From endless sleepless nights to receiving recognition directly from Google employees, this was one of the biggest roller coaster experiences I have ever been a part of.
The journey to Bengaluru itself started almost as a joke. We were discussing whether we should actually go, and somehow, a few days later, we found ourselves on a train to Bengaluru with our laptops open, building our first Flutter mobile application. It was also our first time visiting Bengaluru. The train journey quickly turned into a hackathon of its own. We spent hours with our laptops in our hands, working on features and trying to get our Google Cloud functions working. At one point, I was sitting on the upper berth at 5 in the morning, still trying to make a Google Cloud function work.
When we finally reached Bengaluru, we went straight to our hotel and continued building. We barely had time to explore the city because most of our time was spent working on the application and figuring out technologies we had never used before.
Chaos at the venue
The real chaos began when we reached the venue. We saw a long line outside, and the Wi-Fi was down. Once we entered, there was barely any space to sit. The organisers had called around 60 extra teams because they anticipated a large number of no-shows, but ultimately, far more teams showed up than expected. There were not enough chairs or tables for everyone.
We left our hotel very early and had not had breakfast. By the time we entered, the breakfast at the venue was over, so we grabbed some snacks and coffee and waited to be assigned a table. With no Wi-Fi and no power outlets available, we decided to use the time to talk to mentors and improve our idea.
Luckily, the very first person we met was the person who had designed our problem statement, Mr. Edson Yanaga. We discussed our idea with him, and he gave us some incredible suggestions that immediately helped us see the problem from a different perspective. The highlight of the entire event was getting to meet him and directly learn from someone working on Google Wallet. He suggested implementing text and link modules and deep linking back to our Raseed app, and we were able to incorporate those ideas into our application.
After some time, we were finally assigned a table and immediately got back to development. However, the Wi-Fi situation had not improved. We were relying on mobile hotspots and could only get a 4G connection. Eventually, we discovered that the hotspot worked outside the venue, so we went outside and sat there with our laptops, coding and building the application.
Meeting the mentors
As we continued, we started talking to other mentors about Google ADK and how we could improve the agents in our application. One of the mentors we met was Mr Lavi Nigam. He was an angel in disguise for our team. He completely changed the way we were thinking about building our agents with ADK. He explained why we needed to build the agents the way we were approaching them, what we should focus on, and gave us extremely useful suggestions and feedback.
His advice forced us to rethink our approach, and with his guidance, we got right to work on that part of the application. By the end of the night, we had a decent plan and had made significant progress.
The next morning brought another round of chaos. We had not thought far enough ahead about the submission requirements and had left the PPT and video until the last minute. There was some last-minute arguing and scrambling, but somehow, we managed to finish everything and submit our project.
The judging
Then came the judging. When the reviewers started coming in, we were honestly disappointed by their reactions. They seemed uninterested, and one of them did not even listen to our entire pitch. We felt completely disheartened. After everything we had put into the project, we started wondering whether our application was actually good enough. We sat there in despair, convinced we had not done enough.
Later, after lunch, Mr Lavi Nigam approached us and asked about our project. We explained everything that had happened and how we had built the application. He told us not to be disheartened and said that we had done a great job. That conversation gave us the hope we needed to keep going.
We sat there waiting for the top 15 team announcement. We genuinely did not expect to be selected. So when we saw Team Raseed's name on the board, it was unbelievable. We squealed with joy, but there was barely any time to celebrate because we immediately had to prepare for the final presentation.
We gathered ourselves, prepared for the final round, and gave it our best. We showcased our application to the judges, walked them through its features and benefits, and finally sat down to await the results.
First prize
The third prize winners were announced. Then the second prize. At that point, we were convinced we were not winning. And then they announced the first prize. Team Raseed. We could not believe it.
Just a few days earlier, we were considering dropping the opportunity because we were not confident in ourselves. We travelled all the way to Bengaluru, struggled through the lack of Wi-Fi, worked through the nights, built an application using technologies that were completely new to us, and somehow ended up as the first-place winners of the same competition.
Reality did not really kick in until the next morning. It felt surreal. For many of my teammates, this was their first hackathon victory, which made the moment even more special.
We spent the next day exploring Bengaluru, visiting some holy places, and thanking God for His blessings and kindness.
My team members helped me give my best. Thank you, Harshavardhan Khamkar, Ryan Dsouza, and Akash Jadhav, for your support, hard work, and unwavering determination throughout the journey.
We faced multiple issues at the venue, but the volunteers and the Hack2skill team powered through them and kept the event moving.
From a train journey that started as a joke to sitting outside a venue coding on a 4G hotspot, from meeting mentors who completely changed our approach to seeing our name announced as the winners, this was truly one of the best experiences of my life. A truly memorable journey from start to finish.