The
Boardroom
Hack.
Ship it before dinner.
Calcutta’s first hackathon for school students.
- DateSunday 11 October
- Time12 PM to 8 PM
- VenueOpen House, AC Market
- Seats45, by application
You arrive with no code. You leave with a product that is live on the internet, built by you, working on Monday. Mentors who ship for a living sit at your table.
The problem statements are ours. You get yours on the morning, with your team.
The day
- 12:00Check in. Teams of three and problem statements handed out.
- 12:30Business mentors: how to pick what is worth building.
- 13:00Tools session: what to use and how to put it live.
- 13:30Build. Floor mentors at your table, mentor room slots running.
- 15:30Pitch review, one team at a time.
- 17:00Ship deadline. Parents welcome from here.
- 17:30Demos, five minutes a team.
- 19:00Judging, prizes and photos.
- 20:00Close.
Times are indicative. Venue, Wi-Fi, power and mentors are arranged. Bring a laptop and a charger.
The room
- 5 Floor mentorsOne for every two teams. They sit with you and stop you overbuilding.
- 1 Mentor roomYour own slot with a tech mentor. Arrive with a question, leave with a smaller one.
- 3 Business mentorsEx-McKinsey. They work on what is worth building, then on how you pitch it.
A build that works but nobody would use does not win. Neither does a good pitch with nothing behind it.
Built at the last one
Four things teams built in a day on 30 August. Yours will be different.
A study tool for your class
Notes in, question bank and flashcards out, used by the section.
A booking page for a shop
A tuition centre that took bookings on WhatsApp now has a page.
A bot for a real group
A WhatsApp bot answering a school committee's repeated questions.
A dashboard from public data
Kolkata air quality, turned into a page a person can read.
The fee
₹12,500 plus GST, payable only after acceptance.
Covers everything on the day. Nothing to pay until we say yes.
Prizes: ₹45,000 and ₹15,000.
No coding experience needed. Half the room will have none.
After you apply
- You apply. About five minutes, on this page. You get an application number.
- We reply on WhatsApp within 48 hours. Yes, waitlist, or not this time.
- If yes, a payment link comes to the parent, valid for 72 hours. The seat is held once paid.
- A few days before: venue details, timings, what to bring. Teams, problem statement and mentor come on the day.
Questions before you apply? WhatsApp us.
Who is running it
Calcutta AI Club
A 400-member community in Kolkata of people who build with AI, meeting every week in person. Its first hackathon had sixty participants, a ₹50,000 sponsored prize pool, and every team demoed something working. The Boardroom Hack is Calcutta's first hackathon built for school students.
- Sahil Bahety (UCLA)
- Swarnim Modi (Manipal, ESADE Barcelona)
The Student Boardroom
Puts students in classes 8 to 12 in the rooms where real decisions get made: company problems, professionals at work. Built in Calcutta first, so students stop travelling for what other cities take for granted.
- Rahul Agarwal (McKinsey, then regional head of HR across the Middle East, Europe and North America)
- Vedant Kajaria (Berkeley, McKinsey New York)
- Manushri Kanoria (Emory, Columbia Teachers College)
Apply for a seat
45 seats. We read every application and reply within 48 hours.