MLH Hack Days by Pydata Indore

Main Description

PyData Indore Hack Days is a 7 hour, in-person mini hackathon for builders across Central India, hosted by SSi Digital Academy and run as an official MLH Hack Days event in partnership with Major League Hacking.

Sat, 18 July 2026 · 10:30 AM – 5:30 PM IST · SSi Digital Academy, Indore · Teams of 1–4 · Free entry

There's no overnight grind here — it's a single focused day where you form a team, pick a problem, and ship a working prototype with Python and data by sundown. Open to all skill levels, from someone writing their first script to people already shipping models to production. On-site mentors from the PyData Indore community are around to unblock you fast, and the day wraps with live demos and judging.

Schedule:

• 10:30–11:00 AM — Check-in & setup
• 11:00–11:30 AM — Kickoff & briefing (rules, tracks, judging criteria)
• 11:30 AM–4:00 PM — Hacking (with mentor check-ins, lunch, and refreshments)
• 4:00–4:45 PM — Project demos
• 4:45–5:15 PM — Judging & results
• 5:15–5:30 PM — Wrap-up & networking

$7,000+ in prizes and perks are up for grabs — JetBrains subscriptions, lifetime viaSocket access, Google Gemini partner prizes, and a free viaSocket subscription plus MLH swag and certificates for every participant.

About the challenge

Three open tracks, each meant to spark ideas rather than box teams in:

Learn Better — Build something that makes learning actually stick, for a real learner you can name. Think: turning a lecture into practice questions, translating cryptic Python errors into plain English, converting messy notes into flashcards, or a workshop-prep assistant.

Ship Faster — Kill a developer chore that's still manual even though the code around it should be automated. Think: a project scaffolder, an auto-generated test suite, an MCP server hooking an LLM to a useful data source, a notebook-to-blog pipeline, or auto-generated API docs.

Daily Drivers — Build a personal tool you'd actually open every day. Think: a resume tailor, a natural-language expense tracker, an invoice generator with UPI QR codes, a content repurposer, or a smart bookmark manager.

Each track also has viaSocket integration angles — teams can wire their build into 2,000+ apps via webhook flows for a shot at the "Best Use of viaSocket" prize, and there's a separate "Best Use of Gemini API" prize for teams that meaningfully integrate Gemini (requires submitting a Gemini API Key Project Number).

Judging is on four equally weighted criteria: Technology (25%), Design & Usability (25%), Completion (25%), Real-World Usefulness (25%). Explicitly not judged: code cleanliness, pitch polish, or novelty for novelty's sake — a well-executed boring idea beats a broken clever one.

Get started

1. Register — on MLH (mandatory for check-in, swag, and prize eligibility). You'll enter your team name and members (up to 4) at sign-up — sort your team out beforehand if you can, or show up solo and join the team-formation session at kickoff.
2. Show up — SSi Digital Academy, 11 Bhawarkua Main Rd, Professor Colony, Indore – 452014. Bring your laptop, charger, valid photo ID, and ideally a power bank plus a mobile hotspot as backup.
3. Pick a track and build — 11:30 AM to 4:00 PM is your build window. Mentors are on-site the whole time.
4. Submit on Devpost — link shared at kickoff. You'll need: project title, track, description, a 2–3 min demo video, 2+ screenshots, source code link, tech stack, team roles, and mandatory AI-tool disclosure (what you used and how).
5. Demo and get judged — 4:00–4:45 PM demos, 4:45–5:15 PM judging and results.