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Inside EVOLVE 1.0: Hyperpure's first AI hackathon

Tanya Sharma & Narendra KumawatIJune 16, 2026I4 mins read
Inside EVOLVE 1.0: Hyperpure's first AI hackathon

I'll be honest, when the email about Hyperpure Hackathon: EVOLVE 1.0 landed in my inbox, my first instinct was to ignore it. Deadlines were already piling up, my chai had gone cold for the third time that day, and "pull an all-nighter to build something from scratch" isn't exactly a sane decision on a regular workday.

Then I read the details. Free food. Unlimited caffeine. I was half in already.

The spark

It was a Wednesday afternoon. Data loads running, code getting written, the usual grind. Then Deepak Deora (DD), our tech lead, walked in and pulled us into a meeting room and said "Suno sab log."

We'd been heads-down for weeks – shipping features, fixing bugs, the usual. Then DD had an idea: what if we pulled an all-nighter, brought our tech, IoT, and analytics teams together in one room, and actually built the solutions we'd been complaining about but never had time to fix?

The goal wasn't just to use AI once. It was to get genuinely comfortable with it – turning ideas we'd kept in our heads into real, working prototypes. Not theory. Not a webinar. Hands on keyboard, solving what Hyperpure wrestles with every day.

We all said yes.

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Day 1: coders assemble

A hackathon is roughly 10% talent, 10% caffeine, and 80% convincing your favorite people to lose a night with you. We landed on a team of eight, two engineers who don't believe in sleep, one analytics brain, and one person whose entire job was morale and snack logistics. Every great team has that last role. Wildly underrated.

We gathered at Zomato's farmhouse, all sporting matching 'Code The Next Big Thing' tees, followed by amazing free food and group pictures. Before we knew it, it was time to press the start button in our heads and begin cooking up ideas, prototypes, and hacking jugaad solutions for our problems.

The organisers made it seamless with a dedicated EVOLVE website, everything in one place. Schedule, problem statements, live scoreboards, even games. No "ye kahan milega?" chaos. Just open the site and go.

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The moment it clicked

The sun went down. We loaded up on food and snacks, yapping our way into the night, and then the real fun began.

The first few hours, everyone's a genius. Somewhere around midnight, nothing works. Half the room stares blankly at error messages, and the chai-to-blood ratio hits dangerous levels. Then, right when you're about to give up at 4 AM-bugs get resolved and everything finally clicks into place. Classic.

To my surprise, over one night, teams used AI to:

  • Turn a design file (or even a screen recording) into working code
  • Build Slack bots that fix on-call issues, not just flag them
  • Spin up full dashboards from a single prompt
  • Make code draw its own map, so nobody has to guess how the logic works
  • Predict product, vehicle, and workforce demand before it hits
  • Turn years of "last time humne kya kiya tha?" WhatsApp threads into a bot for new joiners

Basically, everyone took a daily headache and handed it to AI.

Was anything perfect? Not even close. Did it work in the demo? Mostly. Did we celebrate like we'd won a Nobel? Obviously.

Day 2: the final lap

Ten teams, each convinced their build was the one. Leaders pulled up chairs and asked the only question that mattered: "Show me what you've got."

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The winners

Winner: team Jarvis – HyperBuddy

An AI copilot for Hyperpure's internal dashboard that allows teams to ask questions, trigger actions, and resolve issues using simple natural-language prompts. By reducing manual effort and dependency on multiple tools, it makes everyday operations faster and more intuitive.

Runners-up: team IoTians – FreshIoT An IoT-enabled quality control system built to bring consistency and data-driven decision-making to fresh produce operations. It aims to reduce wastage, improve vendor accountability, and unlock predictive insights across the supply chain.

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The actual takeaway (including goodies)

Here's the kaam ki baat: I walked in thinking this was a coding contest. I walked out realising the real prize was a room full of people who are no longer nervous about AI-who've now built with it, on problems that matter, and know exactly how far it can carry them.

That comfort doesn't come from a course. It comes from one slightly sleepless night and the nerve to build something from nothing.

EVOLVE 1.0, you were a blast. Now bring on 2.0.