How to participate in your first hackathon: where to find hackathons in India, how to form a team, what to prepare, and what to expect in 24 to 48 hours

How do I participate in a hackathon for the first time?

Find one on Devfolio, Unstop, MLH, Devpost or Hack2skill that welcomes beginners, register two to four weeks ahead, form a team of two to four through the event's team-finding channel or your college, set up your laptop and accounts the week before, and arrive with one small idea you could finish in half the time available. Then build the smallest working version, demo it honestly, and write down what you learned. The first hackathon teaches you how hackathons work; the second one is where you start winning.

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My first hackathon was a mess: a team that met at registration, an idea that needed three days, a demo that did not run. Three later wins came from doing the opposite of everything on that day [8]. This page is what I wish someone had handed me before the first one.

Nobody wins their first hackathon by being brilliant. They win their fourth by having learned what the first three taught. Pranjul Rathour

What is a hackathon, and what actually happens?

A hackathon is a timed building competition, usually 24 to 48 hours, where small teams build a working prototype around a theme or a problem statement and demo it to judges. It opens with a briefing and problem statements, then the build, with mentors circulating and checkpoints or mid-way reviews, then submissions with a repository and a video, then three-minute pitches, then results. Online hackathons run the same way over Discord and a submission portal. Food, sleep and the demo working are the three things beginners underestimate.

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Where do I find hackathons in India?

Devfolio lists most large student hackathons in India, including college fests, and has team-finding built in [1]. Unstop lists corporate and college hackathons plus case competitions [2]. Major League Hacking runs a global season of student hackathons with many in India [3]. Devpost is where company-sponsored online hackathons live [4]. Hack2skill hosts corporate and government-partnered events [5]. Smart India Hackathon is the national one, run through your college [6]. Beyond the platforms, follow your college's coding club, nearby college fests, and community Discord and WhatsApp groups, where smaller, beginner-friendly events appear first.

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How do I get shortlisted?

Most hackathons with more applicants than seats shortlist on the application. Fill in every field. Link a GitHub with at least two repositories that have READMEs, even small ones. Write the "why do you want to attend" answer specifically: what you want to build or learn, not "to gain experience". If the hackathon asks for an idea, give a small concrete one. Apply early; late applications compete for fewer seats. Apply to several; acceptance is partly luck.

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How do I find a hackathon team?

Post in the event's team-finding channel, on Devfolio or Discord, with three lines: what you can do, what you want to learn, and when you are free to talk. Ask in your college coding club and your class group. Say yes to a team that has a skill you lack, even if you do not know them. A team of three with one person who can build a frontend, one who can build a backend or model, and one who can design and pitch is enough. Two committed people beat four who vanish at midnight.

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The longer version of finding a team, including how to handle a teammate who disappears mid-event, is on the portfolio [9].

What should I prepare the week before?

The boring things that eat hours on the day. Laptop updated, editor and Python or Node set up, Git configured, GitHub account with SSH working. Accounts created and API keys tested for the tools you might use, kept in a .env file. A starter template you have run once: a frontend, an API, a database, deployed somewhere free. A charger, an extension cord, a power bank, headphones, a water bottle, snacks, a change of clothes for offline events. And a plan for the demo video, because recording at 6 a.m. with no plan is how good projects submit bad videos.

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What should a beginner build at a hackathon?

One feature that works end to end, for one specific person, with a demo you can show in ninety seconds. A receipt reader for a hostel mess. A notice-board summariser for your college WhatsApp. A form that fills itself from a photo. Use APIs for the hard parts and spend your hours on the flow and the demo. Do not build a platform, a marketplace, a social network or anything with "ecosystem" in the description. The judging rewards a thing that runs, and beginners lose by attempting things that cannot run in 36 hours.

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My list of what to build at a first hackathon, with the scope test I still use, is written up separately [10].

How do I manage the 24 to 48 hours?

Decide the idea and the demo path in the first hour and do not revisit it. Split work by interface: one person owns the frontend, one the backend, one the model or data, with the API contract written down first. Have something that runs end to end, however ugly, by the halfway mark. Eat on a schedule. Sleep in shifts if it is overnight; a team with two hours of sleep each builds better than a team with none. Freeze the build with two hours left. Record the video and rehearse the pitch on the frozen build.

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What if I do not know how to code well yet?

Come anyway, with a role. Teams need someone to design screens, write the pitch, make the video, test the flow, talk to mentors and keep the plan. Learn one thing during the event by pairing with the builder on one small piece. Use no-code and low-code tools for parts of the demo where they fit. Judges care whether the thing works and whether the team understood the problem, not whether every member wrote code. By your second hackathon you will have shipped something, which is the fastest way to learn to code well.

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How do I make the first hackathon count even if I lose?

Ship something that runs, however small. Talk to at least three mentors and two other teams. Write down what broke and why. Post about it the same week with a screenshot, the lesson and a thank-you to the organisers. Keep the repository clean with a README and a video link. Add the event to your LinkedIn as experience. Register for the next one before the memory fades. Every win I have had traces back to a loss I wrote about.

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Hackathon FAQ for beginners

Do I need a team? Most events allow solo, but a team of two or three is easier and more fun. Do I need an idea before? Usually not; problem statements come at the start, and platforms often let you form teams first. Is it free? Student hackathons almost always are, and offline ones usually feed you. Can first-years join? Yes, and many events have first-timer tracks. Online or offline? Offline for the first one if you can; the energy and the mentors help.

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Where should I start?

Open Devfolio or Unstop tonight, pick one hackathon four weeks out, register, and post a three-line team-finding message. The rest of this page applies from there. For a hackathon workshop at your college that covers picking, building and pitching in a weekend, email pranjulrathour41@gmail.com or use pranjulrathour.scult.in/invite.

Pranjul Rathour

GenAI Engineer · Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

GenAI engineer and AI product builder with 2+ years shipping production-grade AI systems: RAG pipelines, fine-tuned LLMs, hybrid retrieval and multi-modal apps across vision, speech and OCR, architected end to end from ingestion to deployment. Leads engineering for SCULT INDIA's 14-member team, founded the 500+ member TechVerse Enclave community and has mentored 200+ students. Three hackathon first prizes: Changethon 2025 (IIT Roorkee), Product Genesis at Vividhotsava 2025 (CSJMU Kanpur) and BYTEBATTLE (MeetKats).

Open to GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks at colleges. Email pranjulrathour41@gmail.com.

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