Applications close on 10 October 2026. Hefty-Hacks, presented by TechZap, is an online Finance × Trading hackathon with a ₹75,000 prize pool — built for engineers, quants and designers who want to ship trading systems, market predictors, fintech solutions, risk engines and DeFi projects under sprint conditions.
The format is an intense online build sprint. Teams of 2 to 6 members compete across three tracks — Finance, Trading and a Fusion category — which means both pure-quant tooling and hybrid fintech products have a lane. The online format removes the travel barrier, so college teams and working professionals can compete on equal footing.
Trading and fintech hackathons have a particular career logic: the work is portfolio-grade. A working market predictor or risk engine built over a weekend says more to a fintech employer — or an angel investor — than most certificates. For quant-minded students, this is also one of the cheapest ways to test whether a trading idea survives contact with real market data.
With the deadline just days away, interested teams should assemble and register now. The 10 October 2026 cutoff leaves no room for dithering — but a small, sharp team can still put together a credible entry in the time left.
Why it matters for founders
Fintech founders are disproportionately made in hackathons like this — the constraint of a weekend forces a working prototype, and the judging panel is often the first outside validation of the idea. ₹75,000 is a solid prize for a student team, but the real prize is a demo that can become a startup. Deadline: 10 October.