Studying Time: 4 minutes
The clock strikes 12. A bead of sweat trickles down Akshay’s brow. The workforce’s presentation is due now, however there’s a bug that wants consideration. Because the projector boots up and the judges gear up, Akshay and the workforce know that they solely have one alternative — to debug throughout their pitch.
It appears nearly not possible to drag off, however one way or the other, they handle to pitch their product and debug the bug on the similar time. The judges don’t betray any response. The workforce is uncertain if this bug will price them the coveted prize.
In the meantime, on the opposite aspect of the new MoEngage workplace, two groups sit dejected. They thought that they had a killer thought, full with a killer presentation deck. However they didn’t get referred to as via to the following spherical.
The stress is palpable throughout video calls. Staff members from world wide sit related via giant 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 Purple Bull, nonetheless, is a giant hit. It’s what saved groups up all evening. And no, this isn’t an advert for Purple Bull.
38 groups. 168 contributors. 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 should always substitute month-to-month OKR planning actions with a hackathon as an alternative. Wouldn’t that be enjoyable!
It’s true! Productiveness ranges have really skyrocketed earlier than and through this hackathon. In reality, 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 workforce members, add concepts, slide decks, and pitch movies.
They did this as a result of the generic hackathon portal was charging an outrageous price, which our Co-Founders believed could 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 successful classes aside from the primary, second, and third prizes:
- Wolf of Wall Avenue: The product with the most important enterprise influence, ideally as a brand new income stream.
- Starvation Video games: A product that improves developer productiveness by a big quantity.
- Million $ Child: One patch to manufacturing which might save most prices and enhance GMV.
- Sidekick: Any hack to scale 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 danger 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 workforce over-delivered right here: most displays appeared like firm pitches made to VCs!
Whereas the judging panel had a tricky time shortlisting the finalists, it’s secure to say that the successful groups really deserved it.
In reality, even the workforce that was debugging throughout the presentation, Akshay’s workforce, gained! And the opposite two groups who had been dejected as a result of they didn’t get shortlisted to the following spherical? They gained too. Seems, the judges had been so offered on their pitch deck that they didn’t want a remaining spherical.
All in all, it was a loopy 48 hours the place we realized that innovation in tech can convey individuals collectively in fantastic methods. Groups used new expertise to convey down the price of current techniques. For instance, Mohit and workforce introduced down prices of 1 service by 40% utilizing Scylla DB. In the meantime, Neha’s workforce constructed a real-time debugger for Circulation campaigns, and Nilesh’s workforce added SQL based mostly segmentation.
Everybody who participated obtained a cool field of goodies which included a hoodie, laptop computer stickers, and a laptop computer sleeve. The organizers obtained their due thanks for internet hosting an incredible 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 together with your teammates, whether or not offline or on-line, was an unmatched expertise.
Would you wish to take part within the subsequent MoEngage Hackathon? Take a look at our careers web page!
