Studying Time: 4 minutes
The clock strikes 12. A bead of sweat trickles down Nawaz’s brow. The crew’s presentation is due now, however there’s a bug that wants consideration. Because the projector boots up and the judges gear up, Nawaz and the crew know that they solely have one selection — to debug throughout their pitch.
It appears nearly unimaginable to drag off, however in some way, they handle to pitch their product and debug the bug on the identical time. The judges don’t betray any response. The crew is not sure if this bug will price them the coveted prize.
In the meantime, on the opposite facet of the new MoEngage workplace, two groups sit dejected. They thought they’d a killer concept, full with a killer presentation deck. However they didn’t get known as via to the subsequent spherical.
The stress is palpable throughout video calls. Workforce members from world wide sit related via massive cameras and TV screens put in across the workplace. There’s a desk on one nook stuffed with pizzas and beers, each left untouched as a result of nobody appears hungry. The Pink Bull, nevertheless, is an enormous hit. It’s what saved groups up all night time. And no, this isn’t an advert for Pink Bull.
38 groups. 168 members. 24 hours.
The MoEngage Hackathon 2022 is on! It’s the first of it’s type, constructed for the post-pandemic world: a hybrid hackathon. Some groups take part on-line, some offline, and a few combined. However one factor is in widespread — they’re all right here to win.
This turns into evident when one of many judges, the CTO of MoEngage, Yashwanth Kumar, confesses that it’s laborious to shortlist a winner as a result of all concepts appear nice.
One other participant quips that we must always change month-to-month OKR planning actions with a hackathon as a substitute. Wouldn’t that be enjoyable!
It’s true! Productiveness ranges have really skyrocketed earlier than and through this hackathon. In truth, two of the core committee members, Suraj and Nilesh, even constructed out a full-fledged hackathon administration and participation portal in simply 6 hours! The portal is full with a coding backend and services to register, add crew members, add concepts, slide decks, and pitch movies.
They did this as a result of the generic hackathon portal was charging an outrageous payment, which our Co-Founders believed can be higher off given as a prize quantity to the winners. Because the saying goes:
What’s At Stake
Our organizers and volunteers actually upped the ante on this one by creating seven new profitable classes aside from the primary, second, and third prizes:
- Wolf of Wall Avenue: The product with the most important enterprise affect, ideally as a brand new income stream.
- Starvation Video games: A product that improves developer productiveness by a major quantity.
- Million $ Child: One patch to manufacturing which may save most prices and enhance GMV.
- Sidekick: Any hack to cut back help TAT or shut a help ticket routinely.
- Fireproof: Any patch to manufacturing which instantly impacts buyer expertise or NPS.
- Minority Report: A repair to manufacturing which reduces safety threat at MoEngage
- Non-tech Hack: Any groups that solely have enterprise, design, gross sales, or advertising and marketing groups as members.
The Winners
The target of this Hackathon was to harness creativity and experience and supply revolutionary options to the MoEngage platform. Each crew over-delivered right here: most displays appeared like firm pitches made to VCs!
Whereas the judging panel had a troublesome time shortlisting the finalists, it’s protected to say that the profitable groups really deserved it.
In truth, even the crew that was debugging through the presentation, Nawaz’s crew, received! And the opposite two groups who have been dejected as a result of they didn’t get shortlisted to the subsequent spherical? They received too. Seems, the judges have been so offered on their pitch deck that they didn’t want a ultimate spherical.
All in all, it was a loopy 48 hours the place we realized that innovation in tech can carry individuals collectively in fantastic methods. Groups used new know-how to carry down the price of present programs. For instance, Mohit and crew introduced down prices of 1 service by 40% utilizing Scylla DB. In the meantime, Neha’s crew constructed a real-time debugger for Circulate campaigns, and Nilesh’s crew added SQL based mostly segmentation.
Everybody who participated acquired a cool field of goodies which included a hoodie, laptop computer stickers, and a laptop computer sleeve. The organizers acquired their due thanks for internet hosting an excellent occasion over a dinner at Bier Library, Koramangala, Bangalore.
Whereas there have been some challenges internet hosting a hybrid occasion and coordinating this inside a short while body, the sensation of hacking collectively along with your teammates, whether or not offline or on-line, was an unmatched expertise.
Would you prefer to take part within the subsequent MoEngage Hackathon? Try our careers web page!
