NHAI Innovation Hackathon 7.0
National Highways Authority of India (NHAI)
📌About the Event
NHAI Innovation Hackathon 7.0 is a national-level innovation challenge by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). This edition invites tech students, AI/ML enthusiasts, developers, professionals, startups, and innovators to build a secure, lightweight, fully offline facial recognition and liveness detection system for remote and zero-network environments. The solution is expected to support NHAI’s Datalake 3.0 app and work smoothly on mobile devices.
ℹ️ Event Details
- Theme/Challenge: Develop an offline facial recognition and liveness detection solution for field authentication.
- Problem focus: The solution should help field personnel authenticate securely even without an active internet connection.
- Mode of conduct: Online submission through the official NHAI Hackathon portal.
- Technology focus: AI/ML, facial recognition, liveness detection, mobile app integration, React Native, Android and iOS compatibility.
- Target users: IT students, AI/ML enthusiasts, app developers, tech professionals, startups, and innovators.
📅 Important Dates
- Submission opens: 22 May 2026
- Final submission deadline: 5 June 2026
- Application window: 22 May 2026 to 5 June 2026
- Submission portal: Official NHAI Hackathon portal
🎯 Eligibility & Rules
- Eligibility:
- Open to IT students, computer science students, AI/ML enthusiasts, app developers, tech professionals, startups, and innovators.
- Technical requirements:
- The model should work with React Native and support both Android and iOS.
- The AI model should be lightweight, with a target size of around 20 MB or lower.
- Facial recognition and liveness verification should ideally happen in under 1 second.
- The solution should work on mid-range mobile devices, without needing high-end GPUs.
- It should support devices with at least 3 GB RAM, including Android 8.0+ and iOS 12+.
- Facial recognition accuracy should be above 95%.
- The system should perform reliably in outdoor conditions such as bright sunlight, low light, and shadows.
- The solution should use open-source technologies and share the working prototype source code.
- Evaluation process:
- Innovation level – 30 marks: Efficiency of the edge AI model, compression techniques, and offline liveness detection.
- Feasibility – 30 marks: Ease of integration with the Datalake 3.0 React Native app and speed on mid-range phones.
- Scalability and sustainability – 20 marks: Reliability of offline-to-online sync and performance across different faces and lighting conditions.
- Presentation and documentation – 20 marks: Source code, integration guide, and final presentation quality.
🏆 Prize Details and Value
- 1st Prize: ₹2,00,000
- 2nd Prize: ₹1,00,000
- 3rd Prize: ₹50,000
- Total prize pool: ₹3,50,000
- Incentive: Winners get recognition from NHAI, with a chance to build a real-world solution for India’s highway infrastructure ecosystem.