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PRANJUL RATHOUR
PRANJUL RATHOUR

Posted on Originally published at pranjulrathour.scult.in

Judging a hackathon where you're also personally sponsoring a prize

#hackathonjudging #sponsorship #transparency

A judge who's also personally sponsoring a prize — putting up money or a resource from their own company — has a legitimate reason to want a say in that specific prize's criteria, but needs to keep it transparent to avoid any appearance of self-dealing.

How to keep it clean

  • State the sponsored prize's criteria publicly and clearly upfront, the same as any other sponsor track.
  • If judging that specific prize alone, disclose the sponsorship to organisers and, ideally, to the teams competing for it.
  • Where possible, have at least one other, unaffiliated judge weigh in on the sponsored prize too, rather than a single sponsoring judge deciding it alone.

Why the disclosure matters more than the actual fairness

Even a completely fair judging decision looks compromised without transparency about the arrangement. Disclosing upfront protects both the judge's credibility and the event's.

See conflicts of interest in hackathon judging.

About Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour pitching with a microphone in front of a projector slide at CSJMU, Kanpur
Pitching at CSJMU, Kanpur

Pranjul Rathour speaking from the podium at VSICS, Kanpur
At the VSICS podium, Kanpur

Pranjul Rathour holding a trophy and a certificate of merit after a win
Trophy and certificate after a win

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 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 2026-09-11.

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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