Prime Highlights
- Women accounted for 62 per cent of participants in Cognizant’s Technoverse Hackathon 2026.
- More than 22,000 engineering students from over 160 Indian cities participated in the competition.
Key Facts
- Cognizant is a global technology and professional services company.
- More than 1,100 participating teams in the hackathon were women-only teams.
Background
Women engineering students made up 62 percent of the total participants at Cognizant’s Technoverse Hackathon 2026. More than 1,100 of the over 5,600 participating teams were women-only teams, exceeding the company’s expectations.
The nationwide hackathon attracted over 22,000 pre-final year engineering students from more than 450 colleges across over 160 cities in India. Participants included students from IITs, NITs and IIITs. Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Coimbatore and Pune emerged as the top five cities in terms of participation.
As part of the company’s inclusion efforts, each four-member team was required to have at least two women members. The initiative aimed to encourage greater diversity and representation in technology-focused competitions.
The hackathon kicked off in April and wrapped up with 24 shortlisted teams going head-to-head in a 24-hour challenge. The finalists built and showcased their Minimum Viable Products in front of a jury of experts. Cognizant worked alongside AWS to make sure participants had access to the right tools and technical support through the final stage of the competition.
Team AeroFyta from Chennai Institute of Technology won the competition and took home ₹3 lakh. Team Owlgorithms from Techno Main Salt Lake, Kolkata, came in as first runners-up with a prize of ₹2 lakh, while Team Devtronix from Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences, Coimbatore, finished as second runners-up and received ₹1 lakh.
