Buildathon with Businesses

The premise

Most AI events pick a side. This one doesn't.

Jodhpur has builders who can ship an AI agent before lunch, and business owners who need one but don't know how to ask for it. This buildathon puts them in the same building, on the same clock.

Business owners pitch real problems at kickoff. Developers pick one and build a working demo in sixty minutes. By 12:30, the owner who pitched the problem is watching it solved — and deciding whether to hire the person who solved it.

01Local builders & AI engineers

02Business owners & merchants

03Tech entrepreneurs & corporates

How the two hours run

One kickoff. One room. One convergence.

The schedule is the idea — a shared start and a shared finish, with both tracks running side by side in the same space.

Joint kickoff — briefing, problem pitching & matchmaking 10:30 – 10:45

Track A Business workshop 10:45 – 11:45 AI ROI & real costs, local automation hacks, and how to hire & brief developers.

Track B Developer buildathon 10:45 – 11:45 Build AI agents and apps with LLM APIs, LangChain, Vercel, WhatsApp APIs, vision AI & automation.

Grand convergence — live demos, business feedback & on-the-spot hiring 11:45 – 12:30

Track breakdown

What happens inside the room

Track A — Business workshop Track A

Local business owners, traditional merchants, retail, handicraft exporters, local services.

AI ROI & low-hanging fruit

Real metrics over buzzwords — hours saved, response times, acquisition cost. Plus three high-impact local use cases: WhatsApp support, multilingual cataloging, review management.

15 min

Hands-on prompting & daily hacks

Live examples: vendor negotiation emails, localized Hindi/English marketing copy, and summarizing financial reports.

20 min

Working with developers & AI talent

Framing business problems as technical briefs, and what to expect when hiring — roles, timelines, custom vs. off-the-shelf.

25 min

Track B — Developer buildathon Track B

Full-stack developers, AI engineers, tech entrepreneurs.

The challenge

Pick from 3–4 problem statements submitted live by business owners, or a pre-defined track: Smart Inventory Assistant, Automated WhatsApp Order Bot, OCR for Regional Receipts.

The stack

OpenAI / Gemini APIs, Vercel, Python, Claude Artifacts, Bolt.new, or n8n — whatever gets to a working demo fastest.

The goal

A working MVP or functional demo, ready to show everyone in sixty minutes flat.

11:45 – 12:30

The grand convergence

All tracks fold back into one — this is where the event pays off.

25 min Live demos Developers show what they built, straight to the business owners and founders who'll actually use it.

10 min Business pitch-back Immediate feedback on utility, usability, and whether it's worth paying for.

10 min Talent connect & hiring On-the-spot interviews for internships, full-time roles, and freelance work — iStart facilitators log every lead.

Bring a problem, or bring a laptop.

Seats are limited — business pitches and developer slots fill separately.