At Galgotias University, 152 student teams are turning some of the country’s most pressing challenges into working technology at the offline round of the Smart India Hackathon (SIH) 2026 Pre-Qualifier. Each team is advancing a deep-tech solution to a problem set directly by India’s ministries, national agencies and industry, carrying it from concept to a demonstrable, deployable prototype.
Smart India Hackathon is among the country’s largest innovation platforms, created to direct young talent towards problems of national consequence. It asks not for ideas but for solutions that are functional, scalable and ready for the organisations that framed the challenge to put to use.
From 406 Entries to 152 Contenders
The 152 teams now competing were selected from 406 entries through two rounds of online evaluation, a filter designed to surface the most technically credible work. The problems they are solving were set by national bodies including the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Earth Sciences, the National Technical Research Organisation, ISRO and DRDO.
Innovation Across 11 Frontier Domains
The shortlisted solutions span 11 priority domains: Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Healthcare, Agriculture, Disaster Management, Space Technology, Robotics, Sustainability, Transportation, Smart Education and Smart Governance. Together these map to the technologies on which much of the country’s next decade of capability will be built.
Rather than presenting concepts, the teams are building working prototypes and application-ready systems, engineered against the real constraints of the organisations that face these problems. At the offline round, each solution is assessed for originality, technical depth, feasibility and readiness for real-world use, the qualities that separate a demonstration from a solution that can be relied upon.
Commenting on the Pre-Qualifier, Dr Dhruv Galgotia, Chief Executive Officer, Galgotias University, said, “Deep tech comes from a student taking on a hard problem, failing at it a few times, and finally shipping something that holds up. The problems worth that effort are the ones that solve real societal challenges, and our job is to keep putting problems of this weight in front of them.”
Pathway to the National Grand Finale
Following the offline evaluation, the top 100 teams will be identified and put forward for the Smart India Hackathon 2026 Grand Finale, where they will be evaluated at the national level. For these young innovators, the Pre-Qualifier is the first proving ground on a path that can carry their work to a national stage.
For Galgotias University, the Pre-Qualifier reflects a deliberate investment in deep tech and student-led innovation, an environment in which students are expected to build, test and refine solutions of real social, economic and national relevance rather than stop at ideas.
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