Prize pool
HackForChrist
for the home team.
Only Christ College of Engineering students compete for it, with its own judges and leaderboard.
- Winner
- ₹25K
- 1st runner-up
- ₹15K
- 2nd runner-up
- ₹10K
HackForChrist
BeachHack S08 · Christ College of Engineering
India's longest-running beachside hackathon, since 2018
Hack by the sea
HackForChrist is Christ College of Engineering's own competition inside BeachHack Season 8: its own ₹50K prize pool, its own panel of industry judges and its own leaderboard, alongside the national teams at Nidhi Cottage Homestay, Chavakkad, 5 to 7 February 2027.
Apply as a team of four with an idea. We shortlist 20 teams for a 16-hour round on campus on 22 December, and the top 10 from that build for 36 hours on the beach.
- HackForChrist prize pool
- ₹50K
- on the beach, continuous
- 36 hours
- make it to the beach
- 10 teams
- to enter, food and stay included
- ₹0
What the weekend is like
- You build by the sea. The venue is a homestay on the Chavakkad coast, not a conference hall with a view. You work, eat and sleep by the beach, and watch the sun set over the Arabian Sea before the night shift starts.
- Industry mentors at every checkpoint. They pressure-test your plan, get you past the hard technical problem, and tell you what to cut before the pitch.
- Free from start to finish. No registration fee, and nothing to pay once you are there. Meals, the overnight stay, power and internet at the venue are all covered, so the weekend costs your team nothing but sleep.
You apply with an idea in one track
Six tracks
- 01
Agents in Production
Software that does the job, and what keeps it in bounds
- Tool use
- Permissions and approvals
- Evaluation
- Memory and state
- Audit and traceability
- Multi-agent orchestration
- Back-office automation
Not this track: A chat window wrapped around an API.
- 02
The Toolchain
Everything you build with, and what it quietly costs
- Developer experience
- Build and deploy
- Observability
- Debugging
- Dependency safety
- Model gateways and cost
- Self-hosted infrastructure
Not this track: A project management app for developers.
- 03
The Trust Layer
Proving a thing is what it claims to be
- Threat detection
- Prompt injection
- Deepfakes and provenance
- Fraud and scam defence
- Identity
- Supply chain integrity
- Applied cryptography
Not this track: A password manager with a new interface.
- 04
The Rails
Rails a billion people already stand on
- Credit and finance
- Health records
- Learning
- Civic services
- Commerce
- Language and accessibility
- Informal work
Not this track: Another UPI payment app.
- 05
The Edge
Intelligence that runs where the thing actually is
- On-device models
- Robotics and drones
- Vision at the edge
- Sensor networks
- Industrial and agri monitoring
- Assistive devices
- Low-power hardware
- Indic speech
Not this track: A sensor that posts readings to a dashboard.
- 06
Earth Systems
Water, land, weather, and everything living off them
- Fisheries and the sea
- Floods and landslides
- Rivers and groundwater
- Coastal erosion
- Soil and food supply
- Waste and energy
- Early warning
Not this track: A dashboard of climate statistics.
Read the full track deck
Fourteen pages: why each track is hard right now, and what gets an idea shortlisted.
We read every single application
How to get in
We read for a person, not a category: “farmers” is not a user, “paddy farmers in Kuttanad who lease their land” is. Name the hard part of the build and be honest about it, and know what already exists, because “nothing like this exists” almost always means nobody checked. Then keep it to what four people can finish by Sunday morning.
Four steps
- 1
Sign in and fill your profile
Everyone signs in with their college Google account, which is how we check you are a current B.Tech student here. Then a short profile: name, phone, department and year, GitHub and LinkedIn, what you are good at, and a few lines about yourself. About 5 minutes each.
- 2
Start your team
The team lead names the team and picks a track. That gives the team an 8-character code and an invite link, both always on the team page.
- 3
Bring in three teammates
Share the link or the code on WhatsApp. Each teammate signs in with Google, fills in their profile and presses Join. Meanwhile the lead writes up the project, a title and a short description, and uploads the pitch deck. Drafts are kept, so stop and come back any time.
- 4
Review and submit
When all four profiles are complete, the lead reviews the application, ticks the team declaration and submits. The team locks, and the team page becomes your ticket: Registered now, Under review next, then Results.
What to prepare
- Each member signed in with their college address, which is the proof of enrolment
- Each member's phone number, GitHub username and LinkedIn profile
- A track for the idea, a project title and a description of 100 to 1,000 characters
- A pitch deck as PPTX or PDF, up to 10 MB
- About 5 minutes per member, and about 15 for the lead
Rules
One person, one team, and the product is built at the event. Follow the Code of Conduct, and read the privacy notice before you register.
HackForChrist
Prizes
BeachHack's main track, open to every college, has its own ₹1 Lakh pool, judged separately.
HackForChrist timeline
Schedule
- Applications open18 October
- Applications close9 November, 11:59 pm IST
- Screening: 20 teams shortlisted16 to 25 November
- 16-hour round on campus, Irinjalakuda22 December
- Top 10 announced for the beach23 December
- 36 hours at Nidhi Cottage Homestay, Chavakkad5 to 7 February 2027
Got questions
FAQs
B.Tech students of Christ College of Engineering, in teams of exactly four. Any branch and any year, and one team can mix them. Students from other colleges can’t join a HackForChrist team.
In three rounds. We read every application and shortlist 20 teams between 16 and 25 November. Those 20 build for 16 hours on campus on 22 December, and the top 10 are announced on 23 December. The 10 then build for 36 hours on the beach, 5 to 7 February 2027, for the ₹50K prize pool.
By a panel of industry judges. Screening is on your application and deck alone, with no demo. In both hackathon rounds, each team gets 7 minutes to pitch and demo what it built, then 3 minutes of questions. Judges look at the whole project, from the idea to the build to the pitch, not at a fixed checklist.
9 November at 11:59 pm IST. Only submitted teams are screened: a team still forming at the deadline is removed, so don’t leave the last step to the last hour.
On 25 November, when screening ends. Every submitted team gets its result here under Updates (the bell at the top), not by email.
No. There is no registration fee, and food, overnight stay, power and internet at the venue are covered.
Yes, if your team can build. There is no experience requirement. We shortlist ideas that are specific, technically honest and buildable in a weekend, so a sharp idea from second-years beats a vague one from final-years.
No. You don’t need a prototype to apply: bring the idea and the deck, and build the product at the event. Open-source libraries, public APIs and frameworks are fine. Project code written beforehand leads to disqualification.
No. One person, one team.
No, submitting locks your team and every detail. If something is wrong or a teammate drops out, choose Ask the organisers in your account menu, or email beachhack@cce.edu.in with your team name. We will send you a link to fix it.
The campus round is at Christ College of Engineering (Autonomous), Irinjalakuda. The beach round is at Nidhi Cottage Homestay, Blangad, Chavakkad, Kadappuram, Keralam 680506.
Laptops, chargers, any hardware your project needs, and a change of clothes for the overnight stay. Everything else is provided.
More questions? Write to beachhack@cce.edu.in.