“Everybody has that one significant achievement in life which he cites as his ‘biggest win’; for me winning Code Gladiators 2020 will be ‘that biggest win’”, said Himanshu Singh - the newly crowned coding champion of the world’s biggest coding competition - TechGig Code Gladiators 2020. Himanshu Singh, who passed his college – the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi - just a month ago took over 2.52lakh+ coders and won the much-coveted champion’s crown!

Code Gladiators is the annual coding extravaganza hosted by TechGig and felicitated with Guinness World record and Limca Book record for its massive participation. Code Gladiators celebrated its seventh edition this year, and the first one to have a virtual grand finale. TechGig Code Gladiators 2020 edition was announced in March and saw swarming participation by developers – both Indian and international - despite the COVID-19 situation.

Himanshu Singh won the 165-day long competition in a nail-biting coding finale. The finale rounds for coding and theme hackathons were held on August 8 and 9, respectively. From August 9 - 13, leaders from the participating companies evaluated and judged the finalists to select the winners.

TechGig Code Gladiators 2020 had four theme hackathons – namely, UiPath RPA hackathon, Times Internet Multi-Label Classification, Microsoft Hack on Azure and IBM Call for Climate Change. Theme hackathons are usually centred on finding business solutions to real-world problems. This year the last two hackathons were specifically focussed at finding tech solutions to combat COVID-19.

Explaining more details about the competition, Sanjay Goyal, Business Head, TimesJobs and TechGig said, “In March 2020, we sensed that the COVID-19 situation could slip out of hands, and very quickly we decided to have a grand virtual conclusion to our mega coding competition. We were staring at a mammoth challenge to bring the grandeur of a worldwide recognised event to the virtual format and ensure that all our 2.52lakh+ participants get a slice of this event. I’m happy to share that we’ve been able to live up to all our expectations. We had a few international participants as well, which makes me think that maybe the virtual mode is better than the offline mode”.

International participants Ahmed Makki and Yurasik Ol participated at Code Gladiators for the first time. Ahmed Makki was jubilant about making it to the finals in his maiden attempt. “I feel the virtual mode is better because had that event been held in its usual offline format then I would not have been able to participate owing to visa and COVID-19 restrictions”.

Talking about the virtual aspect of grand finale event Pourab Karchaudhuri – runners up at theme hackathon Multi-Label Classification, and a theme winner at Code Gladiators 2019 said, “The mood and tone of Code Gladiators don’t flicker’. “The experience is cool considering everything is online and extremely well managed,” he added. As for Lucknow boy Himanshu Singh, the journey has just started. He has recently joined an IT firm and hopes to do his best at his new job.