After the success of our first Hackathons in January and August 2019, we were all set to make Hackathons a regular part of our tech culture. And then came the dreadful pandemic, derailing all our plans đ€
Fast forward to a little more than 2.5 years â Meesho now has a âWork From Anywhereâ policy. A lot of new engineers joined the Tech team during this period, many of whom have never worked with each other in the same physical space. More than half of our current 50+ member team joined in 2022 đ What better way to nurture team building in engineers than a Hackathon?
But, a âWork From Home Hackathonâ just didnât feel right.
Thankfully, our Quarterly Summits provided the perfect  opportunity for everyone to collaborate with their teammates, show off their skills, think out of the box, and learn from othersđ„ł So we thought, âHey! Why not make use of the upcoming Quarterly Summit to organise our next Hackathon?â. Our CTO Sanjeev Barnwal was especially excited about this, and was himself a key promoter for the event. We executed the Hackathon at the end of July.
A Unique Twist
While Hackathons are usually the domain of engineering teams, we decided to introduce a unique twist â we invited product and business team members from the Supplier Growth org to participate in the event as well. Participants from the product and business teams know our users best. We wanted the outcome of our Hackathon to be solutions that address actual problems that users face â and thatâs exactly what happened :)
The idea was for them to act as mentors to the engineering team; helping them define a good problem statement, ideate and shape their ideas, and help out in building a good demo and business statement.
This worked out amazingly well! Almost every one of the 16 teams had mentors associated with them, and there was a lot of camaraderie and collaboration on display!
Planning the Hackathon
Preparation for the Hackathon started almost a month prior to the event, and we enlisted an army of people to help organise it! We had to organise everything starting from the name of the event, logo for the Hackathon, designs for swag and trophies, F&B preferences, and many many other things.
We ran this like a Technical Program Manager would run a cross-cutting program. First, we listed out all deliverables â name of the event, logo, designs for the swag, trophies, etc., assigning owners/ETAs and conducting daily check-ins to make sure everything was on track. And it worked well â the entire event went off without any hitches because everyone knew exactly what they were responsible for getting done, and executed seamlessly.
Themes and Ideas
The organisers had zeroed down on 3 themes related to our business charter, which acted as guidelines for all hacks. The themes were:
- Simplifying Cataloging
- Growth Hacks for Suppliers
- Tech Platform and Process Improvements
The organisers and senior leaders within our business group seeded a few ideas for every theme, and then we opened up to the general audience as well. We were blown away by the response -- we had 50 engineers and Program Managers participating, but 57 ideas! The engineers then used these ideas as inspiration to select their hack and form teams.
Day 1 - Kick-off, Hacking and Fun!
Kick Off
We kicked off the event on the 26th of July, at 11:00 AM. The three senior leaders who served as judges (more about them later) gave a brief talk about the importance of the Hackathon, the importance of innovation and also the importance of having fun!
Let the Hacking Begin!
Immediately after the address by the judges, all the participants started gathering in their respective teams and got busy. While some teams approached the Hackathon with precision and preparation, other teams decided to play it by the ear. Everyone got involved â including our senior engineering managers and director of engineering. We had a countdown running on the projector, to remind everyone that time is short â no slacking!
A lot of people stayed late into the night working on their hacks â even till around 3 AM!
Day 2 - Wrapping Up the Hacks and Demos
Last Minute Scrambling and Wrapping Up
Next morning, people started trickling back into the office, and scrambled to add some last-minute finishing touches to their hacks. Around 1 PM, we asked everyone to stop coding, relax and have some lunch. There was a lot of excitement in the air â each team was curious about what the other had built, and the participants were going around checking out the competing entries.
Demo Sessions
Shortly after lunch, we started off with the demo sessions. Every team had 10 minutes to present, which included five minutes to demo the hack and 5 minutes for a Q&A from the judges and audience.
Judges and Evaluation Criteria
We had an all-star cast as judges for this event:
- Sanjeev Barnwal - Chief Technology Officer
- Lakshminarayan Swaminathan aka LN - Chief Executive Officer, Supply Platform
- Kirti Varun - Chief Product Officer
We specifically chose these leaders for the panel since they represented each of the three key verticals in Meesho (Tech, Business and Product) and would bring in their unique perspectives to evaluate the hacks.
The judges evaluated every hack on multiple criteria including originality, complexity, usefulness, polish, the potential to productionise and the quality of the demo. The scores were tallied up using a weighted sum of these scores. Of course, some criteria, such as originality, were deemed more important than other criteria such as the quality of the demo.
And finally, the winners were announced!
The Hacks
Overall, we had 55 people (including mentors) participate in the Hackathon, spread across 16 teams and 3 themes. Details of all the hacks and teams below:
Presenting, the Winners!
We decided to award the top-ranked team for every theme as winners of the event. All the winning teams (including the mentors) got a cool trophy, a gift certificate and a âbig chequeâ. In the chaos towards the end, we forgot to write anything on the cheques, however â our CFO Dhiresh Bansal is still trying to track down these blank cheques đ
Winner for the Theme: Growth Hacks for Suppliers
Winner for the Theme: Simplify Cataloging
Winner for the Theme: Tech Platform & Process Innovation
A Special Mention âŠ
A special mention goes out to the team consisting of Aman Raj Patwa, Mahafuz Zaman, Umang Somtiya and Shivam Chandak who built the Gamify Catalog Upload hack. While they did not win, this team consisted of freshers straight out of college, and had spent only 3 weeks in Meesho prior to the Hackathon (Aman was an intern at Meesho).
Their hack showcased extraordinary insights into the business problem of their team, and the confidence and exuberance with which they presented their hack completely blew away the judges and the audience. Well done guys!
Wrapping Up
Overall, the event was a grand success. Everyone involved had a great time, got to know their teammates a bit better and got to show off their creative and coding chops. The judges and leadership were also impressed with the quality of the hacks on display â they now want more! It has also set the tone for other teams in Meesho to conduct their own Hackathons.
A big thank you goes out to everyone who helped organise this event - this would not have been possible without you!
As a next step, we will examine how to productionise as many of these hacks as possible. Keeping in line with our Mantra âSpeed Over Perfectionâ, we are already evaluating a few hacks to see if they can be made live within the next few sprints.
See you all in the next Hackathon!
Credits: Cover image: Ved Sarkar (Portfolio, Linkedin)
