Hyderabad, October 29, 2022…IIIT Hyderabad’s    Entrepreneurship Cell conducted its annual flagship event, Megathon 2022, that witnessed over 700 participants from 30 colleges. The event was highly successful in garnering the most entrepreneurial and technology-driven youth from across the region. This staggering participation also makes Megathon ’22 IIIT Hyderabad’s largest hackathon to date. It was a 24-hour hackathon involving 4 problem statements: 2 from their Title Sponsor Stellantis, 1 from Associate Sponsor Qualcomm, and the social problem from Raj Reddy Centre for Technology and Society (RCTS).

After a gruelling round of pitches, team “AlphaQueue” emerged as winners for the first problem statement by Stellantis while team “Pied Piper” won the second one. Team “Le Boys” took home the Qualcomm prize and finally “Hack Your Mom” and “What the Hack” jointly won the social problem round.

Since 2016, Megathon has been conducted annually and is growing every year. Last year it was conducted online, but this year it was offline, bringing in new challenges. These challenges were dealt with by the student team at E-cell, making Megathon the largest student-run Hackathon conducted at IIITH.

The opening ceremony of the event was graced by talks from several distinguished speakers. Prof. Ramesh Loganathan kickstarted the event by introducing the students to CIE (Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship), IIIT Hyderabad’s own start-up incubator. He was followed by Prof. CV Jawahar, Dean RnD, IIIT Hyderabad and CEO of CIE, and finally, Prof. Kannan Srinathan, who talked to students about the entrepreneurial spirit of problem solving. The event was filled with enthusiastic participants who kept the energy high throughout the event.

After one round of selection by the pre-jury, 23 teams presented their lightning pitches to the final jury in the closing ceremony.

The final jury comprised Alok Madhukar – Managing Director of Goldman Sachs, Anish Anthony – Angel Investor and CDO of T-Hub, Murali Talasila – Innovator and ex-PWC Risk Management partner, Saurabh Kumar – CEO of GMR Cargo, Madhusudanan Kandasamy – Qualcomm and Rahul Rajupalepu – Vice President and Head of India Digital Hub of Stellantis. They not only judged the lightening pitches presented by the finalists but also gave the participants valuable inputs and insight.

The shortlisted Stellantis problem statement winners all get to be a part of a much larger hackathon and participate to get their best ideas reviewed.

The event closed with the prize distribution ceremony, followed by a photo session with all the winners and with the people who made the enthralling event a reality.