Hewlett-Packard Enterprise • 8th Position • 25th July, 2026

Organised in Bangalore in 2026, it was a big competition, where many race to solve 30 or-so questions within the limited time given using Python, Java, C, or C++. The questions progress in difficulty, and harder questions earn more points.

I had joined my new school in Bangalore less than a month ago, and of perhaps 130-140 teams, my team, of three high-schoolers, placed 8th. It was the first competition I attended, and I was happy with the outcome. I had no preparation, and I accept it.

National Public School ITPL • 1st Position • 8th August, 2026

A Hackathon under the name "Hacknexus". You are provided a set of 10 questions to solve within 90 minutes. I solved them in 40.

Placing 1st, I got the school a trophy, myself a certificate and a cheque for 5000 INR. The money was not of my concern and went to my father, for my concern was merely that I had won. I had, once again, no preparation (no clue how to).

Additionally, NPS's Principal was happy to have me and told me "continue on my path" and "do what I do and keep growing" or something along those lines.

National Centre for Excellence • 2nd Position • 14th August, 2026

Rhetorica is a collection of events, one of which was a Hackathon. This greatly differed from the earlier competitions I had attended, since those were pure coding challenges. This, on the other hand, constituted multiple rounds to test participants':

• Programming Skills (30, 20, 5 minutes each question): Three programming questions to solve, similar to the earlier competitions.
• Creative problem solving (45 minutes): Designed ultrasonic animal-deterrent sensor network for railway tracks.
• Robotics (40 minutes): Participants were allowed to observe a given "road" to build a simple contraption with simple material to be a sort of "car" capable of traversing through it. We were unfortunately inadequately provided materials, hence given an additional 10 minutes with the aforementioned missing materials we were initially unaware of (figured from others' creations). The final creation worked well, far better than we expected.
• Presentation skills (45 minutes): "Helmet that serves to help Cyclists' safety." Participants had to create a presentation of 5 slides (max) and speak on the solution that they come up with. We thought of infrared cameras to see in the dark; engines and warm blood are hot enough to be seen, even when dark, using which, we can improve night cycling safety.

I arrived at the school at 8 am, and left at 7 pm, and stayed for so long, as our team of three had won 2nd place.