Samkit Sharma, founder of Hack2Skill, discusses the evolution of Hack2Skill, its impact on global innovation, over 1,000 AI-driven hackathons, and his vision for shaping the future workforce in the latest episode of the Dinis Guarda Podcast. The podcast is powered by Businessabc.net, Citiesabc.com, Wisdomia.ai, and Sportsabc.org.
Samkit Sharma is an entrepreneur and tech enthusiast focused on innovation, product evangelism, and building tech communities. He is the founder of Hack2Skill, one of India’s largest tech communities with over 5 million members. Hack2Skill is India’s largest and fastest-growing community, has partnered with over 10,000 institutes, including IITs and NITs, and engaged with more than 10,000 startups. The platform has hosted over 1,000 hackathons, generated 25,000+ ideas, trained more than 75,000 innovators and organised 5,000+ boot camps, working with brands like Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Unilever, and Snap.
He served as Vice President at LanCraft, supporting young gamers, and Director at Indolympix, promoting sports talent. Samkit has spoken at global events like Web Summit on SaaS and innovation. He worked with ISRO on the Bharatiya Antariksh Hackathon 2024 to support advancements in space technology.
During the interview with Dinis Guarda, Samkit Sharma discusses Hack2Skill becoming a go-to platform for global innovation across all domains:
“Any brand in the world, if they start innovation, they think about our platform. We want to replace innovation with Hack2Skill.
This is a big, big task, big challenge, but think of it in a way we want to replace the word innovation with Hack2Skill because innovation needs those kinds of skills or learning experience. Normally, people will innovate, and then they will get to know about their learnings and all. You want to learn them first, ready for what’s coming next to their plate, and then they innovate for the future.
This platform will be large enough, maybe I will say 20 to 30 million in a year, two, or three, 20 to 30 million developers and innovators on the platform.
There are a lot of things happening around the globe, and if we have access to the right solution, access to the right innovation, I think this is how the world will evolve. That’s the kind of bridge we want to meet between innovators and the opportunity providers.”
Bridging innovation between communities and brands
Samkit discusses the critical bridge he is building between communities:
“We are creating a bridge between these stakeholders. For the community, it’s a great way to learn new technology. For a community, it’s a great way to learn about mentorship, to learn about networking.
Where they are standing in terms of innovation, what kind of things they can explore in the ecosystem.
Brands will get good innovation solutions. They can actively understand how developers or innovators are thinking about their product. What kind of things are they using? All this data helps the brands change their way they behave, how they develop, or how they operate using that data.
Data is very important, and our platform, the AI-enabled platform, is matching everything.
It’s a win-win situation for both. The Community learns about new technology. Community is giving their feedback about the program, about the platform, about the SDKs of the customer, of the brands, and learning from the ecosystem, learning from industry experts.
Networking is the one way where they are finding themselves, how they are working or how they are evaluating in the ecosystem. The brands get good solutions, getting that kind of feedback from the ecosystem, getting the response on how this thing will work and all.”
Hack2Skill: Global tech communities
Samkit introduces Hack2Skill, India’s largest and fastest-growing community:
“Hack2Skill is an innovation management platform and product evangelism platform. We are catering to two types of organisations and companies. One is the tech companies like Google, Intel, Microsoft, who are ready with their SDK, ready with their product and all with the platform.
We are engaging developers for that, more than 5 million innovators and developers. We are also working very closely with Google on how the AI adoption in India can take place.
It’s a gamified version of experiential learning where a lot of offline or in-person, or I will say online, boot camps we are doing, they can compete, and then they can see how they level up.
They can take part in various hackathons and judge themselves, a complete gamified version of learning where they can not only learn but also evaluate where they are standing in the ecosystem of AI development.
Second is a pure innovation management where we outsource, we like to crowdsource all the good ideas.
For a company, if they want to innovate, what they will do is create a team of 10-12 people, give them 6 months, and provide all the resources. We are closing in just a day or two.
Imagine the 10 best solutions can help them in whatever way they can. There are good examples out there, these are the frugal innovations. These are the tested innovations that will work in the ecosystem.
90% of the cases we have agreement with the client. We can’t share publicly, but a few things which are in the public domain, we are happy to share and talk about more.”
Driving innovation and engagement
Samkit elaborates on the implementation and success of Hack2Skill’s innovation management platform:
“Our main focus is the right set of ROI and the experience of all the stakeholders. When we initiate a project, there are, I will say, stakeholders related- mentors, jury on the client side, there are thought leaders, subject matter experts, and all, and then there are innovators who come up with their solutions.
Everything is a competition environment because you are catering to more than two million developers out there.
There are a lot of things you have to do when it comes to engagement, innovation management, and so all.
We don’t want to do it just for the sake of executing it. We want to take what came out of those projects. Any initiative we do with our client it’s like a festival in Hack2Skill. We do celebrate all the successes.
The festival feeling of doing a project with our clients makes our retention rate 98%, which no one has in the market. All those clients bring us more business.”
Concluding the interview, Samkit discusses his vision for shaping the future workforce, reflecting on the challenges faced by young individuals:
“There are a lot of jobs available in the market, the only problem is we are not interacting with the right set of skilled people for the job.
When I started, I never thought that I would create a 10 cr company or a 100 cr company like that. I always start, let’s solve this.
In entrepreneurship, if you are making sense of whatever you are doing and you are doing it for at least two to three years, I think things will fall in place. People will know what is happening in the media, but no one wants to go to these new technologies and domains, which is a lack.
Our platform will focus on those opportunities which are domain agnostic, people will learn first, they will have an experience, that experience will give them confidence whether they want to pursue excellence in that particular domain.”
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