why do the same problems keep coming back?
Final-years unsure which companies fit them.
What do seniors know that juniors never hear?
24 cue cards. Go and find the problem.
A theme comes with a cue: something to notice. Teams spend the first hours looking and listening, and by hour 6 commit to one problem in a single sentence. Talk to at least three people before you build.
“Everyone on campus loses 10 minutes somewhere, every day.”
“Some things on campus refuse to go digital.”
“The most useful knowledge on campus lives in seniors' heads.”
“In every class, a few students quietly stop following.”
“Money leaks out of small shops in ways owners never see.”
“A lot of India's business still runs on a notebook and memory.”
“A delivery rider's day has more waiting than riding.”
“Most young people get a first salary with no idea what to do with it.”
“In every family, one young person fixes every phone and fills every form.”
“Almost every home has medicines no one fully understands.”
“Patients in small clinics wait hours without knowing why.”
“More parents live alone as children move to cities.”
“Your waste goes somewhere after it leaves your bin.”
“At 2 pm in summer, some people cannot stop working.”
“The last kilometre is often the hardest part of the journey.”
“In many towns water arrives on a schedule, not on demand.”
“Good students go quiet when class switches to English.”
“In many towns a craft has only a few makers left.”
“Every festival brings a burst of demand small sellers cannot meet.”
“Recipes, remedies and stories vanish with each generation.”
“Someone near you is already using AI at work, quietly.”
“Some jobs look the same but are done very differently now.”
“People believe some AI answers and doubt others, without knowing why.”
“Ask anyone what their job looks like in 2030, and watch them pause.”
We score the thinking, not the code.
Technical quality only breaks ties. We also look at how you used Claude, how you took feedback, and how much you learned over the two days. Day 1 on campus is judged by your HODs, deans and faculty; day 2 at the Studio by Adaptiv studio engineers and industry guests.
A spot that leads to a guaranteed placement or startup funding in 90 days, through the full cohort at The Adaptiv School.
A Claude Team account for the whole team for two months — the same tool you built with, to keep going after the weekend.
One month of access to the Chhaon coworking space and library for the whole team, to keep building somewhere real.
The winner takes part in the full 90-day cohort at The Adaptiv School.
The winner meets every challenge criterion set by mentors during the 90 days.
Placement and funding outcomes are subject to market conditions.
Picked from the teams on day two at the Studio. Every participant gets mentor feedback and a certificate.
Your users now have no internet
Users now speak only Tamil
It must now cost them nothing
The main feature is rejected
No personal data may leave the phone
One of you leaves for two hours
10 users become 10,000 overnight
Another team picks holes before you pitch
