Hack the Fork: India's First AI Food Tech Hackathon

The National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management, Kundli (NIFTEM-K), an institute under the Ministry of Food Processing Industries, hosted Hack the Fork, described as India's first hackathon bringing Artificial Intelligence and food technology together. The 24-hour contest asked young innovators to use AI on real problems of the alternative protein industry.

When it ran and who opened it

The hackathon was inaugurated on 24 October by Ms. Alice Pjie, Director of Hack the Fork, and ended the next day, 25 October, with the teams presenting their solutions to an expert jury. Hack the Fork is a France-based non-profit initiative, and it organised the event in collaboration with NIFTEM-K.

The teams

More than 85 teams applied. Of these 25 were shortlisted for the final round, and 22 teams from 10 states, with over 90 participants in all, took part at the institute's campus. The participants came from several disciplines and from institutions including the IITs, the IIITs and the University of Delhi, which gave the contest an interdisciplinary character.

What the teams worked on

The challenge was built around the use of Artificial Intelligence to advance the alternative protein industry. The work covered plant-based food innovation, fermentation technologies and food systems more broadly, and the teams were pointed towards nutritional optimisation, food safety, sustainable food production and the reduction of food waste. The winning teams competed for prizes worth 1.5 lakh rupees along with a chance to enter the Startup Incubation Programme of NIFTEM-K.

Who guided the contest

Dr. Harinder Singh Oberoi, Director of NIFTEM-K, said India's first such hackathon would help generate new ideas and strengthen the country's food ecosystem, and encouraged the young innovators to develop practical solutions for a future-ready food-processing sector. The event was coordinated by Dr. Vimal Pant, Professor at NIFTEM-K and Chief Executive Officer of NTIBIF. Mentors included Chaitanya Chilukuri and Svarnim Samant of the Good Food Institute (GFI) India, Dr. Saurabh Jain of IIIT Sonepat and Abhishek Shukla, a research scholar at the University of Delhi, who helped teams sharpen their ideas during the round.

Why it matters

For an institute of the food processing ministry, the exercise tied technology to a sector the government is pushing: alternative proteins, sustainable food production and waste reduction. It also linked a foreign non-profit, Indian technical institutions and a government institute in one innovation event, and offered the winners incubation support rather than a prize alone.