Talent Doesn't Need a Metro PIN Code: Inside KITS Ramtek's SIH 2026

Quick answer: On 9 September 2026, Fireblaze AI School founder Aniruddha Kalbande served as Chief Guest and Jury for the Internal Smart India Hackathon (SIH) 2026 at Kavikulguru Institute of Technology and Science (KITS), Ramtek, a NAAC A-grade autonomous college affiliated to RTM Nagpur University and one of Fireblaze AI School's MOU partner institutions. Standout projects included a solar-powered dryer built for self-help groups making agarbattis, and a local-first tourism website built by civil engineering students. This post covers what stood out, and why talent this good does not need a metro-city PIN code to build things that matter.

A packed auditorium in Ramtek

The Internal Smart India Hackathon is the round a college runs on its own campus to shortlist teams before the national Smart India Hackathon, the Government of India's flagship hackathon under the Ministry of Education's Innovation Cell and AICTE. KITS Ramtek ran its 2026 internal round on 9 September, and Aniruddha Kalbande was invited as Chief Guest and Jury, spending the day moving from team to team, hearing pitches and asking questions.

The auditorium was full, and the ideas on stage were the kind most metro-city hackathons would be lucky to see.

What the Smart India Hackathon actually is

The Smart India Hackathon (SIH) is the Government of India's national hackathon, run by the Ministry of Education's Innovation Cell (MIC) alongside AICTE, where student teams build working solutions to problem statements posed by government ministries, PSUs and industry. Before any team reaches the national round, most participating colleges first run an internal hackathon of their own, to shortlist which teams and ideas actually represent the campus. That is what KITS Ramtek ran on 9 September, and it is why the day looked less like a classroom exercise and more like a real product review: teams pitching, a jury asking pointed questions, and ideas getting cut or advanced on the spot.

Three projects that stayed with the jury

A hackathon jury sees a lot of ideas in one day. A few earned a second look.

• A solar-powered dryer for self-help groups making agarbattis. Built to dry incense sticks faster than open-air drying, cut production costs, and let self-help groups earn more per batch, a direct, unglamorous fix for a real bottleneck in a livelihood that supports many households around Ramtek.
• A tourism website built by civil engineering students, designed to put local voices at the center of how the region gets discovered, not just its monuments. Built by students whose coursework is bridges and structures, not web development.
• A cluster of ideas spanning agriculture, sustainability and community livelihoods, dreamt up by students building for the problems they actually see around them rather than the ones a hackathon brief usually assumes.

Why this is the point, not the exception

It is easy to assume the sharpest student ideas cluster where the venture capital and the tech parks do. A day of jury duty in Ramtek argued otherwise. Talent does not need a metro-city PIN code to build things that matter, and a solar dryer that measurably helps a self-help group earn more is not a smaller idea than a metro fintech pitch. It is a more finished one, because someone bothered to check who it was for.

What made the day work was not the projects alone. It was a college that has built a culture where students solve real problems instead of just submitting assignments, which is a harder thing to build than any single hackathon and the thing worth thanking KITS Ramtek for.

About Kavikulguru Institute of Technology and Science (KITS), Ramtek

KITS Ramtek is a NAAC A-grade, autonomous engineering college affiliated to Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University (RTMNU), located in Ramtek, roughly 45 kilometres from Nagpur. Autonomy and an A grade are not small things for a non-metro engineering college to hold on to, and the quality of the ideas on stage on 9 September tracked with that: this was not a college coasting on its accreditation.

Thanks to KITS Ramtek

Thanks to Principal Dr. Avinash N. Shrikhade and the entire KITS Ramtek team for the invitation, and to every team that presented. Keep building. This is how it starts.

KITS Ramtek is a Fireblaze AI School MOU partner institution, part of the same college-partnerships program that has trained students and faculty at KDK College of Engineering, Yeshwantrao Chavan College of Engineering (YCCE) and Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University. If your college is exploring a similar collaboration, from vocational training cohorts to hackathon mentorship and jury support, see our college partnerships program.