Bengaluru: EY has announced the winners of Techathon 5.0: Harnessing AI to Transform Bharat, a competition that saw students develop Generative AI-based solutions to tackle real-world challenges in education, healthcare, financial inclusion, and citizen services.

Top Winners

• Champion: Team CaseWizz (Siddharth Asthana, Sanyam Jhuria, and Ayush Sikarwal) from IIT Kharagpur won the Techathon 5.0 trophy for their AI-powered financial assistant, V.A.R.U.N. (Voice Assistant for Rural Users’ Needs). Their solution was recognized for its customer-centric design and innovative architecture.
• Runner-Up: Team SE827 (Dastageer Siddiqui and Arun Bhattacharya) from KIIT, Bhubaneswar secured second place for Polyphen, an AI-driven mobile health platform designed to enhance rural healthcare with patient registration, QR-based history access, and AI-powered chronic disease prediction.
• People’s Choice Award: Team Catalyst (Tejaswini Atluri, Pabitha Kommineni, Rishik KNR, and Akshay Pulla) from VNR VJIET, Telangana, won the popular vote for their impactful AI solution.

The grand finale in Bengaluru featured an independent jury of industry leaders who evaluated the finalists. The winning team received INR 3,00,000, while the runner-up team won INR 2,00,000 along with mentorship from EY leadership to refine their solutions for global enterprises.

With over 1.5 lakh registrations and 6,500 team submissions, EY Techathon 5.0 highlighted the potential of AI in transforming Bharat and fostering next-generation tech leaders.