Emergent Brings VibeCon Hackathon to India, Offering Y Combinator Interview Opportunity

Emergent, the fast-growing AI software creation platform will host VibeCon India on April 16–17 in Bengaluru, bringing its flagship selection-led hackathon from San Francisco to India for the first time. The event presents a major opportunity for Indian builders: the winning team will receive a direct interview with a Y Combinator partner for an upcoming batch.

The Bengaluru edition arrives at a pivotal moment for India’s startup ecosystem. It takes place just ahead of Y Combinator’s first in-person Startup School India, scheduled for April 18, creating a concentrated week that will bring together founders, engineers, and operators from across the country to build, launch, and test new ideas. VibeCon India will be hosted at Polaris School of Technology, Bengaluru, bringing this high-intensity builder experience to one of the city’s emerging hubs for tech talent.

Originally launched in San Francisco, VibeCon was designed as a high-signal hackathon that prioritises exceptional builders and tangible outcomes over open participation. The India edition continues that approach through a rigorous application and selection process intended to identify founders, engineers, operators, and non-technical builders capable of rapidly transforming ideas into working products.

Interest in the inaugural India edition has been significant. More than 20,000 applicants from India and abroad applied to participate, from which a smaller cohort of high-potential builders has been selected to compete in Bengaluru.

VibeCon India is supported by a broad network of ecosystem partners spanning venture capital, AI research, and developer infrastructure. Partners include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Together Fund, OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, Stripe, Razorpay, MongoDB, Starknet, Eigencloud and Temporal Technologies, among others. These organisations will provide mentorship, tools, infrastructure, and technical resources to help teams build during the hackathon.

“India is producing an extraordinary number of ambitious builders, many of whom are ready to move faster than traditional pathways allow,” said Mukund Jha, Co-founder and CEO of Emergent. “With VibeCon India, we want to create a focused environment where high-potential teams can test ideas, ship real products, and engage directly with the global startup ecosystem. The opportunity for the winning team to interview directly with Y Combinator reflects our focus on outcomes that can meaningfully accelerate a founder’s journey.”

The two-day hackathon will culminate in a final judging round where participating teams present the products they developed during the event. In addition to the direct interview opportunity with Y Combinator, winning teams will receive cash prizes and access to a partner-backed pool of credits and resources designed to support continued product development beyond the hackathon.

With the launch of VibeCon India, Emergent aims to strengthen connections between India’s fast-growing builder community and the global startup ecosystem, while creating a platform that enables promising ideas to move quickly from concept to company.

About Emergent:

Emergent is the fast-growing platform that lets anyone create full-stack, production-ready applications using autonomous AI agents. Its latest product, Wingman, brings that same vision to personal autonomous agents, giving anyone access to an always-on team that works in the background. Emergent enables ambitious people to move at the speed of their thought — to build faster, go bigger, and be unblocked from technical limitations. Launched in 2025, Emergent is backed by Khosla Ventures, SoftBank, Lightspeed, YC, Prosus, Together, and Google’s AI Futures Fund. Its mission is to democratize who gets to build software and bring new ideas to life.