10 national winning student teams were felicitated by Union minister Jayant Chaudhary (Photo: PIB).A spider-shaped bomb-defusing robot, an instant flask, an urban breathing pole, and affordable bone-conduction smart glasses were among the projects developed by students who emerged as 10 national-level winners at the Viksit Bharat Buildathon 2025.Union Minister of State for Education Jayant Chaudhary Wednesday felicitated the 10 winners from various states, including Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Gujarat.Organised by the Department of School Education and Literacy in collaboration with Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog, and the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), this hackathon targeted school students from Classes 6 to 12 across the country.Viksit Bharat Buildathon 2025 also entered the Guinness World Records as the ‘largest innovation solution competition’ with 2,87,967 project submissions.Addressing the event, Chaudhary reiterated the importance of fostering confidence, creativity, innovation and independent thinking among children to mould them into future leaders.Highlighting the Buildathon Initiative, he noted that students were encouraged to identify problems and develop solutions independently, without predefined problems or solutions.“Centred around four foundational pillars—Atmanirbhar Bharat, Swadeshi, Vocal for Local, and Samriddh Bharat—the initiative witnessed an unprecedented grassroots response, recording 2,87,967 project submissions across both Idea and Prototype tracks,” said the Ministry of Education in a statement.Story continues below this adIt said that to evaluate the solutions, a rigorous, three-tier assessment framework was instituted at the district, state and national levels led by multidisciplinary expert panels. Following comprehensive evaluations, 10 national awardees, 100 state awardees and 1,000 district awardees were selected.An award pool of over Rs 1 crore was instituted across district, state and national levels. The 10 national winning teams were awarded a total cash prize of Rs 17.50 lakh. Under the prototype track, each of the five top winning teams was awarded Rs 2.5 lakh, recognising their functional working models.Each of the five winning teams under the idea track received Rs 1 lakh to encourage the incubation and scaling of their creative concepts, the ministry said.