Virtusa's 20-hour long NeuralHack challenge is the best platform for young coders today. Here's why

From November 27, 11 am to November 28, 7 am — the atmosphere was charged for 20 grueling hours at the Virtusa office in Hyderabad. More than 100 engineering students from leading universities across the country competed in the annual challenge NeuralHack organised by the American information technology services company. Students had sailed through two online challenges and competed with 28,000 fellow applicants from 600 colleges to get there. We speak to two chosen students who were not only selected from the talent pool, but who also won in two categories — Full Stack and Data Science.
 
A one-man army

VL Rajesh Kumar | (Pic: VL Rajesh Kumar)

Final-year Computer Science student of BV Raju Institute of Technology (BVRIT), Hyderabad, VL Rajesh Kumar was the winner in the individual Data Science category. "What attracted me to this challenge was that NeuralHack seemed like a great platform for me to test my abilities," he says. Though people from different parts of the country were competing in the final round, with the guidance of mentors from Virtusa, Rajesh remained motivated. He was given two tasks, one that required him to visualise data and another that required him to predict actual values. "I also got the chance to make several new friends," says the 19-year-old. In the future, the youngster aims to work with a company that works for public safety.
 

Better together

The winning team and Anoushka Mada | (Pic: Anoushka Mada)

Working as a team requires different approaches and Anoushka Mada, a winner in the team Full Stack category, enjoyed working and winning as a team. This final-year student of Computer Engineering from the Indian Institute of Information Technology Design and Manufacturing, Kurnool, felt that as all her team members were new to her, a good rapport was formed right there. "In the 20 hours that we were given, we spent a sizeable amount of time understanding the technology and what we needed to do, thanks to the Virtusa team, and then started working on the problem we were given," says the 20-year-old. She adds, "I like coding because it encourages us to use logic, critical thinking and other skills to solve the task at hand." She would like to make her parents proud with whatever she takes up in the future.

The judges for the competition included:
- Venkatraman Umakanth, Industry Lead, NASSCOM
- Professor Madhu Veeraraghavan, Director and Chair Professor, TA Pai Management Institute, Manipal
- Dr Anand Samuel, Vice-Chancellor, VIT University, Vellore
- Sriram Rajagopal, Chief Strategy Officer, Revature  

For more on them, check out virtusa.com