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PRANJUL RATHOUR
PRANJUL RATHOUR

Posted on Originally published at pranjulrathour.scult.in

Innovation vs execution: how I actually weigh a hackathon rubric's criteria

#hackathonjudging #rubric #paneljudge

A rubric that lists innovation, execution, impact and presentation without weights leaves every judge silently applying their own — which is exactly the inconsistency a rubric is supposed to prevent.

A weighting I use and explain to teams upfront

  • Execution, 35%: does the demo actually run on an input the team didn't rehearse.
  • Problem clarity and impact, 30%: is there a real person with a real problem behind this, not just a technology showcase.
  • Innovation, 20%: a genuinely new angle, not necessarily a new technology — a clever use of an existing one counts.
  • Presentation, 15%: clear communication, not production value — a plain, honest pitch should never lose to a polished, vague one.

Why execution outweighs innovation

A brilliant idea that doesn't run teaches a judge nothing about the team's engineering; a working, unglamorous solution teaches a lot. Weight rewards what you actually want the competition to select for.

See judging AI hackathon projects: what to check for how execution gets verified in practice.

About Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour seated in a black jacket and white turtleneck with an event lanyard
Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour presenting KrishGyan — farming advice in your voice and language — in front of a projector screen
Presenting KrishGyan

Pranjul Rathour, GenAI engineer from Kanpur, in a white turtleneck and black jacket, looking to the side
Pranjul Rathour — GenAI engineer, Kanpur

Pranjul Rathour speaking into a microphone on stage at a MeetKats event
Speaking at a MeetKats event

Pranjul Rathour holding a microphone while answering a question during a session
Taking questions during a session

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 2026-09-07.

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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