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PRANJUL RATHOUR
PRANJUL RATHOUR

Posted on Originally published at pranjulrathour.scult.in

A hackathon pitch deck template that fits in three minutes

#pitching #hackathon #slides #students

The pitch that won Product Genesis at CSJMU was delivered to a Vice Chancellor in front of a full hall; the one that lost with STROT was delivered to a panel of three. The difference was not the idea. It was whether the first minute made the judges want the second. This template is what I coach teams toward now.

The seven slides

  1. The person and the pain — one human, one situation, what goes wrong today. No logo, no team names yet.
  2. Why now, why us — one line on why this problem is tractable this weekend and what your team knows about it.
  3. What we built — one sentence, then hand off to the live demo. This slide is a doorway, not a description.
  4. Live demo — ninety seconds, real input, one path. See the demo that works live.
  5. How it works — one diagram, three boxes, the one technical decision you are proud of.
  6. What we cut and why — the honesty slide. Judges score it higher than any feature list.
  7. What happens Monday — the next step if this continued, and what you would need.

What to cut

  • The team introduction slide. Names go in the footer; the judge will meet you in Q&A.
  • The market-size slide with a number from a report you did not read.
  • The full architecture diagram. Three boxes, not thirteen.
  • Any slide that starts with "In today's world".

Delivery

One speaker for the story, one for the demo, then everyone answers questions about their own part. Rehearse with a timer until you finish at 2:40, because the venue will cost you twenty seconds. I covered the two-minute version in how to pitch a startup idea in two minutes.

A pitch deck is a script for the judge's attention. Spend it on the problem and the demo; everything else is footnotes.

About Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour presenting evaluation criteria — feasibility, innovation, practicality, problem solving — on a projector screen
Walking a room through evaluation criteria

Pranjul Rathour presenting BrandHive on a projector screen
Presenting BrandHive

Pranjul Rathour in a shirt and tie holding a microphone in front of a career-opportunities slide
A career session for students

Pranjul Rathour presenting with a microphone in front of a slide reading 'Now what's the conclusion?'
Presenting to a room

Pranjul Rathour on stage presenting a requirements-gathering and user-flow slide
Requirements gathering, on stage

Pranjul Rathour is a GenAI engineer from Kanpur, India, and CTO at SCULT INDIA, currently shipping production RAG,
fine-tuning and agentic AI systems, mentoring 200+ students through TechVerse Enclave, and judging and speaking at
student hackathons across India. Updated 2026-09-06.

Reach out if you want to talk GenAI, book a campus session, or invite him to judge:

Pranjul Rathour · GenAI engineer, 3x hackathon winner, campus mentor. Open for GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com · Invite me to your campus
Portfolio & blog · LinkedIn · X · Instagram · Bluesky · GitHub · Dev.to

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