The winning team will receive a direct interview with a Y Combinator partner for an upcoming batch.

The event is scheduled just ahead of Y Combinator's first in-person Startup School India on April 18, creating a focused week that will bring together founders, engineers, and operators to build and test new ideas.

VibeCon is designed as a high-signal hackathon that prioritises exceptional builders and tangible outcomes over open participation. The India edition follows a rigorous application and selection process to identify founders, engineers, operators, and non-technical builders capable of rapidly turning ideas into working products.

More than 20,000 applicants from India and abroad applied, with a smaller cohort selected to participate in Bengaluru.

VibeCon India is supported by a wide network of ecosystem partners across venture capital, AI research, and developer infrastructure, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Together Fund, OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, Stripe, Razorpay, MongoDB, Starknet, Eigencloud, and Temporal Technologies. These partners will provide mentorship, tools, and technical resources during the hackathon.

Winning teams will also receive cash prizes and access to partner-backed credits and resources to support continued product development.

With VibeCon India, Emergent aims to strengthen connections between India's builder community and the global startup ecosystem, enabling ideas to move faster from concept to company.