Questions, answered properly

Yes — this event is built for exactly that. First-years are judged in their own track, mentors are online for the whole build window, and there is no assumed starting skill level. If you can open a laptop and are willing to be confused for a few hours, you can finish this.

Any student currently enrolled at a recognised college or university in India — any branch, any year. CS, ECE, Mechanical, Civil, Commerce, BBA, Arts, all of them. You may be asked to show a valid student ID.

No. Register on your own and use the team finder on your dashboard afterwards, or join friends with their team code. Teams can be 1 to 4 people, and every member registers and pays individually.

Yes. Solo entries are judged on the same rubric as teams. It is harder to cover design, build and pitch on your own, but it is allowed, people do it, and there is a cash prize reserved for the best solo build.

Online (Pan-India). You participate from wherever you are — no travel and no accommodation cost.

A laptop, a stable-enough internet connection, and a free GitHub account. Everything else — tools, frameworks, hosting — can be free tier. We publish a setup checklist before the event.

Then skip this edition. We would rather you sit it out than half-participate during exams. Cancel before the refund cutoff and you get your money back in full.

Your participation slot, mentor access through all three rounds, judging, your certificate, prize pool contribution, and platform costs.

Free student events routinely see 70–80% no-shows, which leaves teams half-empty and mentors idle. A small fee filters for people who actually turn up — which makes the event better for everyone who does.

UPI, debit and credit cards, net banking and popular wallets. Payments are handled by a PCI-compliant payment gateway — we never see or store your card or UPI credentials.

Yes. The first 500 registrations pay the early-bird price and the site switches to the regular price automatically once that number is reached. The counter on the homepage is the live number, not a marketing figure.

Full refund if you cancel 7 or more days before the event. After that, no refund, because mentor time and prize budget are already committed against your slot. Full details on the refund policy page.

Usually a delayed bank confirmation that clears within 30 minutes. If it does not, email support@firsthack.in with your payment reference — we either confirm your slot manually or your bank auto-reverses the charge in 5–7 working days.

We keep a small number of waivers for students who genuinely cannot afford the fee. Write to us from your college email explaining your situation. We do not ask for documentation and we do not publicise who receives one.

Three rounds. Idea submission 22–24 October, prototype 26–29 October, and the final pitch 1–4 November, with results after each one. The full breakdown is on the schedule page.

No. You may plan, research and set up your environment, but code committed before kickoff does not count. Judges check commit history. Using existing open-source libraries and frameworks is completely fine.

Yes. Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude — all permitted, and we would rather you learn to use them well. What is not permitted is submitting an entire project someone else built and calling it yours.

That is what mentors are for. There is a help channel open the whole time, and mentors are assigned so nobody waits long. Being stuck is the normal state of a hackathon, not a sign you should quit.

Nothing bad happens — you keep what you learned. You will not receive a certificate, since those go to teams that submit.

Yes, until team composition locks after the first round opens. After that, members cannot be added or removed.

No. Judges score a working core idea far higher than a broad half-finished one. A small thing that runs beats a big thing that does not.

Against a published rubric — innovation, technical execution, impact and presentation, with fixed weightings. The full breakdown is on the rules and judging page.

Yes. First-year submissions are scored within their own track, so you are not ranked against final-year students with internship experience.

₹100,000, distributed across overall winners and category awards. The full split is on the prizes page.

Prizes are disbursed within 30 working days of the results announcement, after winners provide identification and bank details. Prize money is subject to applicable Indian tax deductions.

Every team that submits a valid project receives a verifiable participation certificate. Winners and category awardees receive separate certificates.

It is yours entirely. You keep full ownership and can publish, extend or commercialise it. We only ask permission to show your project name and screenshots when talking about the event.

It helps, but let us be accurate: this is not a placement programme and we do not guarantee interviews. What you get is a real project with real commit history to point at, plus a verified certificate — which is more than a list of course completions.