When Two Minds Align: From Solo Players to 1st Runner Up at the AMD AI Sprint Hackathon

Every developer knows that spark of excitement when a random inbox check turns into a wild adventure. For me, that day was July 10th, 2025. Scrolling through my emails, a notification caught my eye: I had been selected for the prestigious AMD AI Sprint Hackathon & Workshop series at IIT Bombay! With less than 48 hours to go, the clock was ticking. What followed was a whirlwind of last-minute preparations—booking accommodation, grabbing travel tickets, and mentally preparing for the intense journey ahead.

I reached Mumbai early on the morning of July 12th, the air thick with anticipation. By 10:00 AM, we were sitting in the workshop, diving deep into AMD’s cutting-edge AI technologies and hardware accelerators. But as noon approached, a silent anxiety crept in. I had entered the hackathon as a solo player. When the lunch break at 12:00 PM was announced, it was time to find a teammate and register our team.

It was during this frantic team-building window that I met Kishore Kunisetty, a Software Development Engineer (SDE) at Fynd. Just like me, Kishore had come to the hackathon solo. We struck up a conversation, quickly realized our skill sets were perfectly complementary, and decided to join forces.

With no time to waste, we sat down and divided the work. Our project idea demanded both high-quality custom datasets and precise model training. I took charge of the frontend-facing AI workflows: producing rich synthetic data in JSON format and prompt-tuning our agents. Meanwhile, Kishore took the reins on the backend: executing the complex model fine-tuning process. We were a two-man army, each fully focused on our respective battlefront.

As the hackathon officially commenced, the venue buzzed with creative energy. Working alongside Kishore was an incredible learning experience. Between coding sprints, he shared valuable insights from his work in AI/ML. Being surrounded by such a brilliant group of engineers and innovators was humbling and deeply motivating.

The hours flew by. While most of the city slept, our screens remained lit. I kept refining prompts and generating synthetic data deep into the night, finally pausing for a brief rest at 3:00 AM.

The next morning, July 13th, we met back at the venue at 10:00 AM. The final stretch had begun. We had exactly four hours to bring everything together. We spent the morning testing our agents, debugging edge cases, and polishing the final integration. At 2:00 PM, with adrenaline pumping, we submitted our project.

With the submission behind us, we got to attend some incredible speaker sessions. We heard from a Machine Learning Engineer at Hugging Face and an IIT Bombay alumnus currently working at Meta. Hearing these industry experts talk about the future of AI was the perfect way to recharge after a sleepless night.

Then came 6:00 PM—the moment of truth.

When the announcers took the stage to declare the winners, my heart was racing. Then, our names were called. We had won 1st Runner Up!

Walking up to the stage to receive a prize money of 1 Lakh rupees and a beautiful trophy from AMD was a surreal feeling. What started as a random email check had turned into one of the most special, life-changing moments of my developer journey. It proved that when two minds align, even a last-minute team can achieve something extraordinary.