India’s top AI teams are preparing for the Forge the Future Hackathon Grand Finale, where shortlisted developers will compete in Bengaluru after weeks of registration, team formation and idea submissions. Organised by Elastic and powered by AWS, the hackathon focuses on building reliable and explainable AI agents for real-world enterprise challenges.
The competition brings together developers working across search, observability, security and industry-specific AI applications. Teams are being evaluated on measurable performance, reliability and practical impact rather than demonstrations alone.
Four AI challenge tracks
The Forge the Future Hackathon features four major challenge tracks. The first focuses on intelligent search and AI platforms, with teams developing hybrid search systems, retrieval-augmented generation agents and workflows capable of handling tasks such as support-ticket triage and document intelligence.
The second track covers observability and autonomous operations. Participants are working on systems that can identify anomalies, correlate technical signals and recommend remediation while also exploring query performance.
The third track focuses on security and AI-powered Security Operations Centres. Challenges include fraud detection, threat hunting, CERT-In compliance and AI-assisted security operations.
The fourth track covers industry solutions, with teams developing applications for areas such as BFSI, ecommerce, retail, healthcare and insurance. Explainability, auditability and real-world data are key considerations.
Grand finale and prize pool
Following the selection of shortlisted teams, the Grand Finale is scheduled to bring participants together in Bengaluru for an in-person build and presentation event. Teams will refine their solutions with support from Elastic and AWS experts before presenting them to technology leaders.
The competition has a total prize pool of Rs 6 lakh. The first-place team will receive Rs 3 lakh along with Rs 75,000 in Sarvam credits. The second-place winner will receive Rs 2 lakh and Rs 50,000 in credits, while the third-place team will receive Rs 1.5 lakh and Rs 25,000 in credits.
Winners to showcase solutions at Elastic{ON} Mumbai
The competition also provides a pathway to Elastic{ON} Mumbai, where the top three Bengaluru teams will showcase their solutions to technology leaders and the wider Elastic community.
Elastic is the technology partner and organiser, while AWS provides the cloud infrastructure. Nasscom AI, Sarvam AI and HackCulture are also supporting the initiative as industry, AI and innovation partners.
The hackathon ultimately aims to move AI projects beyond experimental demonstrations by challenging participants to develop systems designed around reliability, explainability and practical enterprise applications.
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