Over a weekend, 13 talented teams from Kovai.co came together to ideate and build innovative AI features for our fastest-growing product, Document360. Our hackathon, held in the last week of July, focused on generative AI, aiming to develop at a few innovative product feature ideas for our product roadmap.
The hackathon was announced three weeks prior, with 13 creatively named teams—like Eddy360, Tech Warriors, Hackbrain, Byte Benders, and Data Dynamos—registering for the event. Each team presented their ideas to an organizing committee for approval before diving into the competition.
Kovai.co has a rich history with hackathons. Document360 itself was born from a 2017 hackathon, and the Health Check Metrics came from our 2022 event. This year’s challenge was to innovate and build an AI-based feature within two days that would enhance customer experience, with priority given to features that could be commercialized and practically implemented.
For the first time, we allotted mentors to each team. They guided the teams through ideation, feature building, and presentation phases – said Poornima Sulur Thamizhmani, one of the organizers.
Teams comprised software developers, data scientists, QA engineers, customer success and support members, and marketing team members. They kicked off the hackathon on Friday at 10 am, following a motivational speech by Head of Data Science, Selvaraaju Murugesan. With ideas already approved, developers immediately began coding while customer success and QA members tested the features at various stages.
The teams worked tirelessly, with many developers working through the night fueled by snacks, fruits and healthy beverages. As developers wrapped up around 5 am, other team members prepared PowerPoint presentations and blogs detailing the features, use cases, and commercial viability. The coding time ended at 4 pm on Saturday, followed by presentations at the Step Seater with judges: Director of Engineering Manikandan, COO Andrew Cloke, VP of Growth Suprej Venkat, Head of Data Science Selvaraaju Murugesan, and Chief of Staff Saravanan Balakrishnan.
Presentations lasted three hours, with each team showcasing their innovations. “Every innovation was mind-blowing. What we take two months to build, these teams finished in two days working together,” said Selvaraaju. “It was amazing to see how people from different teams glued together so quickly to come up with a winning product. People shared food, helped even competing teams with coding, and all of them learned the art of storytelling,” he added.
Selecting winners was challenging. Eddy360 and Tech Warriors were declared winners, with HackBrains as runners-up. Participants praised the event, saying 2024 was bigger and better than previous editions.
We had more teams, mentors, and facilities. Competing using your sheer skills is an amazing feeling – said Pavithira Rajendran from Eddy360.
“It was my first hackathon and being from a non-technical background, I mainly helped with the blog. But I loved the extent of learning I received in just 36 hours,” said intern Sanchana Mahesh Kumar.
Conclusion
The hackathon was a resounding success, with participants enjoying the process, honing their skills, and collaborating to create impressive innovations. “This hackathon saw many of our software developers pick up AI skills over the two days. Every participant’s understanding of the product deepened, and they better understood other team members’ roles and tasks through collaboration,” said Manikandan. “The event proved how quickly people upskill themselves with AI skills and mainly how strong a platform Document360 is so it could host all these innovations,” said Suprej, a mentor and judge. This proves we are already on our way to becoming an AI-first product and company, he said.
