A spider-shaped robot that diffuses bombs. Smart glasses that let you hear through your bones. An air-purification pole for city streets. These are not final-year engineering projects — they are the work of Indian school students, and they have just won national honours at the Viksit Bharat Buildathon 2025.
On 28 October 2026, Union Minister of State for Education Jayant Chaudhary felicitated the 10 national winning teams in New Delhi. At the same ceremony, the Buildathon entered the Guinness World Records as the “Largest Innovation Solution Competition” — with 2,87,967 project submissions across its Idea and Prototype tracks.
India’s largest school innovation contest
The Viksit Bharat Buildathon 2025 was organised by the Department of School Education and Literacy under the Union Ministry of Education, in collaboration with NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). Launched in September 2025, it invited students from Classes 6 to 12 across the country to find real problems around them and build solutions — with no predefined problems handed to them.
The contest ran on four pillars: Atmanirbhar Bharat, Swadeshi, Vocal for Local and Samriddh Bharat. Entries were judged through a three-tier framework at district, state and national levels by multidisciplinary expert panels, producing 10 national awardees, 100 state awardees and 1,000 district awardees. The total award pool across all levels crossed ₹1 crore. The 10 national teams shared ₹17.5 lakh — ₹2.5 lakh each for the five Prototype Track winners with working models, and ₹1 lakh each for the five Idea Track winners.
The Buildathon builds on the School Innovation Marathon 2024, and its brand ambassador is Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, one of India’s Gaganyaan astronauts.
The winning inventions
Vadiffuse — the spider-shaped bomb-diffusing robot. Aditya Sharma, Bidhan Rai, Krishna Biswas and Abhinandan Rajkhowa of PM SHRI Kendriya Vidyalaya, Tinsukia, Assam, built a spider-shaped robot designed to diffuse bombs — taking humans out of one of the most dangerous jobs there is.
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EchoLens — affordable bone-conduction smart glasses. Students of Step by Step School, Rohillapur, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, built smart glasses that use bone conduction — sound delivered through the bones of the skull rather than the ears — making them affordable and practical for everyday use.
Urban Breathing Pole. Anish Upadhyay, Samyak Prajapal Shendre, Aastha Maurya, Drishti Shyamkumar Chiluka and Sana Ray of PM SHRI Kendriya Vidyalaya No. 1, Surat, Gujarat, designed an air-purification concept for urban environments.
Guardian Bridge. Arhaan Ahmad, Mannat Jan and Mohammad Muntaha of Green Valley Educational Institute, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir.
Dhanbad: The Burning Treasure and the Silent Methane Gas. Utkrisht Paul, Lucky Kumar, Aryan Raj Singh, Gourav Kumar Rewani and Jagriti of De Nobili School, Dhanbad, Jharkhand, turned to the coal country around them — where there was poison, now there is power.
Innovation in Renewable Energy. Divy Lodha, Madhur Sharma, Atishay Jain, Navya and Japman Kaur of Modern Public School, Shalimar Bagh, Delhi.
EcoSync. PM SHRI Kendriya Vidyalaya, Adoor, Kerala.
WINDMINER. An omnidirectional windmill from students of Carmel Convent Senior Secondary School, Neemuch, Madhya Pradesh.
Tasar cocoon counting, quality-checking and segregation machine. DAV Public School, Unit-VIII, Odisha — engineering for the silk economy.
Instant Thermo Flask. Pathippaga Chemmal K Ganapathy Government Higher Secondary School, Chennai, Tamil Nadu.
From Assam to Tamil Nadu, from bomb disposal to silk cocoons, the winners show what happens when lakhs of school students are asked to solve the problems they can see from their own classrooms — and given the tools to build the answers.
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