Chennai Edition
- Venue
- Rajalakshmi Institute of Technology
- Date
- 28 August 2026
- Prize Pool
- ₹1,00,000
Registrations Open · Season 2 · AI for SDG Goals
Real problems. Working AI. Proven on stage.
Build through three evaluated locks, demo live for a ₹2,00,000 combined pool across Chennai and Coimbatore — and walk away with the one thing no certificate can fake: evidence. Your evaluated project connects to startup and job opportunities through StudAI Hire.
01Define
02Design
03Prove
₹2,00,000
Combined Prize Pool
2
Physical Finals
3
Evaluated Build Locks
1–3
Members per Team
StudAI Hire
Career Pathway
Chennai final · 28 August 2026
Chennai Edition
- Venue
- Rajalakshmi Institute of Technology
- Date
- 28 August 2026
- Prize Pool
- ₹1,00,000
Coimbatore Edition
- Venue
- Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences
- Date
- 25 September 2026
- Prize Pool
- ₹1,00,000
StudAI Foundry Season 2 runs in two Tamil Nadu cities: Chennai Edition at Rajalakshmi Institute of Technology on 28 August 2026 with a ₹1,00,000 prize pool. Coimbatore Edition at Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences on 25 September 2026 with a ₹1,00,000 prize pool.
Theme
AI for SDG Goals Attainment
Format
Two Physical Editions
Journey
Three Online Build Locks
Feedback
AI Evaluation Reports
Accountability
Human Review
Results
Separate Winners per Edition
Beyond the Prize · StudAI Hire
Your build becomes your career evidence.
Most competitions end with a certificate. Foundry ends with proof — three evaluated reports, a real repository and a working product. StudAI Hire, StudAI One’s talent platform, carries that proof into what comes next.
Track 01
Proof-of-work beats a résumé.
Recruiters read claims all day. Foundry gives them something better: your evaluated build history. Through StudAI Hire, consenting participants surface their strongest evidence to hiring opportunities.
- An evaluated project portfolio — rubric scores, evolution across three locks
- A public repository with a genuine commit history behind it
- Verified participation and finalist certificates
- Interview stories that are true: real users, real trade-offs, real limitations
Track 02
You already did the hard first year.
Evidence of a real problem, a reviewed architecture, a measured pilot — that is a pre-seed story, not a college project. The Foundry showcase and StudAI One’s ecosystem put validated projects in front of the people who fund and incubate them.
- A validated problem with documented user evidence from Lock 1
- A solution blueprint that survived expert review in Lock 2
- A working prototype with measured pilot results from Lock 3
- Showcase visibility to ecosystem and incubation connections
Track 03
One season is a beginning, not an ending.
Projects that show promise do not stop at the finals. The community, the mentor network and future Foundry seasons give serious builders a place to keep compounding.
- Continued community access after the season
- A mentor network that has already seen your work
- Priority visibility in future StudAI One programmes
- A project history that compounds season over season
Opportunities through StudAI Hire are earned on evidence. Participation creates the proof — it does not guarantee placement or funding, and consent controls what is ever shared.
Why Foundry Exists
Most ideas die between the pitch and the product. Foundry closes that gap.
A typical ideathon asks you to present a slide deck and wait. Foundry asks you to build — and gives you structured feedback at every stage so your solution is stronger each time you submit.
Traditional idea submission
- Submit an idea
- Present once
- Wait for results
The Foundry journey
- Understand the real problem
- Improve with criterion-level feedback
- Design the full solution blueprint
- Build a working prototype
- Prove it at a physical final
The Three-Lock Journey
Define. Design. Prove.
Three progressive online submission locks stand between registration and the physical finals. Each lock produces a structured evaluation report, so every team improves before the next stage — no one is eliminated by the locks themselves.
Lock 1 — Define · Clarify the problem worth solving
Teams clarify
- The problem and its evidence
- Who the users are
- SDG alignment
- The AI opportunity
- Expected impact
Teams receive
- Criterion-level scores
- Identified strengths
- Identified weaknesses
- Concrete improvement recommendations
Lock 2 — Design · Blueprint the complete solution
Teams create
- Solution blueprint and user journey
- Technical architecture
- AI approach and data plan
- Responsible-AI plan
- Impact metrics
Teams receive
- A second evaluation report
- Architecture feedback
- Feasibility guidance
- A clear improvement path to Lock 3
Lock 3 — Prove · Show that it actually works
Teams submit
- Working prototype and live link
- GitHub repository
- Demo video and screenshots
- Final architecture
- Contribution declaration and known limitations
What happens next
- AI recommendation
- Human verification of key decisions
- Physical-final selection per edition
AI recommendation Human verification Physical-final selection Full journey details
Two Cities, One Movement
Two equal editions. Two sets of winners.
Season 2 culminates in two physical finals — Chennai and Coimbatore — each with its own venue, jury, finalists and ₹1,00,000 prize pool. Neither edition is secondary.
Coimbatore Edition
- Venue
- Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences
- Date
- 25 September 2026
- Prize Pool
- ₹1,00,000
Chennai final · 28 August 2026
Chennai Edition
- Venue
- Rajalakshmi Institute of Technology
- Date
- 28 August 2026
- Prize Pool
- ₹1,00,000
Coimbatore Edition
- Venue
- Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences
- Date
- 25 September 2026
- Prize Pool
- ₹1,00,000
StudAI Foundry Season 2 runs in two Tamil Nadu cities: Chennai Edition at Rajalakshmi Institute of Technology on 28 August 2026 with a ₹1,00,000 prize pool. Coimbatore Edition at Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences on 25 September 2026 with a ₹1,00,000 prize pool.
AI for SDG Goals Attainment
Seventeen goals. Real problems. Meaningful AI.
Every Foundry project addresses a real problem mapped to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The SDG must be relevant — not decorative. AI must play a meaningful role, impact should be measurable, and safety and responsible use are evaluated, not assumed.
- Anchor your project in a real, evidenced problem
- Choose an SDG that genuinely fits — not a label
- Use AI where it meaningfully helps
- Plan how impact will be measured
- Consider safety, bias and responsible use from day one
SDG 01
No Poverty
AI directions →
SDG 02
Zero Hunger
AI directions →
SDG 03
Good Health and Well-being
AI directions →
SDG 04
Quality Education
AI directions →
SDG 05
Gender Equality
AI directions →
SDG 06
Clean Water and Sanitation
AI directions →
SDG 07
Affordable and Clean Energy
AI directions →
SDG 08
Decent Work and Economic Growth
AI directions →
SDG 09
Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
AI directions →
SDG 10
Reduced Inequalities
AI directions →
SDG 11
Sustainable Cities and Communities
AI directions →
SDG 12
Responsible Consumption and Production
AI directions →
SDG 13
Climate Action
AI directions →
SDG 14
Life Below Water
AI directions →
SDG 15
Life on Land
AI directions →
SDG 16
Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
AI directions →
SDG 17
Partnerships for the Goals
AI directions →
Challenge Areas
Ten problem families to build within.
Challenge areas group related SDGs into practical build directions. Pick a family, then go deep on one specific, well-evidenced problem.
Health and Well-being
Preventive care access, early screening support, mental-health tools, hospital operations and community health-worker enablement.
Education and Accessibility
Learning support for low-resource classrooms, assistive tools for disabled learners, skill assessment and teacher enablement.
Agriculture and Food Systems
Crop-health monitoring, yield planning, market access for smallholders and post-harvest waste reduction.
Climate and Environment
Early-warning systems, adaptation planning, conservation monitoring and climate-risk awareness tools.
Sustainable Cities
Waste systems, water management, safe mobility, civic reporting and resilient urban infrastructure.
Employment and Livelihoods
Skill matching, gig-worker protection, micro-entrepreneur tooling and fair access to work.
Financial Inclusion
Benefit-scheme discovery, credit access for the underserved, fraud protection and financial literacy.
Public Systems
Service-delivery transparency, grievance routing, multilingual citizen access and institutional efficiency.
Equality and Inclusion
Safety and reporting tools, bias detection in access to opportunities, and inclusion for marginalised communities.
Responsible Consumption
Circular-economy tooling, energy awareness, supply-chain transparency and waste-stream intelligence.
Who Can Participate
Builders from every discipline.
Foundry is not only for computer science students. Strong teams mix technical depth with domain understanding.
You do not need a perfect solution to begin. You need:
- A meaningful problem
- A committed team of 1–3
- Willingness to build
Students from all disciplines
Developers
Designers
Researchers
Management students
Healthcare students
Agriculture students
Social-science students
Working professionals
Independent innovators
What Every Paid Team Receives
Transparent value, before any selection happens.
Registration gives every team the complete structured build experience — regardless of whether they reach the physical final.
- Access to all three build locks
- A structured submission journey
- AI evaluation reports at every lock
- Criterion-level improvement recommendations
- Responsible-AI guidance
- Participant resource guides
- Community access
- Participation recognition
- A career-evidence portfolio for StudAI Hire
- The opportunity to qualify for a physical final
Payment does not guarantee physical-final selection. Selection is earned through the three-lock evaluation.
AI Evaluation, Human Accountability
Fast feedback from AI. Final judgement from people.
Every submission is scored against a transparent rubric. AI produces the criterion-level report; humans stay accountable for the decisions that matter.
- AI evaluates against transparent, published criteria and returns strengths, weaknesses and recommendations per criterion.
- Human evaluators verify important decisions — AI never independently decides the winners.
- Large differences between AI and human scores automatically trigger moderation review.
- Final selection weighs all three locks plus human review — Lock 3 carries the most weight.
Lock 1 — Define
Sample Team · FND-S2 · sample report
78 / 100
Strength: the problem statement is specific and local. Improve: quantify how many people are affected, citing your source.
Strength: two user conversations documented. Improve: add evidence from an operator or authority perspective.
Strength: the goal-target mapping is genuine, not decorative.
Improve: explain why AI outperforms a simpler rule-based approach for this problem.
Strength: the framing differs from existing government helpline solutions.
Improve: name the datasets you can actually access in the build window.
Improve: define one measurable impact metric you could demonstrate by Lock 3.
Prize and Recognition
Two prize pools. Winners in both cities.
Each edition awards its own winners from its own ₹1,00,000 pool. Beyond the money, finalists present in person to a jury and join the Foundry showcase.
₹1,00,000
Chennai Prize Pool
₹1,00,000
Coimbatore Prize Pool
₹2,00,000
Combined Pool
2×
Separate Winner Sets
- Finalist certificates
- Participation recognition for every paid team
- In-person jury exposure
- Project showcase placement
- Ecosystem connections
Built on Accountability
A platform designed to be trusted.
Foundry publishes its rubric weights, keeps humans accountable for outcomes and works with verified host institutions. Season 1 established the model; Season 2 scales it to two cities. Verified Season 1 photography and participant stories will be added here once cleared for publication — no invented testimonials appear on this site.
Published rubrics
Every lock is scored against criteria you can read before you submit — nothing is hidden.
Human-verified outcomes
AI recommends; people decide. Every physical-final selection passes human review.
Moderation triggers
Large AI-versus-human score differences automatically route a team to moderation.
Verified hosts
Both physical finals run inside real, named institutions — not rented banner venues.
Get Involved
Not competing? There is still a seat for you.
Faculty and industry professionals can request to join Season 2 as jury members, evaluators or mentors — and organisations as sponsors or partners. Every request is reviewed by the organiser team and answered by email.
Join as Jury, Mentor, Sponsor or PartnerJury
Judge the finals
Blind-first scoring, declared conflicts and in-person judgement at Chennai or Coimbatore.
Mentor
Sharpen the builds
Structured checkpoints where your experience turns rough prototypes into real products.
Sponsor
Back the stage
Fuel the prize pools and the participant experience with honest, verified visibility.
Partner
Extend the platform
Host, co-deliver or grow Foundry with your institution or organisation.
Partners and Hosts
Hosted with institutions that build engineers.
Season 2 is delivered with two verified host institutions. Their campuses hold the physical finals.
Chennai Edition Host
Rajalakshmi Institute of Technology
Hosts the Chennai physical final on 28 August 2026.
Coimbatore Edition Host
Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences
Hosts the Coimbatore physical final on 25 September 2026.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Students from any discipline, working professionals and independent innovators. Teams have 1–3 members. You do not need to be a computer science student — strong teams mix technical skill with domain understanding.
The registration fee is paid securely during the application itself, through Razorpay. Your team’s build journey begins after payment is confirmed.
No. Payment gives every team the complete three-lock build experience with AI evaluation reports. Physical-final selection is earned through the evaluated locks and human review — it is never bought.
Access to all three build locks, a structured submission journey, AI evaluation reports with criterion-level improvement recommendations, responsible-AI guidance, participant resources, community access, participation recognition and the opportunity to qualify for a physical final.
Yes. Teams may mix members from different institutions. Institution-specific eligibility (such as internal categories for host-institution students) is verified automatically from your email domains during registration.
Each lock is scored by AI against a transparent rubric, producing criterion-level strengths, weaknesses and recommendations. Human evaluators verify important decisions, and large AI-versus-human score differences automatically trigger moderation. AI never independently decides the winners.
Represent Your Campus
Two Ways to Join the Movement
Become a Foundry Campus Ambassador, help students discover the programme, support team registrations and earn verified recognition and performance-based incentives.
BUILD
Build as a Participant
Build a real AI solution through Define, Design and Prove.
Register Your TeamLEAD
Lead as a Campus Ambassador
Grow a community of builders and bring Foundry to your institution — with leadership experience, an official identity, a personal referral link, a conversion dashboard, certificate eligibility and performance-based rewards.
Become an Ambassador
Season 2 · Chennai and Coimbatore
A real problem. A serious team. A career that starts with proof.
Your idea does not need to be perfect when you begin. But by the end, it must be built, tested and proven — and that proof travels with you, into StudAI Hire and everything after.
Register Your TeamWant to represent Foundry in your college? Apply as Campus Ambassador →