Transcend AI hackathon 2025: Empowering AI talent & innovation

AI is transforming industries at an unprecedented pace, and at NETSOL, we believe in equipping the next generation of AI talent with the right opportunities. As businesses evolve, digital transformation becomes crucial to staying competitive in a rapidly changing market. Embracing technologies like AI, automation, and data analytics is essential for organizations to enhance efficiency, improve customer experiences, and drive innovation. The Transcend AI Hackathon 2025 was a step forward in this mission—bringing together the sharpest AI minds from across Pakistan to solve complex challenges, collaborate, and push the boundaries of innovation.

With a competitive environment, expert mentorship, and real-world AI problem-solving, the hackathon was a breeding ground for creativity and talent discovery. The hackathon provided participants with an opportunity to showcase their skills and compete for top honors. The event was a testament to our commitment to supporting the AI community and expanding our talent pool of future innovators.

The competitive edge: Celebrating the winners

The competition was fierce, but three teams stood out showcasing exceptional technical expertise, problem-solving skills, and creativity. Each team’s efforts underscored the limitless potential of AI innovation, proving that with the right skills, determination, and platform, young AI enthusiasts can develop solutions that transcend boundaries and create global impact.

The hackathon witnessed enthusiastic participation from AI and machine learning enthusiasts across the country.

1st place: Team Tricon (GIKI) – $3,000

Led by Asad Irfan, Team Tricon secured 1st prize by impressing the judges with their cutting-edge innovation - Minutes.AI, an intelligent real-time virtual assistant designed to transform meetings into productive, actionable sessions. By seamlessly integrating AI-driven problem-solving, the team set a new benchmark in automation and efficiency.

Project details: Minutes.AI

Minutes.AI is a real-time AI meeting assistant that enhances collaboration and productivity. It actively participates in meetings, records conversations, generates accurate transcripts, and delivers AI-powered summaries of key discussions. With LIVE insights and AI scheduling, the tool ensures meetings stay organized and efficient.

Key features & integrations

• AI Meeting Assistant: Automatically records meetings and generates detailed transcripts.
• AI Summarization: Extracts key points, decisions, and action items from discussions.
• Custom AI Bots: Generate real-time prompts, take instructions, and answer meeting-related questions.
• Seamless Integrations: Works with Slack, Zoom, and other collaboration tools for effortless connectivity.
• Meeting Scheduler: A built-in LIVE AI Agent that schedules and manages meetings efficiently.

Agentic AI – The all-in-one meeting solution

Minutes AI is built on Agentic AI, an advanced system that understands natural language and provides comprehensive meeting solutions:

• Transcription & Summarization: Convert discussions into actionable insights.
• Translation & Task Tracking: Improve global collaboration.
• Conversational AI: Chat with the meeting assistant for quick information retrieval.

Transforming industries

Minutes AI is a game-changer for tech, healthcare, education, and enterprise sectors, empowering teams with smarter communication, improved productivity, and better decision-making.

2nd place: Predictive Vision (LUMS) – $2,000

With Saif ur Rehman leading the charge, Predictive Vision showcased exceptional analytical thinking and technical expertise, securing a well-deserved second place in the competition with their smart agricultural application, F.A.R.M.

Project Details: F.A.R.M

F.A.R.M – The future of agriculture with a revolutionary model

F.A.R.M is a smart agricultural application designed to empower farmers with real-time, AI-driven insights for better crop management, weather forecasting, and market analysis. The app serves as a personalized farming assistant, integrating cutting-edge AI, NLP, and real-time data analytics to optimize agricultural productivity.

Key features & capabilities

1. Smart weather advisory:

• Provides personalized weather advice based on the user’s location.
• Guides farmers on when to water crops and when to hold off, optimizing irrigation schedules.
• Predicts weather conditions using advanced AI-driven meteorological insights.

2. AI-powered plant disease detection:

• Farmers can upload images of affected leaves, and the disease detection model will diagnose the issue.
• Helps in identifying pest infestations and crop diseases early, allowing timely intervention.

3. Market insights & pricing intelligence:

• Provides real-time market trends and price forecasts to help farmers sell their produce at optimal rates.
• Advises on supply-demand dynamics, ensuring profitable crop selection for the next planting season.

4. Integration with agricultural research:

• Leverages advanced agricultural research to provide farmers with insights on location-based soil conditions and climate adaptability.
• Bridges the gap between farmers and technology, making modern agricultural practices more accessible.

Innovative technology stack

The app operates through an agentic approach, meaning it utilizes multiple intelligent AI agents that specialize in various agricultural tasks:

• NLP-powered assistance: Supports multilingual interaction, ensuring accessibility for farmers across different regions.
• Plant disease detection agent: Identifies and provides solutions for plant diseases using AI-powered image recognition.
• Weather insights agent: Offers real-time weather predictions and adaptive farming recommendations.
• Market insights agent: Not only provides market price trends but also advises farmers on which crops to harvest for maximum productivity and profitability.
• Supply & demand analytics: Uses historical and real-time datasets to predict optimal selling periods.

What sets F.A.R.M apart?

Unlike traditional agricultural advisory tools, F.A.R.M integrates real-time AI and geospatial technology to provide:

• High-resolution mapping: Helps in precision farming by analyzing soil conditions, crop health, and water availability.
• Inventory & farm management: Tracks crop cycles, fertilizers, and pest control measures.
• Plant & pest management: Detects pest infestations, nitrogen levels, and disease outbreaks using Generative AI.
• LIVE API integration: Connects with real-time agricultural databases to ensure farmers receive updated market and climate data.

Application interface

Business & economic impact

For farmers:

• Access to real-time market data increases profits by 20-30%.
• Reduces post-harvest losses below 20%, ensuring better income stability.

For the economy:

• Strengthens Pakistan’s agriculture sector, which contributes 19% of GDP and employs 38.5% of the workforce.
• Enhances crop planning and food security, supporting national agricultural sustainability.

For investors & stakeholders:

• A scalable, high-impact model with potential for nationwide and global expansion.
• Drives growth in an underserved sector, offering lucrative opportunities for investment.

3rd place: The Chateaus (NUST) – $1,000

Guided by Asfand Yar Jamali, The Chateaus secured a well-earned third place with their innovative AI-driven project, Prompt.AI, an AI-powered chatbot solution that automatically trains itself on relevant business data and generates ready-to-use chatbot scripts. This ensures businesses can seamlessly engage customers while transforming how information is accessed and utilized.

Project details: Prompt.AI

The system operates by integrating directly with a designated URL, which serves as a data source for the chatbot. This allows it to fetch and access relevant content directly from web pages, eliminating the need for manual updates.

Key features:

• Customizable chatbot messages – Tailor interactions based on business needs.
• Brand personalization – Integrate custom colors, logos, and themes.
• Seamless data extraction – Leverages a web scraper to extract and structure data efficiently.

AI-powered data processing pipeline

1. Web scraping & Data extraction:

• Retrieves text, metadata, and essential content from the provided URL.
• Filters out irrelevant data while preserving valuable information.

2. Text chunking & vectorization:

• Breaks extracted content into meaningful chunks for efficient storage and retrieval.
• Converts structured data into a numerical database, enabling GPT-4 to analyze user queries with high accuracy.

Impact & unique selling proposition

Traditional customer interactions can take up to 6 minutes per query. With Prompt.AI, this is reduced to just 1 minute, achieving a 5-minute time savings per interaction.

For a website handling 100 queries per day, this translates to:

• 500 minutes saved daily (~8.3 hours)
• 250 hours saved per month
• 30-50% workload reduction

Business value & cost efficiency

Prompt.AI enables businesses to cut operational costs significantly, offering:

• Annual cost savings of up to $50,000 per website
• Optimized resource allocation, allowing teams to focus on strategic initiatives instead of routine customer queries

Current & future integrations

• Currently supports: URLs, PDFs, and text files
• Future roadmap: Expanding to YouTube, Shopify, audio files, and more

Prompt.AI isn’t just an AI chatbot; it’s a scalable, intelligent, and cost-effective solution that reshapes the future of automated customer support.

Beyond prizes: Unlocking opportunities & shaping the future of AI

Apart from the cash prizes, winning teams also got a chance to earn networking opportunities with industry professionals and the chance to showcase their solutions to key decision-makers in the field.

When Faizaan Ghauri, Chief Strategy Officer at NETSOL Technologies Inc, was asked about the key takeaways from the NETSOL Hackathon 2025, he emphasized the incredible energy and innovation displayed by participants. Reflecting on the evolution of hackathons since 2016, he highlighted how AI advancements and open-source technologies have given young innovators unprecedented leverage, enabling them to transform ideas into execution rapidly. He also stressed that AI development is no longer limited by local constraints—Pakistan and similar ecosystems can now compete on a global stage. Additionally, he pointed out how constraints, often perceived as challenges, can actually drive innovation by eliminating unnecessary decisions and pushing for more efficient solutions. Discussing AI breakthroughs, he noted innovations like DeepSeek, which have revolutionized the efficiency of AI models, making high-performance computing more accessible.

The future of AI is being shaped by young innovators who have near-infinite leverage today. The tools, knowledge, and open-source advancements available now allow us to build at an unprecedented pace. AI is no longer constrained by local challenges—what we create today can have a global impact. The ability to move from idea to execution quickly is reshaping how we think about development. This hackathon reinforced that AI innovation is universal, and nothing stops Pakistan or any other ecosystem from competing on a global stage. - Faizaan Ghauri, Chief Strategy Officer, NETSOL Technologies Inc.

The event commenced with a pre-event webinar two days before the event ensuring participants were well-prepared and concluded with an exciting award ceremony where the winners were celebrated for their outstanding contributions.

Fueling AI talent and expanding hiring potential

At NETSOL, we recognize that the future of AI isn’t just about technology—it’s about people. Our hackathon is part of a larger initiative to build a strong AI ecosystem, foster collaboration, and identify top-tier talent for the next wave of AI-driven transformation.

By engaging with talented students from GIKI, LUMS, and NUST, we aim to bridge the gap between academia and industry, offering mentorship, career opportunities, and the chance to work on groundbreaking AI projects.

The NETSOL Hackathon is more than just an event—it’s a launchpad for AI-driven careers and groundbreaking ideas. We look forward to continuing our efforts in empowering the next generation of AI pioneers—because the future of AI begins with investing in its brightest minds. If you’re passionate about AI, stay tuned for the next big opportunity at NETSOL!