The hackathon ignited innovation by fostering GenAI-powered solutions that redefined learning, career planning, and workforce development.
Mumbai: Amazon Web Services (AWS) successfully concluded the inaugural ‘AWS Hackathon’ in Mumbai in collaboration with TimesPro a leading higher edtech platform—an event designed to drive GenAI-powered innovation, accelerate AI adoption, and develop cutting-edge automated solutions. This milestone initiative not only fostered an innovative mindset but also equipped employees with future-ready skills through hands-on experimentation with GenAI technologies.
The three-day hackathon brought together 14 teams comprising over 80 participants, who tackled critical challenges in education and business. Participants developed AI-driven solutions aimed at improving post-class support, automating interview processes, and enhancing competition tracking—key factors influencing learner experience, operational efficiency, and workforce development. The most promising prototypes are set for further refinement to meet production standards and integrate into future product roadmaps.
Among the standout innovations was a GenAI powered resume builder trained on a dataset of 32,000 resumes. This tool enables users to generate professional CVs through text or voice commands in multiple regional languages, significantly enhancing accessibility. Another groundbreaking solution was a GenAI-driven academic companion designed to provide personalised post-class support. This tool assists students with step-by-step answers to queries, generates interactive quizzes, summarises lectures using word clouds and enables precise topic searches with timestamps for efficient revision.
Additionally, an AI-based interview automation platform was developed, featuring proctoring capabilities such as human-object detection and eye-tracking to ensure integrity and efficiency in hiring. The hackathon also produced an AI-driven career guidance tool that helps users define career goals based on their profile and aspirations. By leveraging cutting-edge technologies, including Amazon Bedrock, Claude, these innovations not only addressed pressing business challenges but also provided employees with hands-on experience in AI-driven problem-solving.
Reflecting on the event’s impact, Anish Srikrishna, CEO, TimesPro, stated, “Technology will be the driving force behind all services and the TimesPro-AWS Hackathon is a testament to our commitment to tackling core challenges that shape our industry. Learning is transforming at an unprecedented pace and will be unrecognisable in five years. Our teams have demonstrated remarkable dedication, leveraging GenAI to build innovative solutions that will enhance student learning and drive business impact for TimesPro and the industry. The outcomes of this hackathon will play a pivotal role in shaping the future and we look forward to continued collaboration with AWS to drive innovation.”
AWS played a crucial role in supporting the hackathon, conducting GenAI-centric workshops for TimesPro’s engineers to enhance their AI competencies and providing a robust infrastructure to enable seamless AI and ML integration. A panel of experts, including TimesPro’s leadership, AI specialists, business heads and AWS representatives, evaluated the projects based on criteria such as technical feasibility, business impact and scalability, ultimately identifying the most promising innovations for further development.
The hackathon also served as a foundational step in embedding AI across TimesPro’s digital initiatives. It reinforced TimesPro’s commitment to integrating AI into future projects, ensuring a scalable and customisable approach that caters to specific use cases and extends across partner institutions. Looking ahead, TimesPro aims to deepen its collaboration with premier institutions such as IITs, IIMs and IISc, fostering knowledge exchange and co-creating innovative solutions with a lasting impact.
