Over 300 students to pitch real-world AI solutions at India’s largest GenAI ‘Buildathon’

New Delh: The national finale of India’s largest ‘GenAI Innovation Challenge’ will be held here on February 17, during a session at the ‘India AI Impact Summit 2026’, where over 300 students will get the opportunity to pitch their AI-solutions on a global stage to solve real-world social issues, it was announced on Friday.

OpenAI Academy and NxtWave Disruptive Technologies said the ‘Buildathon,’ co-organised by them, will feature 300 students who have been selected from 70,000 participants.

The ‘Buildathon’ was launched in June 2025 and opened new avenues for 70,000 participants from tier 2 and 3 cities to learn, apply, and innovate using AI tools to build real-world solutions for Bharat.

Students were encouraged to use Generative AI tools, Large Language Models (LLMs), and modern AI frameworks to solve challenges across healthcare, education, agriculture, governance, climate action, and public services.

The ‘Buildathon’ is a key initiative aligned with the India AI Mission, taking AI learning and innovation to the students from tier 2 and 3 cities, it added.

“The focus of the buildathon was aligning Bharat’s youth with the world’s most innovative AI ecosystems. As India’s first major AI-focused summit, this ecosystem will give students rare exposure to how AI is being shaped at scale, across industries,” said Rahul Attuluri, CEO and Co-founder, NxtWave.

The OpenAI Academy team and NxtWave together conducted 8-hour hands-on workshops, preparing students with all the skills they need to build GenAI projects.

The four-day ‘India AI Impact Summit’ will start on February 16, and is anticipated to be the largest of the four global AI summits hosted to date.

It will feature participation from over 100 countries, including 15–20 heads of government, over 50 ministers, and 40 CEOs of leading global and Indian companies.

The summit will showcase 12 qualified Indian startups in areas like healthcare and multilingual tech. This exposure could attract foreign investment and talent inflows, accelerating India’s goal of a $1 trillion digital economy by 2030.

IANS