INDORE – Stepping inside the event hall on a Sunday morning, the first thing to capture your attention was not the commercial banners or jargon of the day. It was the constant tapping of mechanical keyboards, partially filled coffee mugs, and groups of college kids and solo developers discussing system architecture. HackItBros ’26 organized by SlowBros Labs along with Botmartz AI Solutions and Go Study Overseas gathered 130 participants around a straightforward and honest cause: build functional software.
From day one at the kickoff, the organizers spelled out an inflexible rule, "No Fake Demos." In an environment where API wrappers and simplistic chat UIs dominate the scene, the task here was a tough one. Teams had to select one of four engineering problem tracks and implement solutions that would be able to take care of real-life user input. Over 44 teams—going from tight groups to lone-wolf programmers—the place quickly became a workshop supported by Wi-Fi and energy drinks.
Rather than the usual messy judging process that occurs in most hackathons where the judges just take a cursory glance at the presentations in just two minutes, judging was done on-the-spot using JudgeFlow, a judging software specially created for the event by Harsh Parmar. JudgeFlow worked flawlessly all day long, providing transparent scoring based on criteria for code quality, features, and even execution. This made things very clear for all the participants as to how their projects were faring during the day.
When submissions ended, the competition on the demo floor was fierce but cooperative. The first prize winners in 1st position were Team Cloudall (HIB26-NEGR3), Ranveer Gade, Vishant Pandey, Indresh Mourya, and Ananya Dubey, who demonstrated their strong project implementation and automatic pipeline, which earned high praise from both fellow students and mentors. Team Stackshift (HIB26-2ZXMW) placed second and consisted of Prince Bhardwaj, Puranjeet Singh Solanki, Raj Singh Chouhan, and Rehan Patel, known for their full-stack development skills. In third place was the solo coder Shivam Kumar (HIB26-JUB5K), who developed a complete product on his own.
Apart from the crystal mugs, trophies, and certificates, there was something else which actually made the event special, and that was the spirit of the community. There was an eight-member volunteer crew comprising Avani Gupta, Yogesh Sharma, Harsh Parmar, Rishabh Choudhary, Sanjana Mandrai, Shrija Tripathi, Uday Sisodiya, and Bhumi Yadav who were managing everything from breakfast to hardware to power connections, to team registration from morning till night. It was the mentor’s role who were spending their time by the side of teams debugging their codes and not making empty speeches as is seen in a competition.
SlowBros Labs did not want to proclaim some kind of fake revolution in technology. It wanted to provide a stage for local makers and let them collaborate with others who are interested in the same things. With laptops shut down and phone numbers being exchanged by the participants, it was clear that if you forget about all the fuss and concentrate on solving real problems, people come to make cool projects and make friends forever.
Website: https://www.slowbroslabs.com/
