Education ministry launches ‘Buildathon 2025’

The Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) on Tuesday launched the Viksit Bharat Buildathon 2025 aimed at mobilising school students to ideate, design, and develop prototypes in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and non-STEM categories under four key national themes: Vocal for Local, Atmanirbhar Bharat, Swadeshi, and Samriddh Bharat.

While STEM prototypes are preliminary, functional models built as part of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics projects, non-STEM prototypes include innovations in humanities, social sciences, and the arts.

The Buildathon will bring together over 1 crore students across 1.5 lakh schools.

A dedicated Viksit Bharat Buildathon portal will host learning resources, handbooks, toolkits, and supportive videos to guide participants. A live, two-hour innovation event is scheduled for October 13, in which students will work on their ideas and submit entries in the form of videos. There will be no limit on the number of teams a school can submit.

Dedicated support will also be provided by volunteers and mentors from incubation centres, higher education institutions, and corporate sectors to help students build their projects at the school level. An official from AICTE has confirmed that they will identify the mentors and evaluators.

Entries will be evaluated by a panel of experts in November.

Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said, “This is the largest-ever school hackathon which would strengthen the culture of innovation at the grassroots by encouraging students to ideate and build products on four themes—‘Vocal For Local, Atmanirbhar Bharat, Swadeshi and Samriddhi’. It would celebrate student innovations and help engineer an innovation renaissance in the country.”

An award pool of Rs 1 crore has been earmarked for the Buildathon. Awards will be distributed among 1,000 district-level teams, 100 state-level teams, and 10 national winners.

The CBSE has asked affiliated schools to encourage maximum student engagement.